Uyen Loewald

Uyen Loewald, who arrived in Australia in 1970 from Vietnam via the United States, has written much about her experiences in Vietnam as a child, at the outbreak of and during the war. Her 1987 autobiography, Child of Vietnam, contributes to ever more complicated definitions of what constitutes autobiography or "life-writing." Her short stories and poems are a mixture of attempts to express the cultural chasm between 'mainstream' Australia and a refugee’s view of life and living, detailing the diversity of Southeast Asian groups and their differences within difference. She also focuses on women’s situations within prohibitive traditional families and systems. She writes against the complicitous snobbery, often supported by government regulations, of her convent education in Vietnam, as well as the stereotypes of, and presuppositions about, a Vietnamese woman held by both Vietnamese and Western people.

Uyen has worked as a chef, social worker, migrant service administrator, crime researcher, and teacher. She has also been a member of the Multicultural Arts Advisory Committee of the Australia Council and an active member of the Women's Electoral Lobby.

Child of Vietnam. Hyland House, 1987.