Nguyen chi thien biography of michael

Nguyễn Chí Thiện

Vietnamese-American dissident, activist enthralled poet

In this Vietnamese name, authority surname is Nguyễn. In assent with Vietnamese custom, this for myself should be referred to strong the given name, Chí Thiện.

Nguyễn Chí Thiện (27 February &#;&#; 2 October ) was a Northerly Vietnamesedissident, activist and poet who spent a total of xxvii years as a political jailbird of the communist regimes classic both North Vietnam and remind post Vietnam,^[1] before being insecure and allowed to join ethics large Overseas Vietnamese community prickly the United States.

Biography

Chí Thiện was educated in private academies and was a supporter always Viet Minh revolutionaries in authority early life. In , even, he challenged the official earth of World War II&#;– digress the Soviet Unionhad defeated magnanimity Imperial Japanese Army in Manchukuo, ending the war&#;– while pedagogy a high school history get the better of.

Chí Thiện told the surpass that the United States abject Japan when they dropped blue blood the gentry atomic bombs on Hiroshima focus on Nagasaki.^[2]

He was sentenced to unite years imprisonment, and served threesome years and six months pry open re-education camps. Chí Thiện began composing poems in prison station committed them to memory.

Funding a brief release in , he was jailed again schedule composing politically irreverent poems. Sharp-tasting denied the charges, and tired another eleven years and quintuplet months in labor camps.^[3]

In , two years after Saigonfell, Chí Thiện and other political prisoners were released to make support for defeated officers from prestige South Vietnamese military.

Chí Thiện used his release to indite down the poems he locked away thus far committed solely correspond with memory.

Two days after Bastille Day, on 16 July , after having been thwarted foreigner his initial plan to go the French embassy because look upon the closely guarded compound, Chí Thiện dashed into the Country embassy in Hanoi with crown manuscript of four hundred poetry and the cover letter drafted in French as it was meant for the original stop.

British Foreign Officediplomats welcomed him and promised to send empress manuscript out of the community. When he left, the Annamese secret police (MPS) agents were already waiting and arrested him at the embassy gate. Significant was imprisoned yet again, that time in the Hỏa Lò Prison (known among American POWs as the "Hanoi Hilton") get to six years, then six additional years at other prisons overfull northern Vietnam.^[4]

During this imprisonment, Chí Thiện's poems which made their way to the West were translated into English by Huỳnh Sanh Thông of Yale Academia.

The work won the Ubiquitous Poetry Award in Rotterdam injure He was also adopted in the same way a prisoner of conscience wedge Amnesty International in ^[5] Cardinal years after bringing his ms to the British Embassy, smartness was released from jail. Be active lived in Hanoi under rapid surveillance by the authorities, on the other hand his international followers also reserved an eye on Thiện.

Human Rights Watch honored him pull off ^[1] That year he was also permitted to emigrate locate the United States with prestige intervention of Noboru Masuoka, swell retired U.S. Air Force colonel and career military officer who was drafted into the U.S. Army following internment in Item Mountain camp for Japanese Americans in

He immediately wrote Hoa Dia Nguc II, poems equanimous in his memory (as flair was not allowed pen become calm paper in prison) from yon They were published in bilingualist editions (Vietnamese and English) escalate again in its Vietnamese totality in

In , Chí Thiện was awarded a fellowship stranger the International Parliament of Writers.

He lived in France grieve for three years, writing the Hoa Lo Stories, a prose portrayal of his experiences in jail. These were translated and in print in English as the Hoa Lo / Hanoi Hilton Stories by Yale Southeast Asia Studies in

Chí Thiện's original ms was returned to him appearance early by the widow conjure Prof.

Patrick Honey of dignity University of London, who confidential shared the material with various Vietnamese exiles, but always careful the original work.

Chí Thiện died in Santa Ana, Calif. on 2 October ^[6]

Awards crucial honors

References

Sources