Nancy Bui
Nancy Bui, pen name Trieu Giang, is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, historian, Broadway-style musical producer, and an advocate for environmental protection and human rights.
Before 1975, she worked with Song Than newspaper in Vietnam. In 1979, she fled by boat to seek for freedom with her two young children, endured eight months in the Songkhla refugee camp in Thailand, and later resettled in the United States. She served as Secretary General of Ngay Nay newspaper in Houston, Texas until 1984, then moved to Austin to work in real estate while continuing her writing.
In 2004, recognizing the absence and distortion of modern Vietnamese history in U.S. schools, she co-founded the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation (VAHF) to bring truthful accounts of the Vietnam War and the refugee experience into the classroom. Through its Oral History Project, VAHF partnered with five major U.S. universities and conducted more than 700 interviews with Vietnamese and American witnesses. The collection is now available online as VIDDA (Vietnamese Diasporas Digital Archives), which has attracted nearly 20 million views.
She also produced two acclaimed documentaries, Master Hoa’s Requiem and VIETNAMERICA. These films were screened at 15 national and international film festivals, won five awards, and were presented at the Newseum and the U.S. Capitol. VIETNAMERICA is now used as a teaching resource in many high schools and universities across the United States. Most recently, she adapted VIETNAMERICA into a Broadway-style production, VIETNAMERICA: The Musical, which premiered successfully at Capital One Hall in Washington, D.C.
In 2017, she co-founded Justice for Formosa’s Victims (JFFV) to support millions affected by the environmental disaster in Central Vietnam caused by the Taiwanese Formosa Plastics Group. With international support, JFFV helped 7,874 victims file a lawsuit against Formosa in Taiwanese courts, as they could not sue in Vietnam. In October 2020, the Taiwan Supreme Court issued a historic ruling granting the victims the right to pursue their case—a milestone in an unprecedented transnational lawsuit that remains ongoing.
With over five decades of dedication, Trieu Giang – Nancy Bui has built a remarkable legacy in journalism, film, scholarship, and social activism, preserving Vietnamese history while advancing environmental and human rights causes worldwide.
