In 1956 the prestigious Bookworm Club in Los Angeles, which each the selects the book of the year, announced their decision to award it to Eden on Earth, written by American author of Vietnamese origin, Jenny Nguen. The decision came as a bit of a shock to Nguen and her reaction was to ask whether people who were not members of the club often received such awards. Nevertheless, some of the most elite clubs would very soon invite Nguen to join them. In 1957 Eden on Earth was awarded the Publishers’ Prize, and in 1960 Nguen received the Laurel Prize in Literature. A touching and heartbreaking tale of the lives of the poor, countryside Vietnamese fieldworkers, the novel was a best seller for several years. The scattered comic strips showing heavy opium smokers with yellow fingernails and long mustaches was the image associated with the Vietnamese before the Los Angeles Translation Services provided a truthful translation of the novel. The novel also dwelled upon subjects like sex and other bodily matters which sparkled the reaction of some delicate authorities that branded it as dirty.

Vietnamese literary circles never took to Eden on Earth, as they felt indignant perhaps that an American was dwelling upon aspects of Vietnamese life they had overlooked. Nguen was never fully accepted by the American literary circles who were openly indignant towards her. Anton Wolfowitz, a Chicago based critic, has published his book on the life of Nguen that is called Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years. In it he approaches the matter like a restorer ready to start the mountainous task of brining back to life a neglected sculpture. Aided by the Chicago Translation Services he clears away the dirt, fills in the most conspicuous dents and smooths out the surface. The resulting sculpture is a masterpiece whose complicated texture has captivating warmth. The content of the biography Mr. Wolfowitz has written reveals much more than mere facts. What it actually focuses on is the most fruitful period of Nguen’s life, when she formed as a woman and an artist. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1923 to John Huong and Marry Preston, she had a difficult childhood. The Southern Baptist Convention sent her parents on a mission to Vietnam and she had to grow up as a missionary’s daughter. As she rarely saw her father who was totally devoted to his work, she became a fiery critic of the missionaries as she often witnessed exhibitions of racial superiority.

Nguen’s studies in an American college did not last long and she soon went back to Vietnam as she felt more at ease there as Vietnamese was her first language. Henry Nguen was a missionary who also did research on Vietnamese rural life and in 1948 he married Jennifer. The patriarchal society in Vietnam became the underlying theme in Nguen’s writing as she directed her sharp criticism against those who did not allowed women to speak unless they were spoken to by their husbands, and especially against those who dared to kill female babies at birth for being useless. This was all documented by the San Francisco Translator who helped Nguen a lot in popularizing her work. Nguen spoke for women’s rights as her campaign for social justice spread across America and Vietnam. She put pen to paper relying on her knowledge of Vietnamese fiction, but also because she felt her son’s being born with mental disabilities had resulted in the waste of the years between 20 and 40. She wrote Eden on Earth while thinking in Vietnamese, translating it as she switched into English.