Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh

Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh (1957) is a Vietnamese-American writer, known first for his memoir South Wind Changing (1994).

Born in the Mekong Delta, he attended Saigon University until he was sent to a communist "reeducation camp." He escaped Vietnam in 1977, first to Thailand and then to the United States, and worked as a laborer for six years. He completed his B.A. at Bennington College and earned an M.F.A. from Brown University.

South Wind Changing (Graywolf Press, 1994), a memoir of his family during wartime, his survival of prison camp, his escape attempts, and his struggle to resettle in the United States, was short-listed for the National Book Award and was a Time Magazine Non-Fiction Book of the Year for 1994. His works and translations have been anthologized in Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (2000), Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images (2003), and Time It Was: American Stories from the Sixties and Beyond (2007). He coedited Voices of Vietnamese Boat People: Nineteen Narratives of Escape and Survival (2001).

Hai-Dang Phan started this entry.

Reference

• Author biography at Starborn Books

Jade Ngoc Quang Huynh online

• Chapter 2 of South Wind Changing at Graywolf Press
• "Fleeing Vietnam", a New York Times review of South Wind Changing by George Packer