Kien Nguyen

Kien Nguyen grew up an outsider in his native land. His
once wealthy family, thrust into poverty at the dawn of a
new political regime, lived among neighbors who treated
them as pariahs, unwelcome remnants the colonialist past.
Kien himself, a child of mixed race (his father was
American), was among the most unwanted. Told with a stark,
poetic brilliance, Kien's account of his early years—from
the fall of Saigon, when at age eight he watched the last
U.S. Army helicopter leave without him and his family, to
his eventual escape—is a work of profound emotional
resonance, at once harrowing and inspiring. The Unwanted
unforgettably records a universal human experience
played out in extreme circumstances: the forging of an
identity, a life.

Kien Nguyen left Vietnam in 1985 through the United
Nations "Orderly Departure Program." After spending time at
a refugee camp in the Philippines, Nguyen arrived in the
United States. He lives in New York City.