shortly before 1949, the past returns as a charmed
stone that seeks revenge. The young girl in “San”
studies mathematics hard in an attempt to under-
stand her immigrant father, who desperately ap-
plied his mathematical skills to gambling and left
the family broken.
“The Unforgetting” is the story that best il-
lustrates Chinese Americans’ dilemma of being
caught between the necessity and the impossibility
to forget. Ming Hwang, giving up on his dream of
being a scientist, settles down with his wife and son
in an isolated small town in Iowa to start a new life
as a photocopier repair technician. Despite their
intention and attempt to forget, Ming and his wife
remain trapped in their memories and small-town
life. When their son Charles decides to leave home
for college, the immigrant parents realize they only
have each other to keep their memories alive.
In this collection of stories, Chang explores
Chinese-American experiences in a society where
dreams are granted and assimilation demanded,
but where neither is achievable for certain groups
of immigrants. She questions the identity of Chi-
nese Americans, both the immigrant generation of
the 1950s and their children, by examining their
severance from and bondage to the past.
Yan YingHuy nh, Jade Ngo.c Quang (1957– ) Born in a Mekong Delta village in South Vietnam, Huynh was attending Saigon University in 1975
when the capital fell to the Viet Cong. He was
soon sent to a re-education camp and conse-
quently survived forced labor, starvation, tor-
ture, and war. In 1977, leaving his family behind,
Huy `nh made a harrowing journey by boat to
Thailand and lived in a refugee camp before he
was sponsored to travel to Corinth, Tennessee.
He worked at several menial jobs including as a
fast-food restaurant worker, a machine operator,
and a janitor, before graduating with a B.A. from
Bennington College, Vermont, in 1987. He re-
ceived his M.F.A. from Brown University in 1992
and a Ph.D. in 2005 from Cardiff University in the
United Kingdom.
Huy `nh published his major work, South Wind
Changing, in 1994. The memoir won several recog-
nitions including Time magazine’s nonfiction book
of the year, and it was short-listed for the National
Book Award. South Wind Changing is one of the
early book-length narratives in English that de-
scribe civilian experiences in Vietnam after the U.S.
evacuation. The book uses several tropes in describ-
ing life after the fall of Saigon: the re-education
and labor camps, the persecution and execution of
former government officials and intellectuals, the
secret police, government corruption and abuse,
and the tension between the South and the North.
Throughout the narrative, however, runs the motif
of nature as a transcending and eternal source of
hope and inspiration. South Wind Changing also
shares with other Southeast Asian refugee litera-
tures (Cambodian and Hmong) such themes as
war and violence, memory and trauma, hope and
survival, home and family, escape and freedom.
In 2001, Huy `nh coedited with Mary Cargill
Voices of Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Nar-
ratives of Escape and Survival, a collection of
narratives of Vietnamese men and women, from
students to professors, from entrepreneurs to doc-
tors, who risked the dangers of starvation, pirates,
and natural disasters in their escape to freedom on
small make-shift boats.
In 2004, Huy `nh chose Starborn Books, a small
publishing house in Wales, to publish his second
major work, The Family Wound, a fictitious ac-
count based on his aunt’s life. He wanted artistic
control over his literary work rather than compro-
mise with major publishing houses and their ex-
pectations of Hollywood adaptation of his books.
Huy `nh has taught at several colleges and uni-
versities including St. Lawrence University in New
York and Appalachian State University in North
Carolina.Bibliography
Nguyen, Dinh-Hoa. Review of South Wind Changing.
World Literature Today 69 (1995): 654.
Rabson, Steve. Review of South Wind Changing. Jour-
nal of Asian Studies 54 (1995): 254–256.
Truong, Monique T. D. “Vietnamese American Liter-
ature.” An Interethnic Companion to Asian Ameri-Huy `nh, Jade Ngo.c Quang 117