Scope and Contents

The collection consists of novels written by Wendy Duong about the Vietnamese American resettlement experience.

Biographical / Historical

Born in Hoi An, Vietnam to parents who were language professors, Wendy Nicole Duong, née Dương Như Nguyện, and her family escaped the Communist siege of Saigon on a U.S. cargo plane three days before the collapse of the Republic of South Vietnam. Then a 16-year-old about to graduate from high school, in March 1975 she had just won South Vietnam’s Presidential Honor Prize in Literature and was expected to be designated as National Valedictorian by the Ministry of Education for her perfect GPA and national ranking.

Duong (known creatively under the pen name Uyen Nicole Duong) is the first Vietnamese-American to hold judicial office in the United States. In 1992, she was appointed Associate Municipal Judge for the City of Houston and Magistrate for the State of Texas. After serving a three-year term, she resigned to become an international lawyer for Mobil Corporation Asia-Pacific. In 2001, she joined the faculty of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law as a corporate law and international business transactions professor. Duong has also combined her legal career with novel writing. She writes historical fiction featuring Vietnam’s decolonization, the fall of Saigon, immigrant life, and women’s themes. She currently practices law in Houston and writes full-time.