| Nguyen Nguyet Anh |
| Koch Ming Toi |
| Kim Chi Crittendon |
| Anh Houng-Thi Tu |
| |
| Community Events |
Nguyen Nguyet Anh
composer/newspaper owner/editor, Pho hno newspaper
Nguyen Nguyet Anh is the chief editor and owner of the Vietnamese American newspaper, Phô nho’, which she started in 1987 as a means to pay for her daughters college education. It is the first Vietnamese newspaper to be accepted into the National Press Club. Nguyet Anh and her family arrived in the United States in 1975 after escaping by boat during the very week that Vietnam fell to the communists. While on the boat, she decided that the one skill she had that she could use to help her country is music. Since then she has written and recorded over 200 songs that address social issues in her homeland. She has traveled to many Vietnamese refugee camps and communities around the world to perform her music for them.
Quotes from Nguyen Nguyet Anh:
The week I escaped from Vietnam on the boat, I decided what I can do for my country, my people and for the revolution, I will do, serving it. I’m talented with music, and I decided to use my knowledge and my talent.
I didn’t want to be a singer, but I thought about what I could do for my country to forget myself, like a social [professional] life or whatever I could do. And I thought that I’m good in music. I wrote my own songs when I was thirteen, and all the songs, the very old songs and my very first songs, talk about a princess in Vietnam. She sacrificed herself to serve her country. So I thought that whatever I could do, I was going to do. I thought that I’m good in music, so I can use [this talent to serve my country]. [I decided that] I can write my own songs to console people or to ask the Vietnamese people to raise up, stand up don’t cry all the time, and get up and back in the revolution, and we are going to fight until the last days of the communists. They must be out of the country.
[The most important thing about being here]—besides the freedom? yes, [freedom comes first]. Woman, [about being a] woman is the thing I learned a lot from America and I learned it and I appreciate it. About being a woman, woman can do a lot of things. People in my country, from many, many years ago even, a woman cannot do anything. . . . .In America a woman can go into the social [professional] life and work and be successful. I saw lots of women in America, they can do better than men. In America, I learned a lot and I got stronger spiritually, and I feel that you can work, you can go out, and you can do [the same things] just like a man.
I always tell my daughter that everyone has only one life to live, so live and do whatever you can do. But just one thing, when you think back about your life or back about what you’ve done, never feel ashamed. And remember that giving away is accepting. You just give away what you can give away, and people are going to give back to you. Don’t ask people to give to you before you give away to them.
 |
| Nguyen Nguyet Anh at the office of Pho nho newspaper |
 |
 |
|
| Nguyen Nguyet Anh performing revolutionary songs | ||
 |
||
| Nguyen Nguyet Anh performing revolutionary songs | ||
 |
||
| Nguyen Nguyet Anh performing revolutionary songs | ||