Huynh is credited as being the first Vietnamese author to write fiction and non-fiction in English.
[1] After the outbreak of the Vietnam War, Huynh was drafted into the South Vietnamese army,[1] where he reached the rank of first lieutenant, and received a gold and a silver medal.
[2] Huynh was shot and paralyzed during the war, resulting in his trip to the United States in 1963 for physical therapy.
In the early 1990s, Huynh also had some success as a playwright, and in 1990 he was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
[1] In 1990, Huynh received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.