Reverend Suong Ngoc Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American living in Biloxi, Mississippi, serving the Vietnamese community, there, many of whom work in the fisheries system. Nguyen was born, one of four children, in 1944 in Cambodia (to Vietnamese parents), but was raised in Tay Ninh Province in South Vietnam. Her grandfather was a leader of the Cao Dai religious group in Tay Ninh Province. Her father sold goods in a market and disappeared one day in 1946 during the French-Viet Minh war. Reverend Nguyen graduated from high school with honors and began working at Vietnam Airlines at Tan Son Nhat Airport in 1962. She worked there until 1976. Reverend Nguyen married Daniel Quan Nguyen in Tay Ninh, Vietnam, and he served as an infantry commander in the Seventh Division, Mekong Delta, from 1968 to 1975. After his imprisonment in reeducation camp in 1975, Reverend Nguyen worked selling clothes and jewelry at the flea market to support their two children. For twenty years the Nguyens built and pastored Vietnamese Assembly of God underground churches. In 1995 she and her family came to the United States. They adopted the young daughter of Mrs. Nguyen’s sister, who had passed away, and first lived in San Jose, California, raising four children together. In 1996 the Nguyens moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to pastor the Vietnamese Christian Assembly of God church in Biloxi, Mississippi. After losing the church building to Hurricane Katrina, the Nguyens moved the church north of Biloxi to D’Iberville and continued to pastor the congregation as of the date of this interview.

Scope and Content Note:
She discusses life in Vietnam, immigrating to America, importance of Christianity in her life, becoming a minister, Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and fishermen's claims regarding the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.