That student wrote that she is now studying to be a teacher, and when she’s asked about teachers who were influential to her, she always thinks of Nguyen. … You made us feel safe and qualified to think deeply, despite our awkward 17-year-old-ness.” “You helped me fall in love with a poem for the first time in my life. “I am grateful for the way that you encouraged us to be messy and colorful and opinionated,” one former student wrote on Nguyen’s memorial page. When her students started the school’s first Asian Student Alliance, she was the inaugural co-adviser. When Nguyen saw the impact that she had on her students, who viewed her as a role model, it kept her going, Sy said. “We remembered that those were us some years ago, not even that far.” “We talked about being tired of teaching and what it demanded of us-and we go on because of our students,” Sy said. But Nguyen was one of the few teachers of color at her school, Sy said, and she took that responsibility to her students seriously. It was tough for Nguyen to balance writing and teaching, Sy said. She had received several writers’ residencies and fellowships and had recently completed a writing fellowship at Kundiman, a national nonprofit group dedicated to cultivating Asian-American writing. Her short stories had been published in Hyphen Magazine, PANK Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and several other journals. She is survived by her father Hai Nguyen, her mother Vy Yeng, and her brother Steven Nguyen.Īt the time of her death, Nguyen was working on a novel called “Lion’s Tooth,” about a Cambodian-American family living in Cambridge, Mass. She was close to her family and went to be with them when the coronavirus outbreak shut down New York City, Vinola said. “She was telling me, ‘I just want to experience everything.’”īorn and raised in Revere, Mass., Nguyen earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Vassar College and a master’s of fine arts degree from Long Island University. “She wanted so much out of life that she really pursued it,” Sy said. She recently became a big fan of BTS, the South Korean boy band. She loved Harry Potter, anime, and live music. Nguyen was an irrepressible, bubbly person with a zest for life, Sy said. She created a space for you to matter in, to be important in. “My voice was not only always heard, it was listened to.
‘Where are you hurting?,’ she inquired, something no adult had ever asked me before. Nguyen sought to instead understand me and question me.
“Instead of responding with the same bitterness I carried for the world, Ms. “I was an angry, feisty, and oftentimes sassy student,” one former student wrote. Indeed, in an online memorial page, students shared their memories of lunchtime chats, shared jokes, and Nguyen’s warmth. Her disarming charm and candor resonated with discipuli, who gravitated to her when they were seeking advice, looking for a place to belong, or going through a difficult period in their lives.”
I see you.”īrooklyn Latin school leaders wrote in a message to the school community that Nguyen “filled our atria and classrooms with her vibrant attitude, joy, and laughter. She added that Nguyen wanted her students to know, “You are seen, you are heard. “Some of her students had told her … she was the first adult who took them seriously,” Sy said. Once, a Cambodian-American student broke down crying, saying she finally understood why her father was the way he was. Nguyen would bring in poetry about the Cambodian genocide to her classroom, said close friend and fellow writer Cherry Lou Sy. Her parents survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, and much of Nguyen’s writing was influenced by their experiences. Like many of her students, Nguyen was a first-generation American.
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