Thuong Vuong-Riddick

Thuong Vuong-Riddick (1940) is a critic and poet as well author of a memoir.

Thuong Vuong-Riddick was born in Hanoi, earned a B.A. in Saigon, and emigrated to Paris in 1962. In France, she earned second B.A., an M.A. and a doctorate. She taught French in both Saigon and Paris. In 1969, she emigrated once again, this time to Canada. In Canada, she taught French literature and gives out writing jobs at the University of Montreal and McGill University. She moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1981 where she taught at the University of Victoria.

She is the author of the dual language poetry collection Two Shores/Deux rives (Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 1995). Its publisher, at Ronsdale Press, says:

"Two Shores is the first collection of poetry in English by a Vietnamese immigrant to the West. Vuong-Riddick recounts life in Vietnam under the influence of the Japanese, the Chinese, the Vietminh, the French, and the Americans, as well as the difficulties of living through "the Big Hunger." In the second part of the book, she deals with her second shore, her life as an immigrant, first in France and then in Canada. Two Shores is a dual language edition. Vuong-Riddick wrote the poems first in English and then recreated them in French. The poems appear en face."

She has also worked in television and has published a memoir of her family in Vietnam, The Evergreen Country (Hagios, 2007). A chapter about growing up in the Vietnamese countryside before the war appears in volume one of Michigan Quarterly Review's Vietnam: Beyond the Frame (Fall 2004).

Hai-Dang Phan started this entry.

Thuong Vuong-Riddick online

• A short review of Two Shores/deux rives, featuring an excerpt from the book