A large portion of the population here — including Ms. Nguyen’s father, 68, once a fisherman, and her mother, 65, who peeled shrimp at a seafood company — was drawn to New Orleans by the promise of the southern Louisiana fishing industry, and with sponsorship from the local Roman Catholic Church. And for the first 30 years, Ms. Nguyen said, the close-knit community existed in something of a cocoon, kept at arm’s length from the rest of the city by language and cultural barriers and by its isolated location.

All of that changed in 2005. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, along with a series of struggles in the hurricane’s aftermath, forced the Vietnamese community to assert itself politically, starting with successful campaigns to restore city services to Village de l’Est and, more prominently, to oppose the establishment of a nearby landfill. Less than five years later, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — which affected the community disproportionately, given its ties to the seafood industry — precipitated another round of commun ity activism and civic engagement that was centered on the creation of alternative economic opportunities and the pursuit of compensation for widespread loss of income.

Then, more recently, came another seminal event: Ms. Nguyen won a seat on the New Orleans City Council in last year’s municipal election. When she takes office on Monday, she will be the city’s first Asian-American council member.