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.