By Norm Goldman
Published July 15, 2020
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS- CHECK THEM OUT
Norm Goldman
Reviewer & Author Interviewer, Norm Goldman. Norm is the Publisher & Editor ofBookpleasures.com.
He has been reviewing books for the past twenty years after retiring from the legal profession.
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Bookpleasures is excited to have as our guest, Wendy Nicole Duong. Wendy is the author of three novels, Mimi And Her Mirror, Daughters of the River Huong and Postcards from Nam.
Mimi and Her Mirror, won the Multicultural Fiction International Book Award in 2012.
Wendy attended Southern Illinois University on scholarship, and graduated summa cum laude, majoring in journalism, with a minor in French and Vietnamese comparative literature. She became the first foreign-born news editor for the campus newspaper. Upon graduation she worked for a Houston advertising firm (founded by Jack Valenti), and decided to pursue law. She then graduated from the University of Houston Law Center with a J.D, cum laude, receiving the Jurisprudence Award in constitutional law. Subsequently, Wendy earned her LL.M. (with a straight-A transcript and published thesis on gender studies) from Harvard Law School.
During law school at the University of Houston, Duong worked full time as Executive Director of Risk Management for the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and became the first Asian-American woman to serve the HISD in an executive position. She also became the first Vietnam-born lawyer to clerk for the federal court in Texas.
Wendy is also the first Vietnamese-American to hold judicial office in the United States. In 1992, she was appointed Associate Municipal Judge for the City of Houston and Magistrate for the State of Texas.
Wendy has been honored by the American Bar Association in New York City as among “Pioneer Women of Color in the Judiciary.” After serving a three-year term, she resigned to become an international lawyer for Mobil Corporation - Asia-Pacific. In 2001, she joined the faculty of University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, as a corporate law and international business transactions professor. A Fulbright Core Program Legal Scholar to Asia and Fulbright Legal Specialist to Russia.
In addition to her academic and professional achievements, Wendy in her younger days was a singer/dancer, and attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts. She auditioned for the debut of the musical Miss Saigon in New York City and Los Angeles. As a self-taught L’Art Brut visual artist, She also wrote and published essays on law and culture, law and art, law and technology, human rights, gender studies, corporate law, and international economic law.
Among Vietnamese American literary artists, from 1975 until the 2010s, she was the first and the only one who wrote and published bilingually (Vietnamese/English, both poetry and novels). (The more recent bilingual writers were from Vietnam and wrote in English as a second language). Wendy has combined artistic pursuits with the full-time practice of law for 4 decades, working in major cities of the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.
While serving as a professor of corporate and international economic law at the University of Denver, she used her paintings and essays to advocate against human trafficking, and successfully promoted a diversity concert featuring classical, Broadway, and Vietnamese music at Hamilton Hall, Lamont School of Music, the first concert of its kind in Denver.
Norm: Good day Wendy and thanks for participating in our interview.
What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today?
Wendy: There have been two main types of challenges. The first type has to do with the “presumption of incompetence” and structural or subconscious bias. For example: “She is Asian, so she is soft-spoken, nurturing, and very nice. But all that nicety is to make up for her incompetence, lack of skills, or lack of confidence.”
So if you are Asian, don’t be too nice? But, “if she is assertive and speaks authoritatively to demonstrate her knowledge, then she is mean, combative, not a team player, or short of human relations skills.”
Here is another example: “She is attractive and fashionably dressed, so she invites sexual harassment.”
As you know, sexual harassment is gender discrimination, but there is always the tendency for victim-blaming. Physical appearance and manner of speaking can be a basis for disparate treatment. Beautiful, skinny, or tiny women can be discriminated against; overweight, grimly dressed, or older women can also be discriminated against.
The second type of challenge may come as a surprise. I had to face envy, typecasting, and judgmental prejudice from my own ethnic community, resulting from lack of understanding and support, or conflicts of cultural values.
I was expected to live up to certain cultural standards, and I was considered non-conformist. I came of age professionally in the early 1980s, when support networks or mentorship from Vietnamese or Asian Americans were almost non-existent, so yes, I made career mistakes as a result, often in foregoing choices because I didn’t know better, and there was no one with similar experience to guide me. I had no choice but charting my course alone and becoming my own companion.
I call this second type of challenge the dilemma of “womanhood in between two worlds.” The burden of the successful woman of color consists of two extremes: presumption of incompetence from the mainstream versus envy and resentment from her own cultural nest. Both worlds typecast you.
There is a third type of challenge unique to my case, and that is, the conflict between my day job and my night job. In the law environment, I am considered too artistic and therefore less of a lawyer. In the art environment, I am considered too much of a lawyer – “she doesn’t belong here with us, real artists,” that sort of thing. The solution seems to be the handling of a double existence: hiding one persona from the other. Rest assured: when you handle a double existence, you put in at least twice the amount of hours and work.
In a way, these problems are inherent in human nature and hence cannot be conquered. One has to decide what to do with these challenges as facts of life. It is hoped that attitude changes with awareness. Perseverance helps, and raising awareness becomes another challenge in itself.
So much literature has been written about stereotyping and subconscious bias, yet things have not changed at the most basic level because of human nature, although certain aspects of political correctness have become norms to deter and prevent outward disparate treatment.
Very little has been written about disabling conflicts of culture facing women of color. Discrimination is often cast as “alliances,” or “suitability in group dynamics.” In other words, “she just doesn’t fit.” Selected minority members of the workforce are often "token-ed" into the statistical equation to build defense against claims of structural bias. Many minority women willingly “camouflage” or suppress their ethnic characteristics in their work life in order to blend into such “alliances” or “group dynamics.” And, as sad as it sounds, minorities can also discriminate against minorities.
This is not to say that there has not been much progress since the civil rights movement. Overall, America is an egalitarian, rule-of-law culture, and I would say that is part of the American ideals. Yet, for minority women, the glass ceiling and double standards are definitely still there. The fact that women and various ethnicities have been seen in power seats does not mean bias no longer exists in society at large.
Many women and minorities have suffered in silence, because when successful and conforming minorities cry “discrimination,” it is like carving your own Scarlet Letter. The “Me Too” movement, therefore, creates awareness and helps remove the Scarlet Letter, but I think “Me Too” actually came too late.
Norm:What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) so far in your various careers?
Wendy: Success is difficult to define in my case because I ended foregoing many terrific opportunities due to personal choices that resulted from lack of meaningful mentorship.
For example, I was selected as White House Fellowship regional finalist representing the Southwestern States only 4 years after law school, yet I decided to withdraw from the competition.
It was a success to be selected, but it was a mistake to withdraw. I had no one to mentor me one-to-one when I made choices.
As another example, I was the first Vietnamese female lawyer to clerk for the federal district court (1984) and later appointed as municipal judge in Texas (1992), so I could have made it my goal to become the first federal judge of Vietnamese descent, to break the glass ceiling for others, but I abandoned that goal and, looking back, I think that was a mistake.
A federal judge can write novels later. So success in obtaining an opportunity can lead to career mistakes in not taking full advantage of the opportunity.
I would say my greatest success is that I have always been self-made, starting at a very young age. I always worked while going to school and, more than that, I helped support my family as the oldest child, through so many family tragedies and parental illnesses since the fall of Saigon in 1975 (our political immigration – entry to America).
Law school was combined with a full-time executive job in public administration, while my mother was undergoing chemotherapy (she survived). During law school, I had to forego selection to Law Review, an academic prestige law students very much desired, because I had no time left.
Success was also in my ability to combine law and art and living a dual existence, without giving up either. There was a steep price to pay though (I’ll explain later).
In law, the greatest success was my almost overnight transition from a domestic corporate and litigation practice to an international practice, getting Mobil Corporation as a client and then joining the corporation as its senior legal advisor in Asia-Pacific, while writing novels on airplanes, in hotels, and at night.
In the literary art, the success was in…not having to go through too many rejections, primarily because of lack of time in…looking. In other words, there was no time to be rejected! I never had a literary agent, and my two publishers came to me unsolicited (Ravensyard Indie, and AmazonEncore, the newly formed traditional publishing division of Amazon), so I became published overnight without even trying.
But again, my writing career suffered as a result: my novels did not have the full support and marketing of the major publishers, what I call the good old New York establishment, and hence my published works have never been submitted to any mainstream award panel.
My poetry has never been published, either. Likewise, I have never tried to hold exhibitions or to sell my impromptu, quickie L’Art Brut paintings. I now have hundreds of unpublished poems and paintings that no one has seen. Why? I used to think poetry and paintings were friends of the soul, so they did not need to be read or seen. They were only my personal way to diversify my lawyer existence. Well, I was…wrong! The decades of keeping my creative works on the shelf meant that I have jeopardized myself.
In the performing art, success means the ability to walk away from demands that I did not want to meet. Why? I have a non-art career as the podium on which to stand (or fall back). Perhaps success is the following: The hardest thing I have done as an actress was to play Lotus Blossom from Teahouse of the August Moon, while demonstrators might be protesting outside. I had to dance with two fans on wooden shoes, and speak Japanese all throughout the play although I didn’t know the language (I still don’t).
Similarly, I had to dance in a local production of Chicago, a role I totally detested, as the only older woman not professionally trained among a group of 20-year-old real dancers. I had to speak Chinese in “The English Class” local production although I only knew a few words of Chinese. I did all of these nightly after working 8-10 hours a day as a lawyer.
In other words, the biggest professional success in my life has been my ability to be myself in various career endeavors, without giving up, and in facing adversity.
I have to mention this: my biggest personal success (and pride) was side-stepping my career plans to take care of my aging and ailing parents (Alzeimer’s and brain hemorrhage). I was in my 50s and they were in their 80s. I did this in painful hopelessness because I knew they would eventually die.
To me, their deaths were the death of culture. I gave up two wonderful and unique career opportunities due to parental care giving, with no regret. Yet I never felt I did enough for my immigrant parents, and if I continue to write fiction, it is really for them and their legacy. The experience of parental care giving was heartbreaking and life-changing, so I plan on writing a non-fiction book about this experience to help others and to delve into issues of geriatric care especially for immigrants, which must be identified and understood.
Norm: How many times in your various careers have you experienced rejection? How did they shape you?
Wendy: Before I turned 45, the challenge in law was to pick the right choice and turned down the rest. The rejections in law were few and often involved very unique circumstances.
For example, when interviewing for entertainment law in Beverly Hills, I was asked whether I minded representing Steven Spielberg’s dog. Intuitively, I said yes, I would mind, so I was rejected.
Rejection also occurred in "glass ceiling" situations – for example, recruitment to become Chief Legal Officer/General Counsel of major corporations: being recruited and then rejected.
I have already explained earlier why I faced very few rejections in my literary career or the performing arts – primarily I did not know any better and I did not have the luxury of time so I waited for opportunities to come my way, or, like a fool, I turned down opportunities that I should have taken.
I expect a lot of rejections from this point forward. Why? I have taken a hiatus from my various career endeavors to deal with parental care and family emergencies. I have lost one decade for legal academia during which time I could not write novels and screenplays, or audition for the performing arts.
I then lost another decade of combining parental care with off-and-on solo law practice, during which time I could not write novels or act.
I am in the last stage of my life to complete many novels in progress and to get published: hundreds of poems, some 40 years of literary work and manuscripts in progress.
The current situation (plus expectation of rejections) makes me realize how I lacked mentorship in making multiple career decisions when I was younger. I passed up a lot of wonderful opportunities because of lack of experience and advice, and that meant lack of insight and foresight. This was part of the curse of being the first – I am referring to opportunities open to the first generation of Vietnamese American women, both in law and in art. What I am going to do with the wisdom gained will be the biggest challenge now.
Norm: How does it happen that someone with a degree in law comes to write fiction?
Wendy: A young girl from a family that places emphasis on the art of languages found herself in America as a penniless political immigrant who pursued a marketable career to help herself and her family become economically independent.
This was in 1975, after the end of the Vietnam War, almost half a century ago. Then, as a teenager, I had just won South Vietnam’s national honor prize in literature, a presidential award, before my family and I got on the plane during the U.S. evacuation of refugees. In America, I chose a writing major, journalism, but then I decided on law because I felt law would help me protect myself and my family.
In a way, law was the rational choice because there was also a pull toward public service in the family as well. If you ask whether I regretted the chance for public service? To be honest, Yes. I am referring to the White House Fellowship competition as the starting point – “the road not taken.”
Let me add that in America it is quite common for lawyers to become successful novelists. Lawyers also became defining, ageless characters in classic American novels.
Norm: Why do you write? Do you have a theme, message, or goal for your books?
Wendy: I think I write because it is my fate. I was born into a family with a literary heritage, and I was in the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants to experience the rebuilding of life in America -- what is meant by “the American Dream.”
My late parents had given so much of themselves to me so that I could break free to write. All that experience needs to be told, including insight into Vietnamese history and culture injected into America via the struggles of these immigrants, especially women who suffered in silence. My fiction often deals with moral ambivalence and the price of survival, human yearning for nobility against adversity, as well as tension and conflict in the search for happiness.
I write subconsciously, meaning I follow my subconscious instinct. The novel often shapes itself as I “travel on the path of writing.” Yes, I do have themes, messages and goals to pursue, but the process of writing itself and the formation of characters and plots are basically subconscious. This may sound contradictory, but let’s say that the subconscious leads, and shapes choices in the process of creative writing.
Norm: How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?
Wendy: My environment and upbringing become my writing. My background doesn’t just color my novels or poetry, because so far I have written novels in the “genre” called the Vietnamese American experience, and much of my poetry depicts my life experience.
But that does not mean my creative writings are autobiographical. I must admit I tend to create protagonists who are professional women, artists, or female lawyers because I know them instinctively, with little need for further research. That may change in my forthcoming novels.
Norm: In fiction as well as in non-fiction, writers very often take liberties with their material to tell a good story or make a point. But how much is too much?
Wendy: Here is where I explain the general themes, messages, and impetus that drive me to write. In terms of the process of creative writing, I don’t deliberately take liberties because I let my subconsciousness lead me (this was the lesson I learned from Robert Olen Butler although I did not take his MFA creative writing classes).
However, I think even in fiction, and not just non-fiction, there is, and should be, restraint imposed by the search for truth, beauty, and goodness. At least there is, for me. I am bound by that search, deep from within. Even in genres such as science fiction or fantasia, or even in literary erotica, I think serious writers are bound by such a search. Notions of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, capitalized.
Taking liberty to tell a “good story” that sells or to make a point – whatever that point may be -- in violation of this search is too much. It is where the line of self-restraint should be drawn. I don’t think writers should be egotists to disregard that line.
Norm: Which of your novels would you like to see made into a movie? And who would you like to see as the lead characters?
Wendy: Great question. My first published historical novel (not the first I had written, but the first published), Daughters of the River Huong, was written with the intent for an epic film about Vietnam, as counterpart to Catherine Deneuve’s L’Indochine of the early 1990s.
In fact, I have written a film treatment for River Huong and will write a screenplay. This was my plan for the 2000s, delayed for almost two decades because of my career in legal academia and family responsibilities – my parents’ illnesses as I already mentioned. So the cast of characters that I envisioned might not be doable now because these actors have…aged or have retired! I am still working to turn River Huong into a feature film, or an ethnic drama series for Amazon or Netflix.
For the protagonist Simone in her thirties, I would like to have an Asian actress with the dark sultry looks of Catherine Zeta Jones and the acting style of Gong Li.
I would love to have an actor with the internal agony and dark looks of Jeremy Iron for the character Andre Foucault in his old age. Gene Goodman or John Lithgow as the aging American husband and former Vietnam-war journalist who was dying of cancer while his young Vietnamese wife drifted from him.
As for the character of the old Madame Cinnamon sitting by the Perfume River of Hue to gather floating coffins (setting of a recurrent dream), I see myself in that role now, because honestly I think only I can understand the imperial city of Hue and its River Huong (but if nobody casts me then perhaps I would “consent” to the casting of Michele Yoh because she has the right looks). This gives a sense and feel of what I would like to see on the screen. What a dream!
I would also love to see my third novel, Mimi and Her Mirror, made into a movie, showing the historic fall of Saigon in 1975 and then the rat race of corporate law firms in the 1990s a` la “Oliver Stone” style of film-making, but we are getting too much into “make-believe” movies now, so I’d better stop.
Norm: What do you think most characterizes your writing?
Wendy: So far, in terms of substance, it has been the portrayal of humanity in the context of Vietnam and Vietnamese Americans, with history woven into plot and characterization. In terms of form, it is lyrical descriptive writing that goes under the character’s skin to speak in their voice(s) (for example, a 19th century Vietnamese woman would not be speaking like an American lawyer or a U.S. teenager, although I was writing in English; yet there were readers on Amazon.com who complained that my writing in my Vietnam-related historical fiction was archaic, forgetting that it was my 19th-century Vietnamese character who spoke, not me).
Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write? What was least useful or most destructive?
Wendy: I never learned creative writing formally in a degree program. I learned journalistic writing as an undergrad. I feel that journalism helps develop language and organizational skills, but it is destructive to creative writing, because a novel or short story is not an article or a news report. A gifted novelist instinctively knows the difference. As I already stated, I learned from the master Robert Olen Butler (in talking to him in one personal meeting) that novel writing should be subconscious and intuitive.
I also learned from Patricia Powell that in novel writing, one cannot force the plot or become contrived. Many Vietnamese writers who write in their native tongue force their plots or characters to follow a socio-political theme because of their experience with Vietnam, i.e., the message they want to convey, and I think this is destructive to the creation of art. The contrived nature of the work will show. The message should naturally “roll” out of your plot and your characters like a stream flowing into the ocean! You don’t have to try to force it.
As an essayist, I wrote and published on the difference in the creative processes between law and art (published by the University of Southern California). One path is antagonistic to the other. In summary, please do not write novels like writing a legal brief, even if the novel is a legal thriller!
Norm: In your novels, do your characters come first or the story? Please explain.
Wendy: I think simultaneously. Sometimes plot first, sometimes plot follows characters, but the two end up being interwoven. Of course, one has to embryo an idea from which plot and characters appear. There is no formula. The journey of creativity is joyful, a bliss, even if the writer suffers in life in order to write.
Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process.
Wendy: By intuition, referring back to the master Robert Olen Butler’s view, with respect to the subconscious process of writing. But in editing, revising, plot shaping, and further development, it is logic. There, the lawyer in me helps.
My writing process, if there is a process, is that to the extent I can remember, I jot down or dictate into my phone ideas and notes that came to my mind regarding plot, characters, images, etc., all at any unexpected moment and in no specific order. I don’t always use all of the notes. Out of 1000 ideas or images, maybe about 100 got used, but the others may go into “subtext.” When I sit down to write, things just flow and often I can’t stop.
So I usually mess up the priorities of my day because of the urge to write, and the dual career suffers. (This means I have lost a lot of…money because of my creative writing.) I research and edit along the way. I then try to have friends acting as readers or writers’ group to read what I have written, again, along the way.
Self-editing is relentless. I edit every time I reread what I have written. Plot can change midway. With short stories, I often envision it in my head and then I just type it out and imagine each scene as I go along. For both novels and short stories or plays, I describe on the page what I see or hear in my head, and what I feel in the chest. I become every character, heroine or villain. Throughout the years, I’ve written more than 10 novels in draft form. Only three were published, so far.
Norm: How much research went into your novels?
Wendy: A lot, but with the Vietnam genre, I have much of the research already in me. Still need to recheck and verify the accuracy of every detail. The reliving of Vietnam and even my family history in order to write in this Vietnam genre could be very painful and I cried a lot. (I borrowed from certain aspects of my family history but that does not necessarily mean my novel is autobiographical).
That “reliving” is not pure research, but it is still in the nature of research – going back to memory of places and people, and bringing them into my novels in fictionalized form (This is the same as Uta Hagen’s sense-memory recollection method; I learned it, kind of intuitively, from drama school.).
Norm: In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of the writing process?
Wendy: Finishing it. Revising, changing plot out of necessity (subconsciousness does not apply any more), rewriting, eliminating, adding, editing your own work and double-checking the accuracy of factual background. If publication can be counted as part of the process, then publication is the most difficult and time-consuming step, not within a novelist’s control.
Norm: What would you like to accomplish as an author that you have not?
Wendy: I have never had the help of a literary agent. My two publishers have come to me as coincidence, and consequently, my works were not read by mainstream literary award panels because, for whatever reasons, the two publishers did not send them.
All of that needs to happen. The 2012 International Book Award came out of nowhere as the only place where my second publisher decided to send my latest published novel, as of 2011. I wish my publisher had sent my third novel (describing the fall of Saigon, a brutal rape, and corporate America) to the Pulitzer Board for 2012, for a scintilla of hope.
Why? In 2012, the Pulitzer board announced that there was no literature award given because they could not find the right body of work! If my work about the fall of Saigon had been sent, in hindsight my chance would have been either 0% or 100% -- the same chance as with all published novelists whose work did not get sent to Pulitzer competition in 2011! Oh well…
Norm: What advice can you give aspiring writers that you wished you had received, or that you wished you would have listened to?
Wendy: Be patient. Keep on writing and patiently look for the right agent and/or publisher who are committed to delivering a long-term career. Do not just wait for the publisher to come to you by chance. Do not take the very first offer simply because you lack time or the patience to wait! If you combine law and art as I do, select the law job that is conducive for your creative writing, i.e., you can write at night or on weekends, free from the demands and politics of the workplace, your day job.
Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your novels?
Wendy: For published works, the Vietnamese American historical trilogy: on Amazon.com! For my L’Art Brut artworks, see artofnguyen.blogspot.com. My bio is on Wiki under my name. For anything else, in interviews such as this. In the future, when more of my work is published, I will list online link(s) on my blog. Be optimistic!
Norm: What is next for Wendy Nicole Duong?
Wendy: The preservation and continuation of my parents’ legacy as Vietnamese immigrants. That includes publication of my hundreds of pieces of poetry, at least two plays, a short story collection, trying to sell River Huong’s film script, and publication of new novels.
Here are examples of novel manuscripts already finished, in progress, or outlined to be written:
--legal courtroom thriller in the form of literary fiction (combining two genres),
--one period novel tracing the landscape of America and Vietnam,
--memoir about family history, the hidden tears generated by Vietnam and the law career in America,
--non-fiction “Self-Help” on geriatric care in America especially for immigrant families.
--political thrillers: a nursing home and international politics, and the Third Vietnam War.
--a few horror stories in the form of literary fiction (again, combination of genres),
--a few love stories, one about music, others relating conflicts between cultures, personal ethics, and freedom of choice.
--one attempt at science fiction/fantasia novella (an idea only).
This is a long list, but it is no surprise because it’s the accumulation of works in 40 years, in between…law jobs and hiatus! The goal is mainstream publication now, to bring as much of this body of works to the American public.
That is, assuming I have no health issues that keep me from finishing the list!
And, if I still have time, l will try to finish the scholarly essays in progress, drafted initially for legal academia (currently listed on SSRN—Social Scientist Research Network). Not a priority.
With this heavy repertoire, yes I need a lot of luck. Getting published is much much harder than passing the bar! But the one thing consistent about me is: I work very hard, and I don’t give up, unless I drop dead (in which case I kind of want to believe that in creative works, there is an after-life where I can still continue, before any final judgment under any system of religious belief.
Actually, this “self-motivation” belief supports theories of reincarnation in Buddhism. All religions boil down to one common theme: goodness in humankind. Art serves the search for Goodness = Beauty = Truth; so the journey never ends – one has to believe in this to keep on writing).
Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that someone would ask about your novels, but nobody has?
Wendy: Why haven’t I written and published sequels to Daughters of the River Huong? Why didn’t I get new works published in almost two decades? Does that mean I have stopped writing?
For Vietnamese Americans: Why was that historical novel River Huong based on a Vietnamese family with three children: two girls, and a boy as the youngest? What happened to the boy?
Nobody has asked me the questions above.
Yet many people assume and ask me whether the published trilogy was autobiographical. It’s not.
Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.
Wendy: I want to thank Bookpleasures for giving me this opportunity to speak. This is the most informative and in-depth interview I have had. I am grateful, because supportive readership is what creates authors. WND
Mimi and Her Mirror, won the Multicultural Fiction International Book Award in 2012.
Wendy attended Southern Illinois University on scholarship, and graduated summa cum laude, majoring in journalism, with a minor in French and Vietnamese comparative literature. She became the first foreign-born news editor for the campus newspaper. Upon graduation she worked for a Houston advertising firm (founded by Jack Valenti), and decided to pursue law. She then graduated from the University of Houston Law Center with a J.D, cum laude, receiving the Jurisprudence Award in constitutional law. Subsequently, Wendy earned her LL.M. (with a straight-A transcript and published thesis on gender studies) from Harvard Law School.
During law school at the University of Houston, Duong worked full time as Executive Director of Risk Management for the Houston Independent School District (HISD) and became the first Asian-American woman to serve the HISD in an executive position. She also became the first Vietnam-born lawyer to clerk for the federal court in Texas.
Wendy is also the first Vietnamese-American to hold judicial office in the United States. In 1992, she was appointed Associate Municipal Judge for the City of Houston and Magistrate for the State of Texas.
Wendy has been honored by the American Bar Association in New York City as among “Pioneer Women of Color in the Judiciary.” After serving a three-year term, she resigned to become an international lawyer for Mobil Corporation - Asia-Pacific. In 2001, she joined the faculty of University of Denver, Sturm College of Law, as a corporate law and international business transactions professor. A Fulbright Core Program Legal Scholar to Asia and Fulbright Legal Specialist to Russia.
In addition to her academic and professional achievements, Wendy in her younger days was a singer/dancer, and attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts. She auditioned for the debut of the musical Miss Saigon in New York City and Los Angeles. As a self-taught L’Art Brut visual artist, She also wrote and published essays on law and culture, law and art, law and technology, human rights, gender studies, corporate law, and international economic law.
Among Vietnamese American literary artists, from 1975 until the 2010s, she was the first and the only one who wrote and published bilingually (Vietnamese/English, both poetry and novels). (The more recent bilingual writers were from Vietnam and wrote in English as a second language). Wendy has combined artistic pursuits with the full-time practice of law for 4 decades, working in major cities of the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia.
While serving as a professor of corporate and international economic law at the University of Denver, she used her paintings and essays to advocate against human trafficking, and successfully promoted a diversity concert featuring classical, Broadway, and Vietnamese music at Hamilton Hall, Lamont School of Music, the first concert of its kind in Denver.
Norm: Good day Wendy and thanks for participating in our interview.
What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today?
Wendy: There have been two main types of challenges. The first type has to do with the “presumption of incompetence” and structural or subconscious bias. For example: “She is Asian, so she is soft-spoken, nurturing, and very nice. But all that nicety is to make up for her incompetence, lack of skills, or lack of confidence.”
So if you are Asian, don’t be too nice? But, “if she is assertive and speaks authoritatively to demonstrate her knowledge, then she is mean, combative, not a team player, or short of human relations skills.”
Here is another example: “She is attractive and fashionably dressed, so she invites sexual harassment.”
As you know, sexual harassment is gender discrimination, but there is always the tendency for victim-blaming. Physical appearance and manner of speaking can be a basis for disparate treatment. Beautiful, skinny, or tiny women can be discriminated against; overweight, grimly dressed, or older women can also be discriminated against.
The second type of challenge may come as a surprise. I had to face envy, typecasting, and judgmental prejudice from my own ethnic community, resulting from lack of understanding and support, or conflicts of cultural values.
I was expected to live up to certain cultural standards, and I was considered non-conformist. I came of age professionally in the early 1980s, when support networks or mentorship from Vietnamese or Asian Americans were almost non-existent, so yes, I made career mistakes as a result, often in foregoing choices because I didn’t know better, and there was no one with similar experience to guide me. I had no choice but charting my course alone and becoming my own companion.
I call this second type of challenge the dilemma of “womanhood in between two worlds.” The burden of the successful woman of color consists of two extremes: presumption of incompetence from the mainstream versus envy and resentment from her own cultural nest. Both worlds typecast you.
There is a third type of challenge unique to my case, and that is, the conflict between my day job and my night job. In the law environment, I am considered too artistic and therefore less of a lawyer. In the art environment, I am considered too much of a lawyer – “she doesn’t belong here with us, real artists,” that sort of thing. The solution seems to be the handling of a double existence: hiding one persona from the other. Rest assured: when you handle a double existence, you put in at least twice the amount of hours and work.
In a way, these problems are inherent in human nature and hence cannot be conquered. One has to decide what to do with these challenges as facts of life. It is hoped that attitude changes with awareness. Perseverance helps, and raising awareness becomes another challenge in itself.
So much literature has been written about stereotyping and subconscious bias, yet things have not changed at the most basic level because of human nature, although certain aspects of political correctness have become norms to deter and prevent outward disparate treatment.
Very little has been written about disabling conflicts of culture facing women of color. Discrimination is often cast as “alliances,” or “suitability in group dynamics.” In other words, “she just doesn’t fit.” Selected minority members of the workforce are often "token-ed" into the statistical equation to build defense against claims of structural bias. Many minority women willingly “camouflage” or suppress their ethnic characteristics in their work life in order to blend into such “alliances” or “group dynamics.” And, as sad as it sounds, minorities can also discriminate against minorities.
This is not to say that there has not been much progress since the civil rights movement. Overall, America is an egalitarian, rule-of-law culture, and I would say that is part of the American ideals. Yet, for minority women, the glass ceiling and double standards are definitely still there. The fact that women and various ethnicities have been seen in power seats does not mean bias no longer exists in society at large.
Many women and minorities have suffered in silence, because when successful and conforming minorities cry “discrimination,” it is like carving your own Scarlet Letter. The “Me Too” movement, therefore, creates awareness and helps remove the Scarlet Letter, but I think “Me Too” actually came too late.
Norm:What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) so far in your various careers?
Wendy: Success is difficult to define in my case because I ended foregoing many terrific opportunities due to personal choices that resulted from lack of meaningful mentorship.
For example, I was selected as White House Fellowship regional finalist representing the Southwestern States only 4 years after law school, yet I decided to withdraw from the competition.
It was a success to be selected, but it was a mistake to withdraw. I had no one to mentor me one-to-one when I made choices.
As another example, I was the first Vietnamese female lawyer to clerk for the federal district court (1984) and later appointed as municipal judge in Texas (1992), so I could have made it my goal to become the first federal judge of Vietnamese descent, to break the glass ceiling for others, but I abandoned that goal and, looking back, I think that was a mistake.
A federal judge can write novels later. So success in obtaining an opportunity can lead to career mistakes in not taking full advantage of the opportunity.
I would say my greatest success is that I have always been self-made, starting at a very young age. I always worked while going to school and, more than that, I helped support my family as the oldest child, through so many family tragedies and parental illnesses since the fall of Saigon in 1975 (our political immigration – entry to America).
Law school was combined with a full-time executive job in public administration, while my mother was undergoing chemotherapy (she survived). During law school, I had to forego selection to Law Review, an academic prestige law students very much desired, because I had no time left.
Success was also in my ability to combine law and art and living a dual existence, without giving up either. There was a steep price to pay though (I’ll explain later).
In law, the greatest success was my almost overnight transition from a domestic corporate and litigation practice to an international practice, getting Mobil Corporation as a client and then joining the corporation as its senior legal advisor in Asia-Pacific, while writing novels on airplanes, in hotels, and at night.
In the literary art, the success was in…not having to go through too many rejections, primarily because of lack of time in…looking. In other words, there was no time to be rejected! I never had a literary agent, and my two publishers came to me unsolicited (Ravensyard Indie, and AmazonEncore, the newly formed traditional publishing division of Amazon), so I became published overnight without even trying.
But again, my writing career suffered as a result: my novels did not have the full support and marketing of the major publishers, what I call the good old New York establishment, and hence my published works have never been submitted to any mainstream award panel.
My poetry has never been published, either. Likewise, I have never tried to hold exhibitions or to sell my impromptu, quickie L’Art Brut paintings. I now have hundreds of unpublished poems and paintings that no one has seen. Why? I used to think poetry and paintings were friends of the soul, so they did not need to be read or seen. They were only my personal way to diversify my lawyer existence. Well, I was…wrong! The decades of keeping my creative works on the shelf meant that I have jeopardized myself.
In the performing art, success means the ability to walk away from demands that I did not want to meet. Why? I have a non-art career as the podium on which to stand (or fall back). Perhaps success is the following: The hardest thing I have done as an actress was to play Lotus Blossom from Teahouse of the August Moon, while demonstrators might be protesting outside. I had to dance with two fans on wooden shoes, and speak Japanese all throughout the play although I didn’t know the language (I still don’t).
Similarly, I had to dance in a local production of Chicago, a role I totally detested, as the only older woman not professionally trained among a group of 20-year-old real dancers. I had to speak Chinese in “The English Class” local production although I only knew a few words of Chinese. I did all of these nightly after working 8-10 hours a day as a lawyer.
In other words, the biggest professional success in my life has been my ability to be myself in various career endeavors, without giving up, and in facing adversity.
I have to mention this: my biggest personal success (and pride) was side-stepping my career plans to take care of my aging and ailing parents (Alzeimer’s and brain hemorrhage). I was in my 50s and they were in their 80s. I did this in painful hopelessness because I knew they would eventually die.
To me, their deaths were the death of culture. I gave up two wonderful and unique career opportunities due to parental care giving, with no regret. Yet I never felt I did enough for my immigrant parents, and if I continue to write fiction, it is really for them and their legacy. The experience of parental care giving was heartbreaking and life-changing, so I plan on writing a non-fiction book about this experience to help others and to delve into issues of geriatric care especially for immigrants, which must be identified and understood.
Norm: How many times in your various careers have you experienced rejection? How did they shape you?
Wendy: Before I turned 45, the challenge in law was to pick the right choice and turned down the rest. The rejections in law were few and often involved very unique circumstances.
For example, when interviewing for entertainment law in Beverly Hills, I was asked whether I minded representing Steven Spielberg’s dog. Intuitively, I said yes, I would mind, so I was rejected.
Rejection also occurred in "glass ceiling" situations – for example, recruitment to become Chief Legal Officer/General Counsel of major corporations: being recruited and then rejected.
I have already explained earlier why I faced very few rejections in my literary career or the performing arts – primarily I did not know any better and I did not have the luxury of time so I waited for opportunities to come my way, or, like a fool, I turned down opportunities that I should have taken.
I expect a lot of rejections from this point forward. Why? I have taken a hiatus from my various career endeavors to deal with parental care and family emergencies. I have lost one decade for legal academia during which time I could not write novels and screenplays, or audition for the performing arts.
I then lost another decade of combining parental care with off-and-on solo law practice, during which time I could not write novels or act.
I am in the last stage of my life to complete many novels in progress and to get published: hundreds of poems, some 40 years of literary work and manuscripts in progress.
The current situation (plus expectation of rejections) makes me realize how I lacked mentorship in making multiple career decisions when I was younger. I passed up a lot of wonderful opportunities because of lack of experience and advice, and that meant lack of insight and foresight. This was part of the curse of being the first – I am referring to opportunities open to the first generation of Vietnamese American women, both in law and in art. What I am going to do with the wisdom gained will be the biggest challenge now.
Norm: How does it happen that someone with a degree in law comes to write fiction?
Wendy: A young girl from a family that places emphasis on the art of languages found herself in America as a penniless political immigrant who pursued a marketable career to help herself and her family become economically independent.
This was in 1975, after the end of the Vietnam War, almost half a century ago. Then, as a teenager, I had just won South Vietnam’s national honor prize in literature, a presidential award, before my family and I got on the plane during the U.S. evacuation of refugees. In America, I chose a writing major, journalism, but then I decided on law because I felt law would help me protect myself and my family.
In a way, law was the rational choice because there was also a pull toward public service in the family as well. If you ask whether I regretted the chance for public service? To be honest, Yes. I am referring to the White House Fellowship competition as the starting point – “the road not taken.”
Let me add that in America it is quite common for lawyers to become successful novelists. Lawyers also became defining, ageless characters in classic American novels.
Norm: Why do you write? Do you have a theme, message, or goal for your books?
Wendy: I think I write because it is my fate. I was born into a family with a literary heritage, and I was in the first wave of Vietnamese immigrants to experience the rebuilding of life in America -- what is meant by “the American Dream.”
My late parents had given so much of themselves to me so that I could break free to write. All that experience needs to be told, including insight into Vietnamese history and culture injected into America via the struggles of these immigrants, especially women who suffered in silence. My fiction often deals with moral ambivalence and the price of survival, human yearning for nobility against adversity, as well as tension and conflict in the search for happiness.
I write subconsciously, meaning I follow my subconscious instinct. The novel often shapes itself as I “travel on the path of writing.” Yes, I do have themes, messages and goals to pursue, but the process of writing itself and the formation of characters and plots are basically subconscious. This may sound contradictory, but let’s say that the subconscious leads, and shapes choices in the process of creative writing.
Norm: How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?
Wendy: My environment and upbringing become my writing. My background doesn’t just color my novels or poetry, because so far I have written novels in the “genre” called the Vietnamese American experience, and much of my poetry depicts my life experience.
But that does not mean my creative writings are autobiographical. I must admit I tend to create protagonists who are professional women, artists, or female lawyers because I know them instinctively, with little need for further research. That may change in my forthcoming novels.
Norm: In fiction as well as in non-fiction, writers very often take liberties with their material to tell a good story or make a point. But how much is too much?
Wendy: Here is where I explain the general themes, messages, and impetus that drive me to write. In terms of the process of creative writing, I don’t deliberately take liberties because I let my subconsciousness lead me (this was the lesson I learned from Robert Olen Butler although I did not take his MFA creative writing classes).
However, I think even in fiction, and not just non-fiction, there is, and should be, restraint imposed by the search for truth, beauty, and goodness. At least there is, for me. I am bound by that search, deep from within. Even in genres such as science fiction or fantasia, or even in literary erotica, I think serious writers are bound by such a search. Notions of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, capitalized.
Taking liberty to tell a “good story” that sells or to make a point – whatever that point may be -- in violation of this search is too much. It is where the line of self-restraint should be drawn. I don’t think writers should be egotists to disregard that line.
Norm: Which of your novels would you like to see made into a movie? And who would you like to see as the lead characters?
Wendy: Great question. My first published historical novel (not the first I had written, but the first published), Daughters of the River Huong, was written with the intent for an epic film about Vietnam, as counterpart to Catherine Deneuve’s L’Indochine of the early 1990s.
In fact, I have written a film treatment for River Huong and will write a screenplay. This was my plan for the 2000s, delayed for almost two decades because of my career in legal academia and family responsibilities – my parents’ illnesses as I already mentioned. So the cast of characters that I envisioned might not be doable now because these actors have…aged or have retired! I am still working to turn River Huong into a feature film, or an ethnic drama series for Amazon or Netflix.
For the protagonist Simone in her thirties, I would like to have an Asian actress with the dark sultry looks of Catherine Zeta Jones and the acting style of Gong Li.
I would love to have an actor with the internal agony and dark looks of Jeremy Iron for the character Andre Foucault in his old age. Gene Goodman or John Lithgow as the aging American husband and former Vietnam-war journalist who was dying of cancer while his young Vietnamese wife drifted from him.
As for the character of the old Madame Cinnamon sitting by the Perfume River of Hue to gather floating coffins (setting of a recurrent dream), I see myself in that role now, because honestly I think only I can understand the imperial city of Hue and its River Huong (but if nobody casts me then perhaps I would “consent” to the casting of Michele Yoh because she has the right looks). This gives a sense and feel of what I would like to see on the screen. What a dream!
I would also love to see my third novel, Mimi and Her Mirror, made into a movie, showing the historic fall of Saigon in 1975 and then the rat race of corporate law firms in the 1990s a` la “Oliver Stone” style of film-making, but we are getting too much into “make-believe” movies now, so I’d better stop.
Norm: What do you think most characterizes your writing?
Wendy: So far, in terms of substance, it has been the portrayal of humanity in the context of Vietnam and Vietnamese Americans, with history woven into plot and characterization. In terms of form, it is lyrical descriptive writing that goes under the character’s skin to speak in their voice(s) (for example, a 19th century Vietnamese woman would not be speaking like an American lawyer or a U.S. teenager, although I was writing in English; yet there were readers on Amazon.com who complained that my writing in my Vietnam-related historical fiction was archaic, forgetting that it was my 19th-century Vietnamese character who spoke, not me).
Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write? What was least useful or most destructive?
Wendy: I never learned creative writing formally in a degree program. I learned journalistic writing as an undergrad. I feel that journalism helps develop language and organizational skills, but it is destructive to creative writing, because a novel or short story is not an article or a news report. A gifted novelist instinctively knows the difference. As I already stated, I learned from the master Robert Olen Butler (in talking to him in one personal meeting) that novel writing should be subconscious and intuitive.
I also learned from Patricia Powell that in novel writing, one cannot force the plot or become contrived. Many Vietnamese writers who write in their native tongue force their plots or characters to follow a socio-political theme because of their experience with Vietnam, i.e., the message they want to convey, and I think this is destructive to the creation of art. The contrived nature of the work will show. The message should naturally “roll” out of your plot and your characters like a stream flowing into the ocean! You don’t have to try to force it.
As an essayist, I wrote and published on the difference in the creative processes between law and art (published by the University of Southern California). One path is antagonistic to the other. In summary, please do not write novels like writing a legal brief, even if the novel is a legal thriller!
Norm: In your novels, do your characters come first or the story? Please explain.
Wendy: I think simultaneously. Sometimes plot first, sometimes plot follows characters, but the two end up being interwoven. Of course, one has to embryo an idea from which plot and characters appear. There is no formula. The journey of creativity is joyful, a bliss, even if the writer suffers in life in order to write.
Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Please summarize your writing process.
Wendy: By intuition, referring back to the master Robert Olen Butler’s view, with respect to the subconscious process of writing. But in editing, revising, plot shaping, and further development, it is logic. There, the lawyer in me helps.
My writing process, if there is a process, is that to the extent I can remember, I jot down or dictate into my phone ideas and notes that came to my mind regarding plot, characters, images, etc., all at any unexpected moment and in no specific order. I don’t always use all of the notes. Out of 1000 ideas or images, maybe about 100 got used, but the others may go into “subtext.” When I sit down to write, things just flow and often I can’t stop.
So I usually mess up the priorities of my day because of the urge to write, and the dual career suffers. (This means I have lost a lot of…money because of my creative writing.) I research and edit along the way. I then try to have friends acting as readers or writers’ group to read what I have written, again, along the way.
Self-editing is relentless. I edit every time I reread what I have written. Plot can change midway. With short stories, I often envision it in my head and then I just type it out and imagine each scene as I go along. For both novels and short stories or plays, I describe on the page what I see or hear in my head, and what I feel in the chest. I become every character, heroine or villain. Throughout the years, I’ve written more than 10 novels in draft form. Only three were published, so far.
Norm: How much research went into your novels?
Wendy: A lot, but with the Vietnam genre, I have much of the research already in me. Still need to recheck and verify the accuracy of every detail. The reliving of Vietnam and even my family history in order to write in this Vietnam genre could be very painful and I cried a lot. (I borrowed from certain aspects of my family history but that does not necessarily mean my novel is autobiographical).
That “reliving” is not pure research, but it is still in the nature of research – going back to memory of places and people, and bringing them into my novels in fictionalized form (This is the same as Uta Hagen’s sense-memory recollection method; I learned it, kind of intuitively, from drama school.).
Norm: In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of the writing process?
Wendy: Finishing it. Revising, changing plot out of necessity (subconsciousness does not apply any more), rewriting, eliminating, adding, editing your own work and double-checking the accuracy of factual background. If publication can be counted as part of the process, then publication is the most difficult and time-consuming step, not within a novelist’s control.
Norm: What would you like to accomplish as an author that you have not?
Wendy: I have never had the help of a literary agent. My two publishers have come to me as coincidence, and consequently, my works were not read by mainstream literary award panels because, for whatever reasons, the two publishers did not send them.
All of that needs to happen. The 2012 International Book Award came out of nowhere as the only place where my second publisher decided to send my latest published novel, as of 2011. I wish my publisher had sent my third novel (describing the fall of Saigon, a brutal rape, and corporate America) to the Pulitzer Board for 2012, for a scintilla of hope.
Why? In 2012, the Pulitzer board announced that there was no literature award given because they could not find the right body of work! If my work about the fall of Saigon had been sent, in hindsight my chance would have been either 0% or 100% -- the same chance as with all published novelists whose work did not get sent to Pulitzer competition in 2011! Oh well…
Norm: What advice can you give aspiring writers that you wished you had received, or that you wished you would have listened to?
Wendy: Be patient. Keep on writing and patiently look for the right agent and/or publisher who are committed to delivering a long-term career. Do not just wait for the publisher to come to you by chance. Do not take the very first offer simply because you lack time or the patience to wait! If you combine law and art as I do, select the law job that is conducive for your creative writing, i.e., you can write at night or on weekends, free from the demands and politics of the workplace, your day job.
Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your novels?
Wendy: For published works, the Vietnamese American historical trilogy: on Amazon.com! For my L’Art Brut artworks, see artofnguyen.blogspot.com. My bio is on Wiki under my name. For anything else, in interviews such as this. In the future, when more of my work is published, I will list online link(s) on my blog. Be optimistic!
Norm: What is next for Wendy Nicole Duong?
Wendy: The preservation and continuation of my parents’ legacy as Vietnamese immigrants. That includes publication of my hundreds of pieces of poetry, at least two plays, a short story collection, trying to sell River Huong’s film script, and publication of new novels.
Here are examples of novel manuscripts already finished, in progress, or outlined to be written:
--legal courtroom thriller in the form of literary fiction (combining two genres),
--one period novel tracing the landscape of America and Vietnam,
--memoir about family history, the hidden tears generated by Vietnam and the law career in America,
--non-fiction “Self-Help” on geriatric care in America especially for immigrant families.
--political thrillers: a nursing home and international politics, and the Third Vietnam War.
--a few horror stories in the form of literary fiction (again, combination of genres),
--a few love stories, one about music, others relating conflicts between cultures, personal ethics, and freedom of choice.
--one attempt at science fiction/fantasia novella (an idea only).
This is a long list, but it is no surprise because it’s the accumulation of works in 40 years, in between…law jobs and hiatus! The goal is mainstream publication now, to bring as much of this body of works to the American public.
That is, assuming I have no health issues that keep me from finishing the list!
And, if I still have time, l will try to finish the scholarly essays in progress, drafted initially for legal academia (currently listed on SSRN—Social Scientist Research Network). Not a priority.
With this heavy repertoire, yes I need a lot of luck. Getting published is much much harder than passing the bar! But the one thing consistent about me is: I work very hard, and I don’t give up, unless I drop dead (in which case I kind of want to believe that in creative works, there is an after-life where I can still continue, before any final judgment under any system of religious belief.
Actually, this “self-motivation” belief supports theories of reincarnation in Buddhism. All religions boil down to one common theme: goodness in humankind. Art serves the search for Goodness = Beauty = Truth; so the journey never ends – one has to believe in this to keep on writing).
Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what question do you wish that someone would ask about your novels, but nobody has?
Wendy: Why haven’t I written and published sequels to Daughters of the River Huong? Why didn’t I get new works published in almost two decades? Does that mean I have stopped writing?
For Vietnamese Americans: Why was that historical novel River Huong based on a Vietnamese family with three children: two girls, and a boy as the youngest? What happened to the boy?
Nobody has asked me the questions above.
Yet many people assume and ask me whether the published trilogy was autobiographical. It’s not.
Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.
Wendy: I want to thank Bookpleasures for giving me this opportunity to speak. This is the most informative and in-depth interview I have had. I am grateful, because supportive readership is what creates authors. WND
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