Bilingual magazine wins 'ethnic Pulitzer,' caters to Vietnamese who came to U.S. at a young age
San Jose Mercury News, News Feature, Jessie Mangaliman, Posted: Jan 25, 2006
With his neatly tucked white button-down shirt and plain brown pants, accountant Sonny Nguyen, 39, is the visual antithesis of the slick, stylish and edgy magazine he publishes, Nha Magazine.
Launched in San Jose three years ago as a bilingual niche publication for the so-called 1.5 generation -- young Vietnamese-Americans born in the native country but raised in the United States -- Nha Magazine, (pronounced NYAH) features hip-hop musicians, up and coming politicians, Playboy starlets and Vogue-like fashion layouts, in addition to poetry and serious articles about identity and culture.
On Thursday night, Nguyen will pick up a journalism award on behalf of Nha, for publishing a first-person dispatch from death row in Texas written by Son Tran, a young Vietnamese-American convicted of capital murder when he was 17.
The honor will be presented during the annual awards banquet of New California Media, a nationwide group of 700 ethnic media organizations based in San Francisco. Each year, NCM, billed by PBS as the "ethnic Pulitzers,'' honors journalists and civic leaders.
The Mercury News is one of a number of Bay Area sponsors of the banquet, which will be held at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose.
Nguyen calls the award an important milestone for the San Jose-based magazine, well known among the hip, young crowd of Vietnamese-Americans who navigate between the old culture they left behind as children, and the new, American one they now inhabit in style.
"The magazine's look, design, images and presentation are wonderful,'' says Chanh Pham, 33, a clothing designer from San Francisco who subscribes to Nha. ``The fact that it's both in English and Vietnamese is important so no one is left out.''
For Trung Lam, 28, a San Jose Realtor, the magazine is a culture bridge for young, bilingual Vietnamese-Americans like himself.
The magazine, which publishes every other month a modest 15,000 copies -- up from 10,000 copies three years ago -- now circulates and has subscribers in Vietnamese-American communities from Southern California to North Carolina. It is also carried on Eva Air, a Taiwan-based airline used by many Vietnamese-Americans visiting Vietnam.
Published in full color in English and Vietnamese, the 164-page book also has readers in prisons around the United States, Nguyen said.
Son Tran, the Texas death row inmate who wrote the winning essay in 2004, learned of the magazine and wrote to Nguyen.
"We're being recognized as a respectable publication not only for how we look but also for our content,'' Nguyen said. "I'm very proud of that.''
Bridging a gap
Nha, which means "home'' in Vietnamese, has published articles on the growing problem in Vietnam of trafficking children into prostitution; the ``Vietnamese American Ladies of Generation X,'' which includes a portrait of San Jose City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen; and stories every issue about the experience of the bicultural, hyphenated generation of Vietnamese-Americans.
When he launched the magazine three years ago, Nguyen was a tax accountant who realized that in the United States there were plenty of publications in Vietnamese that catered to the mono-lingual, first generation.
But they all but ignored a generation of readers like himself, Nguyen said, who speak, and live, both Vietnamese and American.
"It's indicative of this whole new generation of ethnic media that you find in almost all sectors, all ethnic groups,'' said Sandy Close, founder of New California Media. "It's really part of what the community imagines its future to be.''
Nha's proposition, Close said, that ``fashion and culture defines your identity,'' is an idea that's accessible to the mainstream. ``It's very forward looking.''
Art director Kim Le, 40, said working at Nha Magazine has opened up a world of young Vietnamese-Americans unknown to her working for a technical publication in Palo Alto.
"I didn't realize there are so many talented young Vietnamese out there,'' Le said. ``So that makes my work fun and fulfilling.''
Route to publisher
Nguyen was born in Vietnam and in 1980, after trying a dozen times to escape, walked to Cambodia with his family. A year later, after spending months in refugee camps near Thailand and in Indonesia, Nguyen arrived in the United States.
He grew up in Southern California and got a bachelor's degree from San Jose State University in accounting and managing information systems.
One corner of Nha's office, located on an industrial stretch of Monterey Highway south of downtown San Jose, is the glassed-in section of what used to be Nguyen's principal work: tax accounting.
Late last year he and a business partner launched a free tabloid of real estate and commercial listings.
"When I go to Barnes & Noble, I see Nha next to mainstream magazines,'' Nguyen said. "I'm proud of that fact.''
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