CANR

1. The refugees LCCN 2016058763 Type of material Book Personal name Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- author. Uniform title Short stories. Selections Main title The refugees / Viet Thanh Nguyen. Edition First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition. Published/Produced New York : Grove Press, 2017. Description 209 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9780802126399 CALL NUMBER PS3614.G97 A6 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. Nothing ever dies : Vietnam and the memory of war LCCN 2015037444 Type of material Book Personal name Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- author. Main title Nothing ever dies : Vietnam and the memory of war / Viet Thanh Nguyen. Published/Produced Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, [2016] Description viii, 374 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm ISBN 9780674660342 ((cloth; alk. paper) : alk. paper) Shelf Location FLS2016 090556 CALL NUMBER DS559.8.S6 N48 2016 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLS2)

• Maclean's - http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/qa-author-viet-thanh-nguyen-on-the-ghosts-that-haunt-refugees/

  QUOTED: "I started writing them in 1997, and I started doing the research for Nothing Ever Dies in 2003. And the stories took me all the way to 2014, so as I was doing the research for Nothing Ever Dies, I was writing these stories and, you know, the backdrop of war and memory informs them too, certainly the theme of haunting…"

  Q&A: Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on the ghosts that haunt refugees
  One of the Vietnamese boat people, the author arrived in the U.S. when he was four, and now writes about his people’s experience
  Brian Bethune
  February 27, 2017
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  Viet Thanh Nguyen. (no credit)
  Viet Thanh Nguyen. (no credit)

  Viet Thanh Nguyen, 45, came to the United States from South Vietnam when he was four, part of the Boat People refugee exodus that followed the fall of Saigon to Northern forces. Now a professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Nguyen has emerged overnight—that is, after almost two decades of preliminary drafts—as a major new voice in American letters. His first novel, The Sympathizer, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015, while Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, his brilliant 2016 historical study, is a finalist for the U.S. National Book and National Book Critics Circle non-fiction awards. This year he’s released The Refugees, a book of short stories set primarily in the Vietnamese enclave in California where he grew up, which is garnering similar critical praise. All his writing, fiction and non-fiction explores the in-between lives of refugees: the dueling historical memories of two nations, the generational splits in families, the divided hearts in individuals.

  And although the Nguyen family is a self-evident American success story—Viet’s older brother Tung Thanh Nguyen is a professor of medicine at the University of California (San Francisco) and former chair of the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders under Barack Obama—the author bristles at any suggestion of “immigrant success story.” He and Tung are only in America because the destructive intervention of the U.S. in Vietnam’s internal conflicts caused his parents, already childhood refugees from North Vietnam, to flee their home once again. Refugees are not immigrants, Nguyen argues, and refugee literature is not immigrant literature. He spoke with senior writer Brian Bethune about the distinction, his new book and his young son, now approaching the age when Nguyen became a refugee.

  Q: Did you think of your first novel—about an Americanized Vietnamese man who is as dual-natured as imaginable—and your second book, Nothing Ever Dies—about the struggle to control the memory of the Vietnam War—as two parts of a single work?
  A: I knew they were related in some way because I had spent nine years doing the research on Nothing Ever Dies before I even turned to The Sympathizer, and thinking about these issues of war and memory through Nothing Ever Dies did definitely prepare me for writing The Sympathizer. I tried to think about how I could enact fictionally some of the things that I had thought about in terms of how we remember and how we forget. And then, after I finished writing The Sympathizer, I turned immediately to writing Nothing Ever Dies and everything I’d learned from writing the novel went into the prose and the structure of it. So there was really a wonderful way in which the two books were symbiotically related to each other.

  Q: How do the new stories fit in?
  A: Not so new. I started writing them in 1997, and I started doing the research for Nothing Ever Dies in 2003. And the stories took me all the way to 2014, so as I was doing the research for Nothing Ever Dies, I was writing these stories and, you know, the backdrop of war and memory informs them too, certainly the theme of haunting…

  Q: That’s why there was an actual ghost story? My favourite, in fact.
  A: Haunting is so prevalent in any kind of discussion about war and trauma. But you know, I think as I was writing the short stories, what I was hoping was that what I was learning in terms of writing a sentence and constructing a narrative would somehow make me a better non-fiction writer, too. In retrospect, if I knew in advance that it would take me well over a decade to do the book and 17 years on the short story collection, I’m pretty sure I would have said, “No, thank you.”

  Q: The stories all seem highly autobiographical.
  A: No, no—only one story is. The rest are about Vietnamese people or people who come across Vietnamese people, but the rest of the stories are actually highly fictional.

  Q: You mean aside from the fact they tend to feature refugee parents with an American or Americanized child?
  A: Mmm.

  Q: The specifically autobiographical one is “War Years”? Right down to the upkeep bill the father presents to his son—$24,376, not including “emotional aggravation”—and that kid was only in the 4th grade? Did that happen to you?
  A: Yeah. That was autobiographical. And that part really did happen, though later. I don’t know if my dad was that eloquent, but he did give me a handwritten itemized bill at one point after I graduated from college.

  Q: We were sidetracked from talking about haunting as a theme in all war writing, fictional or not. It was striking to see you take on a female point of view in “Black-Eyed Women,” the ghost story. She has much to haunt her, but the ghost is the least of her terrors.
  A: That story was an awful experience to write. It began in ’97, ended in 2014, took me over 50 drafts and a tremendous amount of pain and agony, and you know, it probably takes about 12 minutes to read. It was a very deliberate attempt to write a story from the perspective of a woman and someone of ambiguous sexuality. In an early draft, she was a lesbian, which just didn’t make the final version. And it was always about haunting because ghost stories are prevalent in Vietnamese culture, even apart from war, and not necessarily of the horrific kind, but of the benevolent kind. And that’s partially the point of the story—to talk about how ghosts function in a very normal way for many people.

  Q: Immigrant literature is a key component of modern Canadian literature, often featuring characters worrying over fitting in here. In your fiction, though, not melting into the pot isn’t defensive—it’s defiant. You seem to be making a conscious effort to craft refugee literature that’s not immigrant literature. You don’t see these two things as the same?
  A: I don’t think they’re the same. In the United States, the immigrant experience occupies a very central place in American mythology. And sometimes, that place wavers between acceptance and rejection. Currently we’re in a moment of immigration rejection. But no one disputes the centrality of that experience. Refugees, on the other hand, are threatening, not just to Americans, but also in many countries the world over. And it’s partially because, unlike immigrants, refugees do not choose where they’re going to go or why they’re fleeing, and they are unwanted populations. They bring with them the stigma of disaster. That scares people who are not refugees, people in potential host countries, because the refugees are not only going to be a demand on the country’s resources, but also the refugees raise the possibility that the countries that they’re going to are themselves not as stable as the citizens would like, I think. We’re all just one catastrophe away from ending up as a refugee, and we don’t want to be reminded of that.

  MORE: A refugee flood in Canada? Please.
  Q: You think, then, that refugees have a different relationship with their new country than immigrants have?
  A: I think that’s true. Immigrants who voluntarily come to a country have already made a decision to assimilate to one degree or another. Probably not completely, but they’ve committed to the place, and they know that they need to make certain kinds of concessions. They change themselves in some way to fit in. They’re looking forward as much as they’re still looking backward.

  But refugees, especially in their early years, are still caught up in the experience that made them refugees. And they’re much more melancholic. They’re much more oriented towards the past and towards the country of origin. That can make the process of becoming a part of the new country much more fraught for them.

  Q: Does the issue of memory, the prime theme of all your work—one story portrays a refugee who develops Alzheimer’s—play out differently too?
  A: I think all immigrants and refugees are preoccupied with memories to one degree or another. But again, this question of how much to remember and how much to forget is really aggravated for those who have lost a tremendous amount. Immigrants who come to a country are going to lose something, for sure, but they hope to gain a great deal by making this journey, whereas refugees by definition have lost a tremendous amount—not just country and society, but also more personal things like careers, prestige, status, relatives, identities. This inevitably makes the longing to remember the past even more powerful among refugees, to the point of often debilitating them.

  Vietnamese Boat People. (Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)
  Vietnamese Boat People. (Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images)

  Q: That probably made integration a particularly thorny question for Vietnamese in America, in the country that both made them refugees and gave them a refuge. In Nothing Ever Dies you write about how the U.S. lost the war but won the peace through its vast soft power. Americans can focus on American tragedies—the 58,000 dead in Vietnam, the four or five thousand in Iraq—and ignore the backdrop, the millions of deaths among locals.
  A: Yeah. Growing up in the U.S., I was certainly deeply aware of the power of American media, specifically Hollywood and television, in terms of broadcasting a particular vision of what the American experience was like. As someone coming from a war that was a preoccupation of Americans in the 1980s, it did strike me that since we were a part of that war, we should have a chance to talk about ourselves. That brought in me a particular kind of resentment about this erasure of the Vietnamese experience—a simmering rage, really—and a desire to contest the American version. It has also instilled in me a great sympathy and empathy for other people to whom this process of erasure was going to happen. The example of Iraq, or Afghanistan, is absolutely true. People may be vaguely aware that there’s suffering in these countries, but simply because the media are filled with American-centric versions, we still see the experiences through the American perspective. We are just completely ignorant of what might be happening to other people.

  MORE: How a Vietnamese boat person helped save a family of Syrian refugees
  Q: You pointed out something that wouldn’t be obvious to most people: it doesn’t really matter if the American government or individual Americans are portrayed negatively, because they are at least portrayed. They’re there.
  A: We enjoy watching bad guys or antiheroes all the time, and to see Americans or any kind of white person cast in this way—consider Apocalypse Now—still continues to make us see through their eyes, even if we disagree with what they’re doing. They have a life that the characters in the background do not.

  Q: In the acknowledgments in The Refugees, you mention your son, specifically to note he’s approaching the age you were when you became a refugee. Why is that significant to you?
  A: He’s three and a half. I was a little bit past four years old when I became a refugee, and I didn’t really have memory at that point. Certainly not coherent memory. I have flashes of recall on the ocean, and very definitely narrative memory once I arrived at the refugee camp in Pennsylvania. So for me, my identity is deeply intertwined with being a refugee because that’s the first experience that I remember. When I was growing up, I cared very little for the customs of my parents, the special things that we’re supposed to do as Vietnamese people. But now that I am a parent, I go out of my way to make sure that my son goes to visit his grandparents and participates in customs like the Lunar New Year celebration. We went home then, so he could participate in that and wear the traditional dress. It’ll be interesting to see how he reacts to these kinds of demands being put on him by his parents, because I didn’t react very well when I was a kid. But the experience of having these things forced on me left their imprint, and even if it was sort of miserable to have to endure it at the time, I appreciate it now. Looking at him at this age and thinking about myself when I was four gives me greater empathy for myself, thinking about what it must have been like for me at that age to have lost everything. And it makes me love him the more to see a little bit of myself in him.

  Q: And to feel enormously protective, I’m sure: it’s not going to happen to you.

  A: Yeah.

• Viet Thanh Nguyen Home Page - http://vietnguyen.info/author-viet-thanh-nguyen

  BIO
  The Pithy

  28BOOKNGUYEN-blog427Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, a Gold Medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award from the Asian/Pacific American Librarian Association. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He has been interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Seth Meyers, and Terry Gross, among many others. His current book is a short story collection, The Refugees.

  The Professional

  Viet Thanh Nguyen is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (Oxford University Press, 2002) and the novel The Sympathizer, from Grove/Atlantic (2015). The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, a California Book Award, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. It was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. The novel made it to over thirty book-of-the-year lists, including The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com, Slate.com, and The Washington Post. The foreign rights have been sold to twenty-three countries.

  His current book is Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, which is the critical bookend to a creative project whose fictional bookend is The Sympathizer. Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, examines how the so-called Vietnam War has been remembered by many countries and people, from the US to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea. Harvard University Press is publishing it in March 2016. Kirkus Reviews calls the book “a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget.” It has won the the John G. Cawelti Award for Best Textbook/Primer from the Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association and the Réné Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Comparative Literature from the American Comparative Literature Association.

  His next book is The Refugees, a short story collection forthcoming from Grove Press in February 2017. He is a critic at large for the Los Angeles Times and has written for the New York Times, Time, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and other venues. Along with Janet Hoskins, he co-edited Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (University of Hawaii Press, 2014). His articles have appeared in numerous journals and books, including PMLA, American Literary History, Western American Literature, positions: east asia cultures critique, The New Centennial Review, Postmodern Culture, the Japanese Journal of American Studies, and Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. Many of his articles can be downloaded here.

  He has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (2011-2012), the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2008-2009) and the Fine Arts Work Center (2004-2005). He has also received residencies, fellowships, and grants from the Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the James Irvine Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation.

  His teaching and service awards include the Mellon Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students, the Albert S. Raubenheimer Distinguished Junior Faculty Award for outstanding research, teaching and service, the General Education Teaching Award, and the Resident Faculty of the Year Award. Multimedia has been a key part of his teaching. In a recent course on the American War in Viet Nam, he and his students created An Other War Memorial, which won a grant from the Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching and the USC Provost’s Prize for Teaching with Technology.

  Download his full CV

  The Personal

  Viet was born in Ban Me Thuot, Viet Nam (now spelled Buon Me Thuot after 1975, a year which brought enormous changes to many things, including the Vietnamese language). He came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 with his family and was initially settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, one of four such camps for Vietnamese refugees. From there, he moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived until 1978.

  Seeking better economic opportunities, his parents moved to San Jose, California, and opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores in the city. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, San Jose had not yet been transformed by the Silicon Valley economy, and was in many ways a rough place to live, at least in the downtown area where Viet’s parents worked. He commemorates this time in his short story “The War Years” (TriQuarterly 135/136, 2009).

  Viet attended St. Patrick School and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. After high school, he briefly attended UC Riverside and UCLA before settling on UC Berkeley, where he graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He stayed at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in English, moved to Los Angeles for a teaching position at the University of Southern California, and has been there ever since.

  x200People not familiar with Vietnamese culture sometimes have a hard time pronouncing his surname. The wikipedia entry on Nguyen has audio pronunciations of the name in Vietnamese. He favors the southern pronunciation of his name, which with the full diacritical marks is Việt Thanh Nguyễn. For those in the United States, though, the Anglicization of Nguyen leads to further issues. Is it pronounced Noo-yen? Or Win? It’s never pronounced Ne-goo-yen. The Win version is closer to the Vietnamese and seems to be the favored choice for Vietnamese Americans.

  Other Activities

  Viet is actively involved with promoting the arts and culture of Vietnamese in the diaspora through two organizations.

  The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), for which he is the co-director, stages film festivals, youth arts groups, and literary festivals and events that center around the voices of Vietnamese in the diaspora.
  diaCRITICS is DVAN’s blog for which Viet is the editor. It features book, film, and art reviews, essays and commentaries, interviews with artists and writers, travelogues, and more, all dealing with the cultural production of Vietnamese in the diaspora.
  Viet is also on the steering committee for USC’s Center for Transpacific Studies, which encourages the study of how cultures, peoples, capital, and ideas flow across the Pacific and between Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. He and colleague Janet Hoskins are co-editing an anthology on Transpacific Studies, forthcoming in 2014 from the University of Hawaii Press.

• Viet Thanh Nguyen Home Page - http://vietnguyen.info/2012/frequently-asked-questions-answers

  FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (AND ANSWERS)
  Posted on December 4, 2012 Leave a comment →
  Do you respond to emails/letters?

  I do my best to write back to everyone who writes to me. If I’m really lucky, I do it in a day. Most of the time, however, I take weeks and sometimes months. I apologize. Besides being a writer, I’m a scholar, teacher, husband, son, and father, and all those tasks have to take priority. That being said, I’ll respond to emails faster than letters or cards sent via the post office, and I really do write back to just about everyone.

  Can I interview you for a school paper/scholarly essay?

  I can only do interviews for print, internet, or broadcast purposes. However, this website has an extensive archive of the interviews that I have done and the reviews of my books, and in them you should find the answers to most, if not all, of your questions. My essays should also provide some insight into my work.

  I have a book/manuscript. Will you read it/blurb it?

  Unfortunately, I can do neither. See above about all the things I must struggle to balance in my life, and hopefully you will understand that I cannot spend more time reading the works of people I do not know, no matter how worthy those works may be. I wish you all the luck and strength that a writer needs.

  Will you speak at my event, campus, or institution?

  Please contact Kevin Mills of The Tuesday Agency, who handles my speaking arrangements.

  How do I get an agent/publisher?

  I have little advice based on personal experience in this regard. I wrote a lot of short stories and published them in small literary journals. Literary agents sought me out from reading some of these stories, which is how I eventually found one. The timing was right; he came looking after I had finished a collection. It’s challenging to get an agent without a book being done, although it can definitely happen, especially in nonfiction. My agent sent my book to publishers.

  There are websites and books that tell you how to find an agent and how to solicit an agent by writing query letters, and how much of a manuscript you should have done, and the like. My best advice is to read those sites and books.

  What kind of advice do you have for writers?

  Read a lot. Read deeply in the categories of writing that you imagine yourself to be in. Only by doing so will you know what is a cliche and what is original, and how to avoid the former and seek the latter in your own work. Reading deeply, you will realize that most work in a category is not very good. That should inspire you to recognize what is good versus bad, and should encourage you to do better.

  Read widely. Genres and boundaries are artificial, and a writer should look everywhere for great writing and powerful ideas, which exist in all fields of writing. Reading the best in a wide variety of genres, styles, and disciplines will provide a writer with greater inspiration and aspiration.

  Write a lot. It could be every day, it could be in big occasional bursts. Whatever works for you. But nothing beats just writing a lot, over time. All the classes in the world won’t help you become a better writer if you don’t write. The more you write, the more you will figure out how to deal with technical issues and the elements of craft. You will also learn to edit yourself, and recognize when something is working and when something isn’t.

  Develop a very thick skin, and develop discipline. The thick skin is to protect you from rejection. The discipline is required because writing demands a great degree of sacrifice–at least of your time and possibly much more. Discipline is more important than talent, if one had to choose (ideally a writer has both). Someone with minimal talent and great discipline will write a book, even if it’s not great. Someone with talent but little discipline probably won’t finish a book (although someone with huge talent might pull it off).

  Give yourself time to mature and grow wise. Young writers with lots of talent who get a lot of attention when they first publish often don’t stand the test of time until they mature and add wisdom to their writing.

• Author C.V. - http://vietnguyen.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Viet-Nguyen-CV-December-2016.pdf

  VIET THANH NGUYEN • curriculum vitae
  University of Southern California
  Department of English
  Taper Hall of Humanities 404
  3501 Trousdale Parkway
  Los Angeles, CA 90089-0354
  213.740.3746 • vnguyen@usc.edu
  USC Faculty Website
  Personal website: vietnguyen.info
  ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE | employment & education
  Professor, Departments of English and American Studies & Ethnicity, University of
  Southern California, 2016-present
  Aerol Arnold Chair of English, University of Southern California, July 2016-present
  Interim Chair, Department of American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern
  California, 2015-2016
  Associate Professor, Departments of English and American Studies & Ethnicity,
  University of Southern California, 2003-2016
  Assistant Professor, Department of English and Program in American Studies & Ethnicity,
  University of Southern California, 1997-2003
  Ph.D., English, University of California, Berkeley, 1997
  B.A., English, highest honors, University of California, Berkeley, 1992
  B.A., Ethnic Studies, highest honors, University of California, Berkeley, 1992
  PUBLICATIONS | books in progress
  The Committed (novel), under contract with Grove/Atlantic, delivery in summer 2018,
  excerpts in Ploughshares and Freeman’s, foreign rights to Hayakawa (Japan), Karl
  Blessing (Germany), Alfaguara/Companhia das Lettras (Brazilian), Belfond (France),
  Neri Pozza (Italy)
  PUBLICATIONS | single-authored books
  1. The Refugees (short fiction) • Grove/Atlantic, 2017
  Audio rights to Audible.com, foreign rights to Corsair (UK) and Phuong Nam (Vietnam)
  Reviews:
  1. Publishers Weekly, starred review
  2. Library Journal, starred review, November 15, 2016
  3. Booklist, starred review
  4. Mekong Review, vol. 2, no. 1, Nov 2016-Jan 2017
  5. Kirkus Reviews, starred review
  6. Library Journal, Editor’s Pick, September 1, 2016
  Features:
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 2/40
  1. Most Anticipated: The Great 2017 Book Preview, The Millions
  2. 23 Highly Anticipated Books of 2017, Goodreads
  3. Fiction to Look Out For in 2017, The Guardian
  4. What Books to Read in 2017, Washington Post
  5. Ten Books to Read in 2017, BBC
  6. Winter 2017 Fiction Preview, Bookish
  7. 15 of 2017’s Most Anticipated Fiction Books, Bustle
  8. 2017 Book Preview: 33 Titles to Add to Your Shelf, The Huffington Post
  2. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (cultural criticism) • Harvard University
  Press, 2016. Audio rights to Audible.com, foreign rights to Phuong Nam (Vietnam)
  Awards:
  1. Finalist, National Book Award for Nonfiction, 2016
  Best of Year Lists:
  1. Kirkus Reviews, Best Nonfiction of 2016
  2. Zócalo’s 10 Favorite Books of 2016
  3. Entropy Magazine, Best Nonfiction Books of 2016
  4. New Zealand Listener, Best 100 Books of the Year
  5. The Seminary Co-op Notable Books of 2016
  Reviews:
  1. Public Books, October 1, 2016
  2. Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, September 2016
  3. Radcliffe Magazine, Summer 2016
  4. Change Seven, August 23, 2016
  5. The Key Reporter (Phi Beta Kappa), August 18, 2016
  6. Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, August 2016
  7. Literary Review, July 2016
  8. The Moderate Voice, July 17, 2016
  9. Pop Matters, May 25, 2016
  10. Publishers Weekly, May, 2016
  11. The New Yorker, Briefly Noted, May 9, 2016
  12. Mekong Review, May 9, 2016
  13. San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 2016
  14. 8books Review, April 26, 2016
  15. Vietnam Full Disclosure, April 2016
  16. Maclean’s, Editor’s Pick, April 9, 2016
  17. Booklist, starred review, April 1, 2016
  18. Library Journal, March 1, 2016
  19. Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2016
  3. The Sympathizer (novel) • Grove Press, 2015
  Audio version, Audible. Foreign editions:
  1. Arab (Arab Scientific Publishers, Beirut)
  2. Brazil (Alfaguara/Companhia das Lettras)
  3. Catalan (Empuries)
  4. Chinese, simplified (Shanghai Translation Publishing House)
  5. Chinese, complex (Marco Polo Press, Taiwan)
  6. Czech (Jota)
  7. Dutch (Uitgeverij Marmer)
  8. French (Belfond)
  9. German (Karl Blessing Verlag)
  10. Greek (Utopia)
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 3/40
  11. Israel (Babel)
  12. Italy (Neri Pozza)
  13. Japan (Hayakawa)
  14. Korea (Minumsa)
  15. Polish (Muza)
  16. Portugal (Elsinore-20/20)
  17. Romania (Grupul Editorial Art SRL)
  18. Serbia (Laguna)
  19. Spain (Seix Barral/Planeta)
  20. Turkey (Epsilon Yayinlari)
  21. UK (Corsair)
  22. Ukraine (Hemiro)
  23. Vietnam (Nha Nam)
  Awards:
  1. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2016
  2. Dayton Literary Peace Prize, 2016
  3. Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, American Library Association,
  2016
  4. Edgar Award for Best First Novel, Mystery Writers of America, 2016
  5. Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, 2015
  6. California Book Award, Gold Medal Winner, First Fiction, 2016
  7. Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction, Asian Pacific American
  Librarians Association, 2016
  8. Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award, USC, 2016
  9. Indies Choice Adult Fiction Honor Book, American Booksellers Association,
  2016
  10. Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, 2016
  11. Finalist, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
  12. Finalist, LA Times Book Prize, Mystery/Thriller
  13. Finalist, Medici Book Club Prize, 2016
  14. Finalist ABA Indies Choice/E.B. White Read-Aloud Award (Book of the Year,
  Adult Fiction), 2016
  Best of year lists:
  1. Powell’s Staff Top Fives of 2016
  2. Berkeleyside Best Books of 2016
  3. Best Crime Fiction of 2016, The Irish Times
  4. Books of the Year, The Australian
  5. Eileen Battersby’s favourite fiction and nonfiction of 2016, The Irish Times
  6. The Irish Times, Our Favourite Books of 2016
  7. The Guardian, Best Books of 2016
  8. Booklist, Top 10 Historical Fiction Books of 2015
  9. American Library Association, Notable Books, 2016
  10. San Antonio Current, The 21 Best Books We Read in 2015
  11. Pop Matters, A Short List of Great 2015 Books
  12. Publishers Marketplace, The Absolutely Best of the Best Books of 2015: Fiction
  13. Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center’s Bookdragon’s Top 25 of 2015
  14. Best of 2015: Fiction, Los Angeles Public Library
  15. Best Fiction of 2015, Kansas City Star
  16. Buzzfeed.com, The 24 Best Literary Debuts of 2015
  17. Politics & Prose Bookstore, Top Ten Books of the Year
  18. Orlando Weekly, Top Books of 2015
  19. Booklist, Editors’ Choice: Adult Books, 2015
  20. LitHub, The 25 Best Books of the Year, According to Booksellers
  21. The Daily Beast, The Best Fiction of 2015
  22. The Georgia Straight (Vancouver), This Year’s Outstanding Books
  23. Chicago Public Library, Best Books of 2015: Fiction
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 4/40
  24. Wall Street Journal, Best Books of 2015: Fiction
  25. Entropy Magazine, Best Fiction Books of 2015
  26. Quartz, What Critics Agree Are the Best Books of 2015
  27. The Globe and Mail, Globe 100: Best Books of 2015
  28. Minnesota Public Radio, Top Fiction Picks of 2015
  29. The Seattle Times, Best Books of 2015
  30. The NP99: The National Post’s Best Books of the Year
  31. Laura Miller's 10 Favorite Books of 2015, Slate.com
  32. BuzzFeed, The 24 Best Fiction Books of 2015
  33. The Guardian, Best Books of 2015
  34. New York Times, 100 Notable Books of 2015
  35. Flavorwire The 50 Best Independent Press Books of 2015
  36. Washington Post, Notable Fiction Books of 2015
  37. Kirkus Reviews, Best Fiction Books of 2015
  38. Kirkus Reviews, Best Historical Fiction of 2015
  39. Kirkus Reviews, Best Debut Fiction of 2015
  40. Library Journal Best Books of 2015: Top Ten
  41. Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, Top 20
  42. Amazon.com Best Books of the Year: Literature and Fiction
  43. Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2015, Fiction
  44. East Bay Express, Best Fiction of 2015
  Reviews:
  1. Sacramento Bee, December 16, 2016
  2. Il Giornale (Italian), December 2, 2016
  3. La Stampa (Italian), November 27, 2016
  4. Fourth and Sycamore, November 1, 2016
  5. The Wire (India), August 8, 2016
  6. Business Times (Singapore), July 29, 2016
  7. Dagens Nyeheter (Swedish), July 28, 2016
  8. The New Indian Express, July 23, 2016
  9. Literary Kicks, July 17, 2016
  10. Ploughshares, July 2016
  11. Asheville Citizen-Times, July 16, 2016
  12. Business Standard (India), June 21, 2016
  13. Scroll.in (India), June 17, 2016
  14. Missoula Independent, June 16, 2016
  15. The Guardian, March 12, 2016
  16. ArtsHub Australia, March 9, 2016
  17. Irish Times, February 20. 2016
  18. Financial Times, February 12, 2016
  19. The Straits Times, January 3, 2016
  20. Chico News and Review, December 17, 2015
  21. Fresh Air, NPR, December 13, 2015
  22. The Melbourne Review of Books, November 28, 2015
  23. The Sewanee Review, Vol. CXXIII, Fall 2015
  24. The Saturday Paper, November 21, 2015
  25. Sydney Morning Herald, October 31, 2015
  26. The Globe and Mail, September 25, 2015
  27. The New York Times (second review), August 27, 2015
  28. Nancy Pearl on KUOW, August 18, 2015
  29. Philadelphia Inquirer, August 10, 2015
  30. Historical Novel Society, August 2015
  31. Public Books, August 1, 2015
  32. Chatham House: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, July 2015
  33. The Arts Fuse, July 29, 2015
  34. The Rumpus, July 7, 2015
  35. KMUW Wichita Public Radio, June 29, 2015
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 5/40
  36. The New Yorker, “Briefly Noted,” June 29, 2015
  37. Critics at Large, June 21, 2015
  38. Consequence Magazine, June 17, 2015
  39. The Master’s Review, June 17, 2015
  40. 8Asians, May 26, 2015
  41. Bookforum, May 26, 2015
  42. Cicero Magazine, May 18, 2015
  43. Dallas Morning News, May 15, 2015
  44. Book Reporter, May 1, 2015
  45. The New Inquiry, May 1, 2015
  46. The Daily Beast, May 1, 2015
  47. ZYZZYVA, April 29, 2015
  48. Toronto Star, April 27, 2015
  49. Winnipeg Free Press, April 24, 2015
  50. The Moderate Voice, April 24, 2015
  51. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 23, 2015
  52. San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 2015
  53. Seattle Times, April 17, 2015
  54. BookBrowse, April 15, 2015
  55. Booklist, starred, April 15. 2015
  56. Barnes and Noble Review, April 14, 2015
  57. Dumpling Magazine, April 10, 2015
  58. VVA (Vietnam Veterans of America) Veteran, April 6, 2015
  59. New York Times Book Review (front page), April 5, 2015
  60. South China Morning Post, April 4, 2015
  61. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2015
  62. Washington Post, March 31, 2015
  63. Thanh Nien News (Youth News), March 6, 2015
  64. Library Journal, starred, Feb. 15, 2015
  65. Kirkus Reviews, starred, Feb. 1, 2015
  66. Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed, Jan. 12, 2015
  67. Library Journal, Oct. 27, 2014
  Featured in:
  1. “Book Report,” Modern Luxury: Orange County, December 2016
  2. Nagrodzony Pulitzerem "Sympatyk" po polsku. Dość zawłaszczania wojny wietnamskiej
  przez Amerykanów, Gazeta Wyborcza, November 25, 2016
  3. “Vietnamese Horror Story,” USC Dornsife Magazine, October 2016
  4. Book Podcast, Bedrosan Center, USC Price School of Public Policy, September 26,
  2016
  5. “Authors Viet Thanh Nguyen and Maxine Hong Kingston Dish on War and Peace,” Los
  Angeles Times, May 25, 2016
  6. “What I’m Reading: The Sympathizer,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 2016
  7. Our Top Books This Week, The National (UAE), February 10, 2016
  8. Politics and Prose Best of 2015 with Ta-Nehisi Coates, Larissa MacFarquhar, and Viet
  Thanh Nguyen, podcast on Slate.com, January 2016
  9. High-Profile Hardcovers, USC Trojan Family Magazine, Autumn 2015
  10. USC Center for Public Diplomacy, Meet the Author, October 23, 2015
  11. Người Việt, Báo New York Times điểm sách của một tác giả gốc Việt (The New York
  Times Praises a Book by a Vietnamese Author), October 2, 2015
  12. Oprah’s Book Club, Fresh Picks for Your Fall Book Club Meeting, September 3, 2015
  13. The Biblioracle: Emotional Reactions to 2015 Books, Chicago Tribune, July 23, 2015
  14. The Best Novels of 2015 (So Far), Novel Enthusiasts, July 2015
  15. Los Angeles Review of Books Book Club Selection, July 2015
  16. This Summer’s Best Books, and Where to Read them in DC, Washington Post, July 14,
  2015
  17. SE Asian Intrigue—Selections to Cover Those Long Summer Hours, Northwest Asian
  Weekly, July 3, 2015
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 6/40
  18. 23 Books We’ve Loved So Far This Year, Washington Post, July 2, 2015
  19. Flavorwire’s 15 Best Fiction Books of 2015 So Far
  20. Amazon Editors’ Top 20 Picks for the Best Books of the Year So Far, 2015 (#5)
  21. Amazon.com Best Book of the Year So Far 2015, Literature and Fiction List (#8)
  22. Amazon.com Best Book of the Year So Far 2015, Mystery and Thriller List (#10)
  23. Public Picks of 2015 (most notable fiction of the year), Public Books
  24. Summer reads: What to Pick Up Under the Sun, Minnesota Public Radio News, June
  19, 2015
  25. BookBrowse Best Books for Father’s Day, June 15, 2015
  26. 11 Books to Take to the Beach, KARE 11, June 13, 2015
  27. 2015 Summer Reading, KUER, June 4, 2-15
  28. Washington Post Book Club selection for May 2015
  29. “Marian Palaia at War’s Perimeter,” The Barnes and Noble Review, May 27, 2015
  30. New York Public Library Pick for Asian Pacific Heritage Month, May 2015
  31. English Kills Review, May 11, 2015
  32. PublicAsian, May 9, 2015
  33. 32 Essential Asian-American Writers You Need To Be Reading, Buzzfeed, May 7, 2015
  34. The Week, Author of the Week, May 1, 2015
  35. Kirkus Reviews, 10 Novels to Lose Yourself In, April 2015
  36. BookBrowse, Editor’s Choice, April 15, 2015
  37. Buzzfeed, Sixteen Awesome New Books to Read This Spring, April 17, 2015
  38. New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, April 10, 2015
  39. Fiction Advocate, April 10, 2015
  40. Oakland Public Library, 10 Great Reasons to Read Fiction in April 2015
  41. Publishers Weekly Picks, Books of the Week, April 6, 2015
  42. Flavorwire, 10 Must Read Books for April
  43. San Diego Magazine, 5 Books to Read in April
  44. Amazon.com, Best Books of the Month, April 2015
  45. New York Public Library, Book Notes from the Underground: Books from the Future!
  March 27, 2015
  46. Newsday, 10 Books Not To Miss in April, March 26, 2015
  47. Library Journal, Spring Best Debuts: First Novels, March 22, 2015
  48. Publishers Lunch Buzz Books 2015 Spring/Summer: Exclusive Excerpts from 39 Top
  New Titles
  49. Publishers Weekly First Fiction Spring 2015: Anticipated Debuts
  50. Publishers Weekly First Fiction Profile, Jan. 9, 2015
  Other recognition:
  1. One City, One Story Selection, Pasadena Public Library, CA, 2017
  4. Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. New York: Oxford University
  Press, 2002. Also published online at:
  DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195146998.001.0001
  Excerpts reprinted in:
  1. Encyclopedia, vol. 1, A-E, eds. Tisa Bryant, Miranda F. Mellis, and Kate Schatz.
  Providence, RI: Encyclomedia, 2006: 209-212
  2. Recovered Legacies: Authority and Identity in Early Asian American Literature, eds.
  Floyd Cheung and Keith Lawrence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005: 158-
  182
  3. Asian American Writers, ed. Harold Bloom, New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism,
  2009: 87-104
  4. Asian American Literature, volume 2, ed. David Leiwei Li, New York: Routledge, 2012
  Reviews:
  1. Choice (October 2002)
  2. Journal of Asian American Studies 6.1 (2003): 101-103
  3. American Literature 76.1 (2004): 189-191
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 7/40
  4. E3W Review of Books 3 (2003): 25-7
  5. Amerasia Journal 30.3 (2004/2005): 107-110
  PUBLICATIONS | edited collections
  1. Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field (co-edited anthology with Janet Hoskins).
  Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014
  Reviewed in: International Social Science Review, vol. 91, issue 1; International Journal of
  Asian Studies, forthcoming
  2. “Special Issue: Postcolonial Asian America.” With Tina Chen. Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial
  Studies, (Spring/Summer 2000) http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v4i3/con43.html
  PUBLICATIONS | forthcoming articles
  1. “April 30,” Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and
  Refugees, ed. Laren McClung, W.W. Norton
  2. “Becoming Bilingual, or Notes On Numbness and Feeling,” Flashpoints for Asian American
  Studies, ed. Cathy Schlund-Vials, Fordham University Press • 12 manuscript pages, solicited
  and refereed
  3. “Pacific Rim and Asian American Literature.” The Cambridge Companion to Transnational
  American Literature, ed. Yogita Goyal. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017: p. 190-
  202 • solicited and refereed
  PUBLICATIONS | articles, chapters & review essays (refereed)
  1. “What Is Vietnamese American Literature?” Recollecting Vietnam, eds. Brenda Boyle and
  Jeehyun Lim. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016: 50-63 • solicited and refereed.
  Excerpt reprinted in Mekong Review, v. 1, no. 4, August-October 2016
  2. “The Emergence of Asian American Literary Criticism.” The Cambridge History of Asian
  American Literature, eds. Rajini Srikanth and Min Song. New York: Cambridge University
  Press, 2016: 289-305 • solicited and refereed
  3. “Industries of Memory: Art and the Viet Nam War.” American Studies as Transnational
  Practice, eds. Yuan Shu and Donald Pease. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2015:
  311-339 • solicited and refereed
  4. “Literatures of the Korean and Vietnam War,” co-written with Daniel Kim, in The Cambridge
  Companion to Asian American Literature, ed. Daniel Kim and Crystal Parikh. New York:
  Cambridge University Press, 2015: 59-72 • solicited and refereed
  5. “Vietnamese and American Public Diplomacy, 1945-2010,” with Mark Bradley, in Engaging
  Adversarial States: The Strategic Limits and Potential of Public Diplomacy in U.S. National
  Security Policy, ed. Geoffrey Wiseman. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015: p. 110-139
  • solicited and refereed
  6. “Memory.” Keywords for Asian American Studies, ed. Cathy Schlund-Vials, K. Scott Wong, and
  Linda Vo, New York: NYU Press, 2015: 153-157 • solicited and refereed
  7. “Introduction: Transpacific Studies: Critical Perspectives on an Emerging Field,” with Janet
  Hoskins, in Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field, ed. Janet Hoskins and Viet Thanh
  Nguyen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014: 1-38
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 8/40
  8. “Viet Nam.” The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature, ed.
  Rachel Lee. New York: Routledge, 2014: 365-375 • solicited
  9. “Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance,” American Literary History (vol. 25, no.1,
  2013): 144-163. Available online at 10.1093/alh/ajs069, extract at
  http://alh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/01/05/alh.ajs069.extract; translated into
  Japanese by Erika Hori, Nagoya American Literature/Culture, Nagoya University (March 2014):
  1-21 • solicited
  10. “Refugee Memories and Asian American Critique.” positions: asia critique. 20.3 (2012): 911-
  942 • solicited
  11. “Remembering War, Dreaming Peace: On Cosmopolitanism, Compassion and Literature,”
  Japanese Journal of American Studies (no. 20, 2009): 1-26, and online at
  http://sv121.wadax.ne.jp/~jaas-gr-jp/jjas/PDF/2009/09_149-174.pdf• solicited; reprinted in
  Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War,
  eds. Scott Laderman and Edwin Martini, Duke University Press, 2013 • solicited
  12. “At Home With Race,” PMLA 123.5 (October 2008): 1557-1565 • solicited
  13. “Seeing Double: The Films of R. Hong-an Truong,” Postmodern Culture 17.1 (September
  2006): http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pmc/toc/pmc17.1.html • solicited
  14. “Speak of the Dead, Speak of Viet Nam: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Minority Discourse.” The
  New Centennial Review 6.2 (2006): 7-37 • solicited
  15. “What is the Political?: American Culture and the Example of Viet Nam.” Asian American
  Studies After Critical Mass. Ed. Kent Ono. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2004: 19-39 •
  solicited
  16. “Le Ly Hayslip: A Teaching Guide.” Resource Guide to Asian American Literature. Eds. Stephen
  Sumida and Sau-ling C. Wong. New York: Modern Language Association, 2001: 66-77 •
  solicited
  17. “The Remasculinization of Chinese America: Race, Violence, and the Novel.” American Literary
  History 12.1&2 (Spring/Summer 2000): 130-157 • solicited
  18. “Editor’s Introduction.” With Tina Chen. Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies
  (Spring/Summer 2000): http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v4i3/con43.htm • solicited
  19. “California, the Pacific Rim, and Asian American Literature.” Western American Literature,
  (Summer 1999): 159-165 • solicited
  20. “Asian America and American Studies: Aliens, Citizens, and Cultural Work in Lisa Lowe’s
  Immigrant Acts.” American Quarterly 50.3 (September 1998): 626-635 • solicited
  21. “Representing Reconciliation: Le Ly Hayslip and the Victimized Body.” positions: east asia
  cultures critique, 5.2 (Fall 1997): 605-642
  22. “The Postcolonial State of Desire: Homosexuality and Transvestitism in Ninotchka Rosca’s
  State of War.” Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism 2.2 (Spring
  1995): 67-94
  PUBLICATIONS | articles & chapters (non-refereed)
  23. “True War Stories.” Special issue of the The Asian American Literary Review on “(Re)Collecting
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 9/40
  the Vietnam War,” volume 6, issue 2, fall 2015: 140-145 • solicited; reprint forthcoming in
  Oklahoma Humanities Magazine
  24. “War, Memory and the Future.” The Asian American Literary Review, volume 1, issue 2
  (2010): 279-290 • solicited
  25. “Multimedia as Composition: Research, Writing, and Creativity,” Academic Commons
  (2/17/2009):http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/multimedia-composition •
  solicited
  26. “The Authenticity of the Anonymous: Popular Culture and the Art of War,” (in English and
  Korean). In transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix, ed. Viet Le and Yong Soon Min. Seoul: Arko Arts
  Center, Arts Council Korea, 2008: 58-67 • solicited
  27. “Race and Resistance: On Asian American Cultural Politics” (trans. in Japanese, Chieko
  Kitagawa Otsuru and Kayoko Yukimura). The Bulletin of the Law Society, Kansai University, 58
  (March 2008): 53-71 • solicited
  28. “Impossible to Forget, Difficult to Remember: Vietnam and the Art of Dinh Q. Lê.” A Tapestry
  of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Lê. Bellevue: Bellevue Arts Museum, 2007: 19-29 • solicited
  29. “How Do We Tell Stories?” Engines of Inquiry: Approaches to Teaching, Learning, and
  Technology in American Culture Studies. Ed. Michael Coventry Washington, D.C.: Center for
  New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, 2003: 363–396 • solicited
  30. “Marxism After Ho Chi Minh.” Bad Subjects, 45 (October 1999):
  http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1999/45/nguyen.html Reprinted in Collective Action: A Bad
  Subjects Anthology, ed. Megan Shaw Prelinger. London: Pluto Press, 2004: 167-170 • solicited
  PUBLICATIONS | short stories or excerpts
  31. “The Committed,” Ploughshares, v. 42, no. 2 (Summer 2016), edited by Claire Messud and
  James Wood: 107-114
  32. “Black-Eyed Women.” Epoch vol. 64 n. 2 (2015): 131-143
  33. “Fatherland.” Narrative (June 2011): http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-
  2011/fatherland
  34. “Look at Me.” The Good Men Project Magazine (February 19, 2011):
  http://goodmenproject.com/fiction-2/look-at-me/
  35. “The Americans.” Finalist, Nelson Algren Award. The Chicago Tribune (Dec 18, 2010).
  http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/chi-books-algren-theamericans,0,4928377.htmlstory
  Reprinted in Printers Row Journal, no. 15
  36. “Arthur Arellano.” Narrative 11 (Spring 2010): 27-40. Also available online at
  http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2010/arthur-arellano
  37. “The War Years.” TriQuarterly 135/136 (Winter 2009/Spring 2010): 79-93
  38. “Someone Else Besides You.” Narrative 2 (Winter 2008): 16-33. Also online at
  http://narrativemagazine.com/issues/winter-2008/someone-else-besides-you
  39. “The Other Woman.” 2007 Fiction Prize Winner, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine
  Arts, 20.1 (Winter 2007/Spring 2008): 193-211. Reprinted in A Stranger Among Us: Stories
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 10/40
  of Cross-Cultural Collision and Connection. Ed. Stacy Bierlein. Chicago: OV Books, 2008: 73-
  88
  40. “A Correct Life.” Best New American Voices 2007, eds. John Kulka and Natalie Danforth. New
  York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 2006: 97-117. Translated into Spanish as “Una vida
  correcta” in Los mejores relatos: narrativa estadounidense contemporánea. Trans. and ed.
  José Luis Palacios. Venezeula: Bid & Co., 2007: 189-214. Translated into Vietnamese as “Một
  Cuộc Sống Đứng Đắn” (Trans. Nguyệt Cầm): damau.org, no. 1 (10.8.2006)
  41. “In the Dark,” short story adapted for the stage by Duy Nguyen. John Sims Center for the
  Arts’ Work-in-Progress Series, San Francisco, July 22 & 23, 2005; stage production,
  November 4 & 5 and 11 & 12, 2005
  42. “The Immolation.” Orchid: A Literary Review, 1 (2002): 34-43
  43. “Better Homes and Gardens.” Finalist, Story Magazine’s Carson McCullers Prize for the Short
  Story, 1999. Published in Manoa, 14.1 (Summer 2002): 171-180
  44. “Mùa Bão” (Storm Season). Văn Học (Literature), (Jan/Feb 1996): 95-101
  PUBLICATIONS | reviews and encyclopedia entries
  45. Review of Hua Hsu’s A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific, New York
  Times Book Review, July 24, 2016
  46. Review of Christopher Sorrentino’s The Fugitives, New York Times Sunday Book Review, Feb.
  19, 2016
  47. “The Making of Asian America is a Stirring Chronicle Long Overdue,” Los Angeles Times,
  September 3, 2015
  48. “Le Ly Hayslip,” Heath Anthology of American Literature, volume E, Sixth Edition, 2010 •
  solicited
  49. Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory, by Scott Laderman. H-Diplo Roundtable
  Reviews, 11.18 (February 2010): http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/RoundtableXI-22.pdf
  • solicited
  50. “Masticating Adrian Tomine,” American Book Review, 31.1 (November/December 2009),12.
  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_book_review/v031/31.1.nguyen.pdf • solicited
  51. “America Is in the Heart,” The Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature, ed. Guiyou Huang.
  Westport: Greenwood Press, 2009 (29-32 ) • solicited
  52. “Le Ly Hayslip,” The Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature, ed. Guiyou Huang. Westport:
  Greenwood Press, 2009 (356-359) • solicited
  53. “Don Lee,” The Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature, ed. Guiyou Huang. Westport:
  Greenwood Press, 2009 (601-604) • solicited
  54. “Gus Lee,” The Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature, ed. Guiyou Huang. Westport:
  Greenwood Press, 2009 (606-607) • solicited
  55. After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My and My Lai, by Heonik Kwon.
  Journal of Asian American Studies. 10.2 (June 2007): 215-218 • solicited
  56. Urban Triage: Race and the Fictions of Multiculturalism, by James Kyung-jin Lee. Amerasia
  Journal. 32.1 (2006): 136-139
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 11/40
  57. Yellow, by Don Lee. Amerasia Journal. 31.2 (2005): 190-192 • solicited
  58. Watermark: An Anthology of Vietnamese American Prose and Poetry, eds. Barbara Tran,
  Monique T.D. Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi. Journal of Asian American Studies 2.1 (February
  1999): 105-107 • solicited
  59. An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature, ed. King-Kok Cheung. Amerasia
  Journal 24.3 (Winter 1998): 236-239 • solicited
  60. The Cry and the Dedication and On Becoming Filipino, by Carlos Bulosan. A. Magazine,
  Dec/Jan 1995 • solicited
  PUBLICATIONS | Critic-At-Large, Los Angeles Times
  61. “Listen to Radicals, Artists,” November 20, 2016 (November 17 online)
  62. “The Appropriation of Culture,” October 2, 2016 (September 26 online)
  63. “Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Great American Novels: The Woman Warrior and China Men,” June 30,
  2016
  64. “What We Share With Others,” April 3, 2016; reprinted in Alriyadh in Arabic
  PUBLICATIONS | editorials and magazine articles
  65. “Trump’s Story, and Our Own,” New York Times, December 11, 2016; forthcoming reprint in
  Radical Hope, ed. Carolina de Robertis, Vintage
  66. “Kissinger: The View from Vietnam,” The Atlantic, November 27, 2016
  67. “The End of an Empire,” New York Times Opinion Pages, November 9, 2016
  68. “The Other Asians,” Los Angeles Magazine, September 16, 2015
  69. “Embracing Differences,” Library Journal, September 15, 2016
  70. “The Hidden Scars All Refugees Carry,” New York Times Opinion Pages, September 2, 2016;
  translated into Italian, Il Sole 24 Ore, December 4, 2016
  71. “Winning the Pulitzer Changed the Value of My Book and Myself,” The Guardian, July 26, 2016
  72. “The Immigrant’s Fate is Everyone’s,” Time, June 11, 2016
  73. “Bob Kerrey and the ‘American Tragedy’ of Vietam,” New York Times Opinion Pages, June 20,
  2016
  74. “Our Vietnam War Never Ended,” New York Times Sunday Review, April 24 online, April 26
  print, 2015; International New York Times, April 25-26, 2015
  75. “This is My Rifle, This is My Gun,” August 7, 2012, http://diacritics.org/2012/diacriticize-thisis-my-rifle-this-is-my-gun
  reprinted August 8, 2012, by New American Media
  http://newamericamedia.org/2012/08/diacriticize-this-is-my-rifle-this-is-my-gun.php
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 12/40
  76. “Let’s Talk,” damau.org, February 5, 2009, http://damau.org/archives/3852. Translated into
  Vietnamese as “Hãy nói với nhau,” http://damau.org/archives/3848
  77. “About Vietnamese” (“về người viết & ngôn ngữ”), damau.org, September 5, 2007,
  http://damau.org/archives/9192
  78. “The War Cannot Go On,” printed as “A Destructive Obsession,” Orange County Register,
  Sunday June 6, 2004; reprinted online on several sites, including Người Việt (Vietnamese
  People) http://nguoi-viet.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=6744&z=10 and translated in
  Vietnamese, www.giaodiem.com/mluc/mluc_II04/06_vtnguyen.htm
  79. “Don’t Forget Viet Nam,” San Diego Union Tribune, Wednesday November 26, 2003; published
  as “Behind Flag Fight, Deep Pain,” Orange County Register, Sunday, August 17, 2003
  PUBLICATIONS | blogs
  80. “We Still Live in Ralph Ellison’s Moment,” Reader’s Almanac, The Official Blog of the Library of
  America, June 15, 2015
  81. Numerous reviews and commentaries on diaCRITICS, the blog on Vietnamese/diasporic arts,
  literature, and politics that I founded and edit, 2010-
  RADIO | commentaries
  1. “The Quiet American.” Pacific Time, KQED’s Asian American and Pacific Rim affairs radio show,
  nationally syndicated on NPR, December 26, 2002 • solicited
  2. “Affirmative Action for a Diverse Minority.” Pacific Time, December 5, 2002 • solicited
  3. “How to Write an Asian American Bestseller.” Pacific Time, May 3, 2001 • solicited
  4. “You Are What You Eat.” Pacific Time, March 22, 2001 • solicited
  MEDIA | profiles, interviews, appearances
  1. The Rumpus, forthcoming
  2. Jacobin, forthcoming
  3. MELUS, forthcoming
  4. Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, forthcoming
  5. America Magazine, forthcoming
  6. History News Network (Robin Lindley), forthcoming
  7. “Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Latest Work is a Nonfiction Companion to His Pulitzer Prize-Winning
  Novel,” USC Dornsife, January 3, 2017
  8. “Author Viet Thanh Nguyen and How Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Changed His Life,”
  Orange Coast Magazine, December 27, 2016
  9. “Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer,” Pen and Place, Audible.com, 2016
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 13/40
  10. “Jesteśmy bohaterami cudzych opowieści - wywiad z Viet Thanh Nguyenem,” Wirtualna Polska,
  December 23, 2016
  11. “On the Limitations of Memory and the Persistence of War, This is Hell!, December 21, 2016
  12. “Un Vietcong a Los Angeles,” Left (Italian), December 17, 2016
  13. “In Country,” Mother Jones, January/February 2017
  14. The Charlie Rose Show, December 6, 2016
  15. “Vietnam Stories: Writing the ‘Dismembered’ Histories of War,” California Magazine, Winter
  2016
  16. "Non fidatevi di Coppola, il vero Vietnam lo racconto io," La Repubblica, November 30, 2016
  17. “Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen Pulls Back the Mask,” Newsweek, 11/20/2016
  18. “Innego Należy Uciszyć [The Other Has to be Silenced],” Dwutygodnik.com, November 17, 2016
  19. “Would You Like Some Pho with Your ‘Murderous Rage’?” Fiction Advocate, November 17, ,2016
  20. “National Book Award finalist Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks out on war, capitalism and Donald
  Trump,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2016
  21. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, National Book Foundation, November 13,
  2016
  22. “Il doppio gioco di Nguyen,” Alias, November 13, 2016
  23. “Inna Wojna w Wietnamie,” Polish Newsweek, October 2016
  24. “Laureat Nagrody Pulitzera i jego ‘Sympatyk’,” Polish Radio, October 10, 2016
  25. VietLife, Summer 2016
  26. Writers & Company, CBC (Canada), October 2, 2016
  27. USC Trojan Family Magazine, Autumn 2016
  28. World Policy Journal, v. 33, no. 3, Fall 2016
  29. Asia Research Institute Newsletter, No. 38, September 20, 2016
  30. World Literature Today, vol. 90, no. 5, September 2016
  31. The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, August 15, 2016
  32. Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, Sydney, Australia, August 4, 2016
  33. “Celebrating the Carnegie Medals,” Dewey Decibel Podcast of the American Library Association,
  June 24, 2016
  34. Otherppl.com, Episode 419 with Brad Listi, June 22, 2016
  35. “For Viet Thanh Nguyen, Author of The Sympathizer, A Pulitzer But No Peace,” New York
  Times, June 21, 2016
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 14/40
  36. Radio Wolinsky, KPFA, June 21, 2016
  37. Booklist, Carnegie Medal Interview, June 15, 2016
  38. “If You Build It,” The Writer, June 2016
  39. “Pulitzer-Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen on the United States, Vietnam, and Why History Can’t Be
  Erased,” Asia Blog, Asia Society, May 27, 2016
  40. Santa Cruz Sentinel, May 25, 2016
  41. “An Interview with Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on His Hopes for U.S.-Vietnam Relations,” The
  White House, May 25, 2016
  42. “Reckoning with the Vietnam War,” The Takeaway, PRI and WNYC, May 24, 2016
  43. “Author Viet Thanh Nguyen Discusses 'The Sympathizer' And His Escape From Vietnam,” Fresh
  Air, NPR, May 17, 2016
  44. The Daily Californian, May 12, 2016
  45. “Viet Thanh Nguyen on Hiding in Plain Sight,” MPR News, May 9, 2016
  46. Psychology Today, May 7, 2016
  47. BBC World News, April 19, 2016
  48. “An Affirmation of Collectivity,” Sunstruck, April 17, 2016
  49. Panelist, “Past to Present: Echoes of War,” Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, C-Span, April
  9, 2016
  50. “The Vietnam War, the American War,” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 9, 2016
  51. The Tavis Smiley Show (television) and radio podcast, April 7, 2016
  52. Book View Now, April 2, 2016
  53. “Interview with the Finalists of 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction,” April 2,
  2016
  54. ALOUD Spring Preview: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Library Foundation of Los Angeles, Spring 2016
  55. “Viet Thanh Nguyen reconciles childhood memories, history,” The Daily Progress,
  March 17, 2016
  56. “Growing Up in America,” Culture Magazin, January and February 2016: 36-42
  57. The Wheeler Column, UC Berkeley English Department, December 10, 2015
  58. Books and Arts, ABC Radio National, Melbourne, Australia, December 10, 2015
  59. Saigon Broadcast Television Network (SBTN), November 25, 2015
  60. Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, Sydney, Australia, August 27, 2015
  61. “For Readers, Writing is a Process of ‘Emotional Osmosis,’” The Atlantic, July 7, 2015
  62. “A Different Kind of War Novel—Talking to Viet Thanh Nguyen, Author of The Sympathizer,
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 15/40
  Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review, June 30, 2015
  63. “Viet Thanh Nguyen: Anger in the Asian American Novel,” The Margins, Asian American
  Writers Workshop, June 29, 2015
  64. “The Rumpus Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” The Rumpus, June 5, 2015
  65. “The Sympathizer: Vietnamese Spy Encounters America,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3,
  2015
  66. The Mixed Experience Podcast, June 1, 2015
  67. Washington Post Book Club Interview with Book World editor Ron Charles, May 25, 2015
  68. “Viet Thanh Nguyen Offers No Sympathy In Debut Novel,” National Post, May 19, 2015
  69. “‘The Sympathizer’: A Very Different Look at the Vietnam War,” Minnesota Public Radio, May
  7, 2015
  70. “The Sympathizer: A Fresh Look at the Vietnam War,” The Kojo Nnamdi Show, WAMU,
  Washington, DC, May 6, 2015
  71. “Escaping the Vietnam War, But Getting Close to the Enemy,” The Leonard Lopate Show,
  WNYC, New York City, May 5, 2015
  72. “Taking Revenge Against Coppola’s Apocalypse Now,” To the Best of Our Knowledge, NPR,
  May 3, 2015
  73. “On the Lost Art of the Comic War Novel,” with novelist David Abrams, Lit Hub, April 30, 2015
  74. “40 Years After Fall of Saigon, Vietnamese-American Writers Share Stories of War,
  Emigration,” KQED Forum, April 30, 2015
  75. “An Act of Justice: An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” The Writers’ Block of the Loft
  Literary Center, April 30, 2015
  76. “Looking at the Vietnam War’s Aftermath through the Eyes of a Communist Spy,” PRI’s The
  World, April 30, 2015
  77. BBC interview, April 29, 2015
  78. “The Heat Discusses the Vietnam War,” The Heat, CCTV America, April 29, 2015 (YouTube
  link)
  79. “Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer,” Between the Covers, KBOO, Portland, April 29, 2015
  80. “How the Vietnam War Resonates 40 Years After the Fall of Saigon,” On Point, WBUR, April 29,
  2015
  81. “Five Questions with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Abandon All Despair Ye Who Enter Here, the City
  Lights Booksellers and Publishers Blog, April 22, 2015
  82. “Q&A with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Deborah Kalb Books and Haunting Legacy, April 17, 2015
  83. “Remembering Vietnam in Fiction and in Fact,” 4 O’Clock Report with Jon Wiener, KPFK, Los
  Angeles, April 15, 2015
  84. “The Sympathizer Offers Fresh Look at Vietnam War,” Press Play, KCRW, Los Angeles April 14,
  2015
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 16/40
  85. “Voices from Vietnam,” USC Dornsife College News, April 14, 2015
  86. “A Dark, Funny—and Vietnamese—Look at the War,” All Things Considered, NPR, April 11,
  2015
  87. “Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Author of The Sympathizer,” Hyphen Magazine, April 10,
  2015
  88. “Viet Thanh Nguyen Tackles War’s Aftermath in The Sympathizer,” Los Angeles Times, April
  10, 2015
  89. “Viet Thanh Nguyen: The TNB Self-Interview,” The Nervous Breakdown, April 9, 2015
  90. “Debut Author Snapshot: Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Goodreads, April 2015
  91. “Q&A with Viet Thanh Nguyen,” Bloom, April 8, 2015; reprinted in Our Own Voice, September
  2015
  92. “An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Debut Author of The Sympathizer,” Omnivoracious:
  The Amazon Book Review, April 7, 2015
  93. “Cemetery Honors Vietnamese Who Fought Alongside U.S. Troops,” New American Media,
  Sept. 16, 2014
  94. Interview in Vietnamese in Vien Dong Daily News. Part 1 and Part 2
  English translations: Part 1 and Part 2
  95. “Remembering the ‘American War’ of the ’60s,” Harvard University Gazette, April 23, 2009.
  96. “Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ronald Stade Interview,” July 18, 2007, Center for the Study of
  Peace and Reconciliation, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan.
  97. “The Career of Education,” Nhà Magazine, Sept/Oct 2006: 28-32.
  98. “Saigon in the Springtime,” USC College Magazine, Fall 2004.
  AWARDS | research & writing fellowships
  1. Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow, UC Irvine, January 2017
  2. Visiting Senior Research Fellowship, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore,
  2014
  3. American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2011-2012
  4. Luce Foundation Fellow, Asian Cultural Council, 2010
  5. James Irvine Foundation Honorary Fellowship, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside,
  CA, 2009
  6. Suzanne Young Murray Fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard, 2008-2009
  7. Tuition Fellowship, Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute, 2008
  8. Fiction Fellow, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, 2004-2005
  9. Faculty Fellow, Institute for Multimedia Literacy, Annenberg Center, USC, 2001-2003
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 17/40
  10. Mellon Foundation Fellow, The Huntington Library, 1997
  11. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, UC Berkeley, 1996-1997
  12. University Predoctoral Minority Fellowship, UC Berkeley, 1995-1996, 1992-1994
  AWARDS | external grants
  13. Luce Foundation ($200,000) for the Center for Transpacific Studies, co-PI with Janet Hoskins,
  2011-2016
  14. Grant for Artistic Innovation, Investing in Artists Program, Center for Cultural Innovation
  ($10,000), http://www.cciarts.org/, 2011-2012
  15. Arts Writers Grant ($20,000), Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation, 2009-2010
  16. Delegate of the U.S. American Studies Association to the Japanese Association for American
  Studies (lecture tour sponsored by the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, $7300),
  June 2007
  17. Visible Knowledge Project Grant (lead investigator, research into teaching with multimedia,
  $75,000), http://cndls.georgetown.edu/about/grants/vkp/
  Georgetown/USC, 2000-2005
  AWARDS | internal grants
  18. Transpacific Studies Research Cluster Grant (with Janet Hoskins, Saori Katada, and Carol
  Wise, $5000), Center for International Studies, 2013
  19. Center for International Studies Faculty Research Grant ($4000), USC, 2011-2012
  20. Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant (for Inside/Out, an Asian Pacific/Diasporic writers event),
  with Sumi Pendakur and Sunyoung Lee ($14,000), USC, 2011-2012
  21. Transpacific Connections Research Cluster Grant (with Janet Hoskins, $5,000), Center for
  International Studies, USC, 2010-2011
  22. Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant (for State of the Word, an Asian American spoken word
  performance event), with Professor Jane Iwamura and Sumun Pendakur, ($11,000), USC,
  2010-2011
  23. Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching ($5,000), Center for Excellence in Teaching,
  USC, 2010-2011, to develop anotherwarmemorial.com
  24. Transpacific Connections Research Cluster Grant (with Janet Hoskins, $2,500), Center for
  International Studies, USC, 2009-2010
  25. James H. Zumberge Interdisciplinary Research Grant (for development of Center for
  Transpacific Studies, http://dornsife.usc.edu/transpacific-studies, co-principal investigator with
  Janet Hoskins, principal investigator, $40,000), USC, 2009-2010
  26. Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant (for forum/film screening on Dreaming of Peace:
  Vietnamese Filmmakers Move from War to Reconciliation), with Professor Janet Hoskins,
  ($13,000), USC, 2009-2010
  27. Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant ($18,600), USC, 2008-
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 18/40
  2009
  28. Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant (for speaker series with Professor Jane Iwamura,
  $18,000), USC, 2006-2007
  29. James H. Zumberge Research Grant ($25,000), USC, 1999-2000
  30. College Faculty Development Grant ($3500), USC, 2009-2010, 2013-2014, 2015-2016
  31. College Faculty Development Grant ($2500/year), USC, 1997-2009, 2010-2013
  AWARDS | fiction prizes, honors & residencies
  32. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2016
  33. Edgar Award for Best First Novel, Mystery Writers of America, 2016
  34. Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, 2016
  35. First Novel Prize, Center for Fiction, 2015
  36. Gold Medal, First Fiction, California Book Awards, 2016
  37. Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction, Asian Pacific American Librarians
  Association, 2016
  38. Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award, USC, 2016
  39. PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction Finalist, 2016
  40. Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, 2016
  41. Finalist, LA Times Book Prize, Mystery/Thriller
  42. Finalist for the 2016 Medici Book Club Prize
  43. Finalist for the 2016 ABA Indies Choice/E.B. White Read-Aloud Award (Book of the Year, Adult
  Fiction)
  44. Runner up, James Jones First Novel Fellowship, 2012
  45. Third Place, Winter 2011 Fiction Contest, Narrative Magazine
  46. Finalist, Nelson Algren Award, Chicago Tribune, 2010
  47. Alan Collins Scholar, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Middlebury, VT, August 2008
  48. Residency, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, CA, April-May 2008
  49. Fiction Prize, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, 2007
  50. Selection, Best New American Voices 2007
  51. Finalist, Story Magazine’s Carson McCullers Prize for the Short Story, 1999
  52. Shrout Short Story Award, UC Berkeley, 1997
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 19/40
  53. Elizabeth Mills Crothers Prize in Literary Composition, UC Berkeley, 1996
  AWARDS | teaching, research, service & academic
  54. Miriam Matthews Award (for important contributions to knowledge of Los Angeles's racial and
  ethnic past), Los Angeles County Historical Society, 2016
  55. Professor of Color Recognition Award, Asian Pacific American Student Assembly and Academic
  Culture Assembly of USC Undergraduate Student Government’s Program Board, 2015
  56. Provost’s Prize for Teaching with Technology (for anotherwarmemorial.com), USC, 2013
  57. Mellon Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students, USC, 2011
  58. Teaching Has No Boundaries Award, USC, 2006
  59. Albert S. Raubenheimer Distinguished Junior Faculty Award for
  outstanding research, teaching and service, USC, 2001-2002
  60. General Education Teaching Award, USC, 2000
  61. Resident Faculty of the Year, Office of Residential and Greek Life, USC, 2000
  62. Gamma Sigma Alpha Professor of the Year, USC, 1999
  63. Phi Beta Kappa, UC Berkeley, 1992
  PRESENTATIONS | keynotes, plenaries, seminars, distinguished lectures
  1. “Creative Criticism, or Writing as an Other,” 2nd annual Judith L. Ladinsky Lecture, Center for
  Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 21, 2016
  2. Keynote, “Justice, Law, and Storytelling,” National Conference of Vietnamese American
  Attorneys, San Jose, CA, October 16, 2016
  3. Speaker, United Nations Refugee Agency, World Refugee Day, New York Public Library, June
  20, 2016
  4. Keynote, “Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field,” Conference on Democracy and
  Difference in the Pacific Century, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany, July 7, 2015
  5. Keynote, “Ethics of the Inhuman,” Association for Graduate Students in English Conference,
  California State University, Northridge, March 14, 2015
  6. Keynote, “War, Memory, Identity,” SEA Legacies: 40 Years of Southeast Asian Diasporas
  Conference, California State University, Fullerton, March 6, 2015
  7. Plenary on Asian American Studies’ Engagement with Publics, Association of Asian American
  Studies Conference, San Francisco, April 17, 2014
  8. Seminar, "Constructing Conversations: Between Asian American Studies and Transpacific
  Studies,” Seijo University, Tokyo, Japan, March 19, 2013
  9. Seminar, “Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance,” Nagoya University, Japan,
  March 17, 2013
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 20/40
  10. Keynote, “Transpacific Studies: Interventions and Intersections,” Conference on Race and
  Ethnicity in American Literature and Culture: A Reconsideration, Nagoya University, Japan,
  March 16, 2013
  11. Plenary, “Toward a Model of Transpacific Studies,” Transnational American Studies as Theory
  and Praxis: Chinese and American Perspectives, Tsinghua University, June 7-9, 2012
  12. Mega-session Speaker, “Southeast Asians in the United States, the United States in Southeast
  Asia: Notes on Field and Method,” Association for Asian American Studies Conference, Austin,
  TX, April 9, 2010
  13. Keynote, “Impossible to Forget, Difficult to Remember: The American War in Viet Nam,”
  Comparative Literature Symposium on War, Empire, and Culture, Texas Tech, April 11, 2008
  14. Plenary, “Memories of the Bad War: Viet Nam in the American Imagination,” Center for Black
  Studies’ Multiethnic Alliances conference, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 13,
  2006. Available from UC Santa Barbara Instructional Resources on the DVD Multiethnic
  Alliances: A Conversation for the 21st Century, UCTV-4343.F.
  http://www.uctv.ucsb.edu/2006/voices/4343multiethnic.html
  PRESENTATIONS | academic invited talks & comments
  15. “Beyond Victims and Voices: On Writing as a Radical Act,” University of California, Berkeley,
  October 28, 2016
  16. Panelist, “Teaching the Vietnam War,” Workshop for High School Teachers, University of
  Wisconsin, Madison, October 22, 2016
  17. Panelist, “Nothing Ever Dies: Remembering the Vietnam War,” Jaipur Literary Festival,
  Boulder, CO, September 24, 2016
  18. Panelist, “War by Other Means,” Jaipur Literary Festival, Boulder, CO, September 24, 2016
  19. “Writing as an Other,” Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, USC, September 23, 2016
  20. “On Remembering Others: Vietnam and the Memory of War,” Princeton University, September
  19, 2016
  21. “Community,” Polymath Academy, USC, September 13, 2016
  22. Panelist, “Refugees in America,” Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA, August
  6, 2016
  23. Panelist, “(Un)settled: Migration, Integration, and the American Future,” USC Trustees
  Conference, April 3, 2016
  24. “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War,” University of Virginia, March 21, 2016
  25. “Refugees, Immigrants, and Asian America,” Asian Pacific American Lecture Series, USC,
  March 9, 2016
  26. Panelist, “Re-Collecting the Vietnam War,” A/P/A Institute, NYU, November 11, 2015
  27. Panelist, “ReclaimED: Why We Need Ethnic Studies,” EdMonth, University of Southern
  California, November 3, 2015
  28. Panelist, “The Big Idea,” Vancouver Writers Fest, Canada, October 23, 2015
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 21/40
  29. Panelist, “Writing Country,” Vancouver Writers Fest, Canada, October 23, 2015
  30. Panelist, “Twisting History into Fiction,” Texas Book Festival, Austin, October 17, 2015
  31. Panelist, “Cultural Diplomacy: What Next?”, USC Center for Public Diplomacy Forum on Global
  Leadership in Public Diplomacy, Washington, DC, October 14, 2015
  32. Panelist, “Isolate or Engage: Adversarial States, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Public Diplomacy,”
  USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Los Angeles, CA, September 9, 2015
  33. Panelist, “Creating (in) California,” USC Libraries Conference on California—Past, Present,
  Future: Imagining, Innovating, Sustainability, Los Angeles, CA August 27, 2015
  34. Panelist, “Lacuna: Writing from the Gaps,” sponsored by SF Arts Commission, Asian / Pacific
  American Librarians Association (APALA) and Lacuna Giving Circle, San Francisco, June 27,
  2015
  35. Panelist, “The Future of Vietnamese American Literature,” Bay Area Book Festival, June 7,
  2015
  36. Roundtable, “Keywords for (Asian) (American) Cultural Studies: Community, Empire, and
  Memory,” Cultural Studies Association Conference, Riverside, California, May 23, 2015
  37. Writing Workshop, The Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis, May 18, 2015
  38. Writing Workshop, Austin Public Library, Austin, Texas, April 25, 2015
  39. Panelist, “Fiction: Shifting Cultures,” Los Angeles Times Book Festival, April 18th, 2015
  40. “Ethics of the Inhuman,” American Studies and Ethnicity Conversations in Decolonial
  Knowledge Circuits, USC, March 28th, 2015
  41. Panelist, Vincent Who? Film Screening and Discussion, Asian American and Pacific Islander
  Initiative for Teach for America, USC, November 11, 2014
  42. “War, Memory, Identity,” Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, August 12,
  2014; audio link
  43. “In the Beginning,” Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, July 15, 2014
  44. “Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance,” Citrus College, Glendora, California, May
  14, 2014
  45. Dialogue with Paisley Rekdal, Transpacific Mixed-Race Literatures: A Reading and Dialogue,
  University of Southern California, April 6, 2014
  46. Dialogue with author Karl Marlantes, “Narrating War” Conference at the House of World
  Culture, Berlin, February 22, 2014
  47. “War, Memory and the Contemporary,” American Comparative Literature Association
  Conference, Toronto, Canada, April 6, 2013
  48. “Transpacific Studies: Interventions and Intersections,” Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan,
  March 26, 2013
  49. “An Other War Memorial,” Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching, USC, January 24,
  2013
  50. “Viet Nam,” Workshop for the Routledge Companion for Asian American and Pacific Islander
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 22/40
  Literature and Culture, UCLA, December 12, 2012
  51. “Refugee Memories and Asian American Critique,” International Conference on Asian American
  Expressive Culture, Chinese American Literature Research Center, Beijing Foreign Studies
  University, June 9-10, 2012
  52. “Just Memory: War and the Ethics of Remembrance,” Oceanic Archives and Transnational
  American Studies Symposium, University of Hong Kong, June 4-6, 2012
  53. “Just Memories: The Afterlife of War,” (Re)collections: Trauma, Collective Memory, and the
  Archive, University of Southern California, February 11, 2012
  54. “War, Justice, and Asian American Critique,” Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, November 21,
  2011
  55. “War and Cultural Studies: Korean Memories of Viet Nam,” Plenary Speaker, English Language
  and Literature Association of Korea, Onyang, Korea, November 18, 2011
  56. Panelist, “Cultural Studies and Its Discontents: Reconsidering Cultural Studies for the TwentyFirst
  Century,” English Language and Literature Association of Korea, Onyang, Korea,
  November 17, 2011
  57. “Just Memory: The Afterlife of War,” University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, October 28,
  2011
  58. Panelist and moderator on the panel “Publishing as a Writer of Color,” Los Angeles Times
  Festival of Books, Los Angeles, CA, May 1, 2011
  59. “The New (Not So Asian) American Writers,” Post45 Conference at the Rock and Roll Hall of
  Fame, Cleveland, OH, April 30, 2011
  60. “Remembering the American War in Viet Nam,” Department of Foreign Languages and
  Literatures, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, June 7, 2010
  61. “Transpacific Crossings: Intersections of Area Studies, Asian Studies, and Asian American
  Studies,” Asian American Studies in Asia: An International Workshop, Institute of European
  and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, June 4, 2010
  62. “An Eye for an Eye: Art, Memory, and the American War in Viet Nam,” Department of Foreign
  Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2010
  63. Roundtable Participant, Acts of Elaboration: A Symposium on Asian American Studies in the
  Northeast, Boston College, Boston, May 30, 2009
  64. “How Do We Tell and Read (Asian American) Stories?” University of Hannover, Germany, May
  5, 2009
  65. “Remembering the American War in Viet Nam,” Harvard University, April 15, 2009
  66. “Asian Diasporas in the United States: On Exiles, Refugees, Transnationals, and Flexible
  Citizens,” At Home Abroad: Diasporas and Homelands Comparative Perspectives Workshop,
  Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, March 1, 2009
  67. “Popular Culture and the Art of War,” TransPOP Symposium, University of California, Berkeley,
  February 14, 2009
  68. “American Studies in an International Frame,” American Literature Colloquium, Harvard
  University, February 11, 2009
  NGUYEN • curriculum vitae, 1/4/2016 23/40
  69. Speaker, Asian Pacific American Student Assembly forum on Identity, Diversity and Fair
  Representation? A Closer Look at Student Exclusion and the VKC Vietnamese Flags, USC, April
  21, 2008
  70. Roundtable participant, Southeast Asians in the Diaspora Conference, University of Illinois,
  Urbana-Champaign, April 16, 2008
  71. “The Authenticity of the Anonymous,” at transPOP: Korea Vietnam Remix, Arko Art Center,
  Seoul, South Korea, January 18, 2008
  72. “On the Dead’s Own Terms: Dinh Q. Lê’s Secondhand Memories,” at the I/M/Migration
  Conference, Loyola Marymount University, October 30, 2007
  73. “The Uses of Cosmopolitanism: On War, Empathy, and Narrative,” at the Multicultural
  Narratives and Narrative Theory conference, Ohio State University, October 25-27, 2007
  74. Speaker, Asian Pacific American Student Assembly and Women’s Student Assembly Event on
  Asian American Women, USC, September 27, 2007
  75. “The Art of Dinh Q. Lê,” Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA, September 9, 2007
  76. “A Correct Life,” Visions and Voices New Student Orientation, University of Southern
  California, July 19, 2007
  77. “Speaking for the Dead: Viet Nam, the United States, and Memorialization,” at the Center for
  Pacific and American Studies, the University of Tokyo, June 19, 2007
  78. “Speaking for the Dead: Viet Nam, the United States, and Memorialization,” inaugural lecture
  at the Center for the Study of Peace and Reconciliation, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, June
  18, 2007. Audio available online at http://cspr.soc.hit-u.ac.jp/audio
  79. “Race and Resistance: On Asian American Cultural Politics,” Kansai University, Osaka, June 14,
  2007
  80. Panelist, Roundtable on “Is American Studies a Discipline?” at the Graduate School of
  American Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, June 12, 2007
  81. “Memories of the Bad War: Ethnicity and Empathy in Viet Nam,” Japanese Association of
  American Studies conference, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, June 9, 2007
  82. Panelist, What Time Is It: Cultural Production and the L.A. Riots, NYU, April 25, 2007
  83. “Not Like Going Home: On Ambivalent Returns to the Source,” Look East Symposium,
  University of Southern California, April 20, 2007
  84. “Little Shop of Horrors: Harrell Fletcher and the War Remnants Museum,” at LA>

Viet Thanh Nguyen
Born: March 13, 1971 in Buon Me Thuot, Vietnam
Other Names : Nguyen Thanh Viet
Nationality: American
Occupation: College teacher
Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2017. From Literature Resource Center.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2017 Gale, Cengage Learning
Updated:Jan. 9, 2017

Table of Contents

Listen
PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Last name is pronounced "Win"; born 1971, in Ban Me Thuot (later spelled Buon Me Thuot), Vietnam; immigrated to the United States, 1975; son of Joseph Thanh and Linda Kim Nguyen; married Lan Duong; children: Ellison. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A. (English), 1992, B.A. (ethnic studies), 1992, Ph.D., 1997. Addresses: Office: University of Southern California, Department of English, Taper Hall of Humanities 404, 3501 Trousdale Pkwy., Los Angeles, CA 90089-0354. E-mail: vnguyen@usc.edu.

CAREER:
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, assistant professor, 1997-2003, associate professor, 2003--.

AWARDS:
Recipient of grants from Luce Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, James Irvine Foundation, Huntington Library, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Creative Capital, and Warhol Foundation; fellow, Fine Arts Work Center, 2004-05; fellow, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2008-09; fellow, American Council of Learned Societies, 2011-12; Carnegie Medal for excellence in fiction, Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and Best First Novel by an American Author, Edgar Allan Poe Awards, all 2016, all for The Sympathizer; Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the Fiction Category, 2016, for The Sympathizer. Also Mellon Mentoring Award; Albert S. Raumbenheimer Distinguished Junior Faculty Award; General Education Teaching Award; Resident Faculty of the Year Award.

WORKS:

WRITINGS:

Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.
(Editor, with Janet Hoskins) Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field, University Press of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), 2014.
The Sympathizer (novel), Grove Press (New York, NY), 2015.
Contributor to journals and periodicals, including PMLA, American Literary History, Western American Literature, New Centennial Review, Postmodern Culture, Japanese Journal of American Studies, Asian American Studies after Critical Mass, Manoa, TriQuarterly, Gulf Coast, and Narrate Magazine. Short fiction included in anthology Best New American Voices, 2007.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS:
Works have been translated into Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Spanish.

Sidelights

Growing up in California, where his parents had fled from war-torn Vietnam in 1975, Viet Thanh Nguyen absorbed themes and images from popular culture that he went on to challenge as a writer. Movies such as Rambo, Platoon, and Apocalypse Now, he explained in an All Things Considered interview on National Public Radio, traumatized him as a youth: as an American, he could identify with Hollywood soldier-heroes, but he also identified with the Vietnamese who were being killed. Nguyen became avid student of the history of the Vietnam war since about age twelve, and much of his work as an academic and a fiction writer explores issues of war and memory, multiculturalism, diaspora culture, critical analyses of the Vietnam war.

Nguyen's first novel, The Sympathizer, earned the author comparisons to writers such as Joseph Conrad, John le Carré and Graham Greene. The book tells the story of an unnamed protagonist and narrator, the son of a French priest and a Vietnamese mother, who becomes embroiled in the dark politics of the Vietnam war. He describes himself, as the novel begins, as "a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces," never to be entirely trusted. The character, known as the Captain, serves as a top aide to a brusque South Vietnamese army general who escapes Saigon in the American airlift in 1975. But the Captain is also spying for the other side, and after following the general to the United States, he is charged with keeping tabs on the restive exile community there that is plotting with the general to launch a counter rebellion against the North Vietnamese. The Captain has begun his involvement with good intentions; as the book's title indicates, he is a man who can see others' viewpoints and can sympathize with their goals. But out of self-preservation, he ends up incriminating comrades, eventually realizing that in betraying others he has betrayed his own values and rendered them meaningless.

"I wanted to write a novel that was going to be a direct confrontation with politics, history, the war and also I wanted to write a novel that would be entertaining," Nguyen told Rumpus Web site interviewer Alex Dueben. "I figured a spy would allow me to do all those kinds of things." Indeed, many reviewers noted the book's humor as well as its dark and troubling themes. A writer for Kirkus Reviews, for example, found the novel "both chilling and funny"; Library Journal reviewer Reba Leiding similarly described The Sympathizer as a "breathtakingly cynical" book that has "its hilarious moments." Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jessica Gelt commented that the book "reads as part literary historical fiction, part espionage thriller and part satire."

Categorizing the novel as a "tragicomic" work, New York Times Book Review contributor Philip Caputo observed that The Sympathizer "reaches beyond its historical context to illuminate more universal themes: the eternal misconceptions and misunderstandings between East and West, and the moral dilemma faced by people forced to choose not between right and wrong, but right and right." The book "deals with some horrible things and I wanted to show those things in as unvarnished a way as I could, without giving the reader the benefit of sentimentality or editorial comments on the immorality on what the reader has been witnessing," said Nguyen in the Rumpus Web site interview. The Sympathizer is "certainly a novel about the Vietnam War, but I always intended it as a novel about power, abuse, authority, and how everybody--on all sides of all factions--are capable of doing these things. We like to deny that we are capable of doing those things but that our enemies can, and so the novel takes a side. The novel takes the side of justice, but in so doing, it recognizes that everybody is committing injustice in the name of these revolutionary and democratic struggles."

FURTHER READINGS:

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

BOOKS

Nguyen, Viet Thanh, The Sympathizer, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2015.
PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2015, Bryce Christensen, review of The Sympathizer, p. 38.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2015, review of The Sympathizer.
Library Journal, February 15, 2015, Reba Leiding, review of The Sympathizer, p. 91.
Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2015, Jessica Gelt, "Viet Thanh Nguyen Tackles Vietnam War's Aftermath in The Sympathizer."
National Post (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), May 19, 2015, Mike Doherty, review of The Sympathizer.
New York Times Book Review, April 5, 2015, Philip Caputo, review of The Sympathizer.
Publishers Weekly, January 12, 2015, review of The Sympathizer, p. 34.
ONLINE

Book Forum, http://www.bookforum.com/ (July 16, 2015), Lisa Locascio, review of The Sympathizer.
National Public Radio Web site, http://www.npr.org/ (July 16, 2015), All Things Considered, review of The Sympathizer.
Reader's Almanac: The Official Blog of the Library of America, http://blog.loa.org/ (July 16, 2015), Viet Thanh Nguyen, "We Still Live in Ralph Ellison's Moment."
Rumpus, http://therumpus.net/ (July 16, 2015), Alex Dueben, interview with Nguyen.
University of Southern California, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Science Web site, https://dornsife.usc.edu/ (July 16, 2015), Nguyen faculty profile.
Viet Thanh Nguyen Home Page, http://vietnguyen.info (July 16, 2015).*

QUOTED: "The story "Warriors" about the child of refugee shopkeepers and what happens to that family, that is drawn very much from my life and the lives of my parents. And it was a very difficult story to write because I think my parents' lives are worthy of writing about. I don't think my life is particularly worthy of writing about."

'The Refugees' Author Says We Should All Know What It Is To Be An Outsider
All Things Considered. 2017. From Literature Resource Center.
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BYLINE: ARI SHAPIRO

HOST: KELLY MCEVERS

KELLY MCEVERS: When Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen was 4 years old, he and his family came to the U.S. from Vietnam as refugees. His latest book of fiction is a collection of short stories called "The Refugees." Our co-host Ari Shapiro talked to him about the book and the refugee experience.

ARI SHAPIRO: When Viet Thanh Nguyen came into our studios, President Trump had not yet issued his executive order restricting refugee admissions. I asked Nguyen about the similarities between the experiences of today's refugees and his family's arrival a generation ago.

VIET THANH NGUYEN: Every new refugee to a society, whether it's the United States or some other place, is subjected to fear. They are the new outsider population, the new other. And people of all backgrounds have a short memory. So when it comes to the Vietnamese, Americans now tend to think of the Vietnamese as being a particularly successful minority or refugee population that's assimilated fairly well.

They forget that 40, 50 years ago, Americans - the majority of Americans did not want to accept these Vietnamese refugees who they saw as completely foreign. Now there are new foreigners - Syrians and other people from the Middle East, people of Muslim backgrounds. And the sense among many Americans is, well, these people are completely different from us, and they're not like the Vietnamese who are much more assimilable. And I think that's very, very doubtful. I think that the majority of these new foreigners, if given the opportunity, will be able to assimilate and deal with American culture. And right now we are subject to a new kind of xenophobia that prevents us from seeing that.

SHAPIRO: Many of the characters in this book have double lives in one way or another. I mean, maybe they're carrying on an affair, maybe they work two jobs. And in a way it felt to me like versions of the two lives that every refugee contains inside of them before and after they leave their homeland.

NGUYEN: And I think that's true. There's that sense of a duplicity, a sense that there's something happening within the community - the ethnic community, and there's - within the family home. And there's a different life that's being lived outside among Americans. You have to wear a different face when you're interacting with the larger culture. And you can be more of yourself at home or in the local market or in the local church speaking your own language. That was my sense growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in San Jose.

SHAPIRO: Your writing is so obviously informed by your life experience. Is there a reason that you chose fiction rather than, say, memoir?

NGUYEN: Well, I've tried memoir. I mean, I think there's one short story in "The Refugees" that's based on my family's life. And it's the only piece I'd written up until that point that incorporated anything autobiographical.

SHAPIRO: I don't think that was clearly flagged as such in the book. I wasn't aware as I read it that one of these was...

NGUYEN: Oh, yeah. I don't tell people. You know, it's not in the book that says this is my life. But the story "Warriors" about the child of refugee shopkeepers and what happens to that family, that is drawn very much from my life and the lives of my parents. And it was a very difficult story to write because I think my parents' lives are worthy of writing about. I don't think my life is particularly worthy of writing about.

SHAPIRO: I'm looking back at this story - "The Warriors" - through different eyes now. And it's sort of about the way politics from the home country follows immigrants to the new country. It's pretty dark.

NGUYEN: It is a dark story. And that was pretty much what it was like to be a Vietnamese refugee in San Jose in the 1980s, that the politics of the war was not done. The war was not finished. People might like to think a war is done when a cease fire is signed, but for most people who lived through a war it goes on for decades. And in the 1980s, the struggle in the Vietnamese refugee community was still very much over the fact that people thought the war could still be fought again.

People were suspicious of the possibility of communist infiltrators. And that meant that there was a lot of fear in this community, that your neighbor might be a communist and you better not be seen as a communist. And on top of that, again, people were just trying to build their lives. And yet they were still struggling under the shadow of trauma and the legacy of violence that they brought over with them.

SHAPIRO: You write in the acknowledgements that your son will be about the age you were when you came over by the time this book is published. Do you think about how different his experience of America will be from yours?

NGUYEN: All the time. (Laughter) I came over when I was 4. I mean, my - basically my journey into - my initiation into memory, into consciousness happened in the refugee camp in the United States in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. So I'm very much defined by this refugee experience of this sense of loss, of losing a country, of being separated from my parents once I came to the United States and living a life that I felt to be a life of privation, even though my parents provided so many material things.

And I look at my son. And he has pretty much everything he could possibly ask for and want for. And I don't want - wish to deny him those kinds of things, but that means that he will have a vastly different sense of security, of place of identity than I had when I was his age.

SHAPIRO: And do you think that's an unquestionably good thing, or is there something about the sense of not belonging 100 percent - of being something of an outsider - that you think is valuable, that you wish your son would have?

NGUYEN: Oh, I think it is a very valuable experience. And I wish not only my son but everybody had a sense of what it is like to be an outsider, to be an other. Because that is partly what gives rise to compassion and to empathy, the sense that you are not always at the center of the universe. But how to attain a sense of otherness, of compassion and of empathy without having to live a difficult life is something that I don't know how to provide any answer for.

SHAPIRO: Viet Thanh Nguyen's new collection of short stories is called "The Refugees." Thank you so much for talking with us.

NGUYEN: It was my pleasure.

(SOUNDBITE OF TYCHO SONG, "DYE")

Viet Thanh Nguyen
The New York Times Book Review. (Feb. 5, 2017): Arts and Entertainment: p6(L). From Literature Resource Center.
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The author, most recently, of ''The Refugees'' says the Star Wars stories are relevant to our age, ''where most people identify with the rebels but so many in fact are complicit with the Empire.''

What books are currently on your night stand?

You mean my leaning pile of guilt? If a book is on my night stand, it means I haven't read it and feel like I should. I'm too embarrassed to name them, as some are written by people I know. As for the books that have come off my night stand recently, they are all forthcoming. Here are some books worthy of reading in 2017: Thi Bui's ''The Best We Could Do''; Charmaine Craig's ''Miss Burma''; Don Lee's ''Lonesome Lies Before Us''; Bao Phi's ''Thousand Star Hotel''; Vaddey Ratner's ''Music of the Ghosts''; and Akhil Sharma's ''A Life of Adventure and Delight.''

What has your post-election reading looked like?

I've been reading news and opinion pieces on Facebook and Twitter. They're utterly terrifying and depressing, since my social circle basically thinks that a Trump presidency spells the end of the world. To get out of the echo chamber, I read Donald Trump's Twitter feed. It's utterly terrifying and depressing, and I run back into the echo chamber.

I take comfort in the children's literature that I read to my 3-year-old son. He will tolerate the tales of Beatrix Potter, which I find soothing, but mostly he wants to hear about Batman, Superman, Ghostbusters and Star Wars. The moral clarity of these stories is comforting not just for a 3-year-old, but also for many adults. This is why they are relevant in our divided age, where most people identify with the rebels but so many in fact are complicit with the Empire.

What's the last great book you read?

Kia Corthron's ''The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter.'' This big, ambitious, challenging novel should have gotten much more attention. It tells the 20th-century history of the United States through the intersecting lives of two white brothers and two black brothers. It is, by turns, tender, brutal and redemptive.

What's the best classic novel you recently read for the first time?

Ralph Ellison's ''Invisible Man'' on audio. I had read it a long time ago, but hearing Joe Morton's stupendous performance was like encountering the novel for the first time, again. The Morton version is absolutely riveting.

What's your favorite book no one else has heard of?

''The Land at the End of the World,'' by Antonio Lobo Antunes, beautifully translated by Margaret Jull Costa. This novel about an old man reflecting on his experiences as a young medic in Portugal's colonial war in Angola was my touchstone while I wrote ''The Sympathizer.'' Every morning I would read two or three pages of its magnificent prose, dense with striking and unexpected imagery, until the moment arrived when I was so seized by the novel's spirit that I was motivated to turn to my own. I wanted to imitate Lobo Antunes, and I failed.

When do you read?

On a stationary bike, sweating. In my car, on audio. At the dining table or my desk, with a pen in hand. Best of all, in bed, at night, with a double of Scotch, neat. O.K., sometimes it's a triple.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

The sentences, which include the rhythm, word choice and images. I will put a book down if the first sentence doesn't immediately thrill me. Since I don't get to read very many books purely for pleasure, I have no time to waste on a book whose every sentence isn't a delight.

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

The genres I most enjoy reading are the ones I try and avoid, because I love them too much. As a child and teenager, those beloved genres were comic books, science fiction, fantasy and war stories, both fiction and nonfiction. As an adult, I added crime stories. The problem is that if I pick up a crime thriller by Jo Nesbo, Walter Mosley or Don Winslow, or a science fiction novel by Octavia Butler, I'll be up until the early hours of the morning to finish it, and I don't have the time. That's likewise the case with comic books when I give in to them, whether they are by the Hernandez brothers, Alan Moore, Rumiko Takahashi, Osamu Tezuka, Adrian Tomine, Gene Luen Yang, or many others.

Besides the fact that these genres provide gripping storytelling, I also love them because they oftentimes have more to tell us about our larger contemporary world than so-called literary fiction (which doesn't acknowledge that it's a genre as well). Comic books long ago predicted presidents like Donald Trump, in series like Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons's ''Give Me Liberty.'' Crime fiction, which often connects low-level crime to high-level corruption, can help us understand the operations and effects of a Trump presidency that unabashedly favors strongmen of all kinds. Science fiction likewise often speculates on grand political questions. Kim Stanley Robinson's ''Red Mars,'' for example, is about the colonization of that planet and the ensuing tragedy wrought by human politics, greed and ambition. It takes place in the future but is really about our eternal human strengths and weaknesses. I like it when literature gets political, and contemporary literary fiction is more often apolitical than not.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously?

I love paper books, but traveling with them was a pain, because my luggage could only accommodate so many books. When the Kindle came along it solved that problem of portability and was my favored reading mode for several years. Then I published my novel and rediscovered the fetish of the physical object. I wanted to hold my book and enjoyed seeing it on bookstore shelves, and have returned to the thrill of buying and reading paper books. I still read on the Kindle, however, and also listen to books on audio. It doesn't matter how I'm reading as long as I'm reading. I read several books at a time, which mirrors to some extent how I always have more than one writing project that I work on simultaneously.

How do you organize your books?

Organize?

What's your favorite book to assign to and discuss with your students?

Maxine Hong Kingston's ''The Woman Warrior.'' I find the book endlessly rewarding to teach, because it's so rich and layered and still relevant to the lives of students. In addition, it's a powerful book about the necessity and dangers of storytelling. The first line is '''You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you,''' and the rest of the book is about the author telling everyone what her mother said. Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I was a lonely boy and a voracious reader who treated the library as my second home. I loved Curious George and Tintin, although I see their problems now as an adult who's more sensitive to racial and colonial connotations. I wouldn't want to reread the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift or ''Tom Brown's School Days,'' but I liked them as a child. Other favorites that I have not revisited for fear of spoiling their memory are Robert Louis Stevenson's ''Treasure Island''; ''D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths''; Tolkien's ''The Hobbit'' and ''Lord of the Rings''; Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Robot books; Frank Herbert's ''Dune''; early Robert Heinlein novels; Harper Lee's ''To Kill a Mockingbird''; Erich Maria Remarque's ''All Quiet on the Western Front''; Audie Murphy's ''To Hell and Back''; Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia; and many, many superhero and war comic books. A curious child can read whatever he or she wants in a good library, which has no borders and stands up for the First Amendment. That meant that by the time I was 13 or 14, I had access to lots of war books filled with sex and violence, as well as trashy, soft-core porn paperbacks featuring detectives, medieval knights and hit men. This probably goes a long way toward explaining how I became the writer that I am.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

For President Obama, the Bible (the Old Testament, not the New). For President Trump, the Bible (the New Testament, not the Old).

President Obama has a great degree of the compassion recommended in the New Testament, but many of us who admire him wish he would sometimes, like the Old Testament God, figuratively hurl fire and brimstone at his domestic political opponents (I recognize that the drone strikes he has authorized are a literal kind of fire and brimstone, but at least he's not playing with the idea of pre-emptive nuclear attacks). President Trump has no problem with loving his followers and smiting his enemies, but he needs to learn humility, generosity and self-sacrifice from the New Testament Jesus, who washed the feet of the poor, fed the hungry, respected women and rejected the corruption of the establishment.

You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Haruki Murakami, since it seems unlikely I'll ever meet him. He can curate the music and cook spaghetti. Carrie Fisher, for her wit and bravura. Lastly, John Berger. I love that Berger gave half his Booker Prize money in 1972 to the Black Panthers, and used the other half to fund the research for his next book on migrant laborers. Berger was the kind of writer we need more of -- politically committed, aesthetically serious, always curious.

What do you plan to read next?

Roland Barthes's ''Writing Degree Zero,'' which I sadly have not read yet. Paisley Rekdal's forthcoming ''The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of the Vietnam War.'' Jeff Chang's ''We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation,'' since I want to learn what we need to do to make everything alright. Linh Dinh's ''Postcards From the End of America,'' which chronicles a declining America through the author's travels among the down and out. Perhaps many liberal and leftist writers think they should reach out to this part of our country, but Linh Dinh is one of the few to do it. Solmaz Sharif's ''Look,'' a work of poetry that is about war and language, drawing partially from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (I've been reading a bit at the intersections of war and poetry, most recently the excellent volumes ''Night Sky With Exit Wounds,'' by Ocean Vuong, and ''Hardly War,'' by Don Mee Choi). Ta-Nehisi Coates's ''Black Panther,'' because the character and the author are an awesome combination. Perhaps I'll find inspiration for the comic book I would love to write someday about Agent Orange, an anti-imperialist crime-fighter who is simultaneously superhuman and disabled, born as a result of the dioxin that the United States sprayed in Vietnam. I promise it will be funny.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

CAPTION(S):

DRAWING (DRAWING BY JILLIAN TAMAKI)

Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about the refugees we don't remember anymore
Quang D. Tran
America. 216.4 (Feb. 20, 2017): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 America Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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When Viet Thanh Nguyen's bold and mesmerizing debut novel The Sympathizer received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, it was an honor that took him by surprise. Having fled Vietnam in 1975 with his family at a young age, Nguyen was the first Vietnamese-American writer to win the Pulitzer. The Sympathizer, with intense and ironic prose, wrestles with issues of identity and loyalty through the confession of a communist double agent during the Vietnam War.

This month Grove Atlantic releases Nguyen's The Refugees, a collection of eight short stories written over a span of 17 years. Nguyen's stories deal with ghosts and patriotism, mental illness and infidelity, and gender roles and homosexuality, among other topics that highlight the tensions and complexities involved in the refugees' search for identity and belonging. The stories humanize Vietnamese-Americans who do not always fit the inflexible "model minority" stereotype. They take a segment of the American population not always on the social radar and bring it into sharp relief.

I spoke with Nguyen over Skype while he was on Christmas break with family in San Jose. This interview has been edited and condensed.

In The Refugees, you make it difficult for readers to point out the "real enemy." Your stories don't allow for easy answers.

That reflects just how I experienced life in the Vietnamese-American community. There were just so many situations that people found themselves in that really had no easy answers. People were suffering from various kinds of trauma. They were human beings who were trying to survive in the United States, but also deal with all kinds of complications with their families, and their children, and their partners. Some people made good choices, some people made bad choices, and some people made choices whose consequences depended on how you were looking at them.

You have a gift for humanizing characters of opposing sides.

Our job is to humanize the communities that we come from to people who don't know anything about these communities. That's important to do, but it's also very constricting because writers who are not a part of the minority don't feel that obligation. They don't feel they have to humanize anybody because it's already understood that they're human. If they're a part of the majority and if their readership is a part of the majority, you don't need to explain the humanity of your own community to someone of your own community.

Each age group of Vietnamese-Americans will receive and process your stories from The Refugees differently--and certainly, differently from non-Vietnamese Americans as well. Who were you imagining reading these stories when you were composing them?

I had a couple of different audiences in mind. I had readers that I thought I wanted to reach out to. And those would be other Americans, but certainly also Vietnamese-Americans as well. But then, also lurking in my mind were the readers who could really make a difference to a writer, and those readers were editors, agents and publishers. And that was, I think, very debilitating for me. I was worried about my career, and recognition, and all those kinds of worldly things.... For The Sympathizer, I had a very different audience in mind, and the audience was me.

The topic of faith comes up often in your writings. Did you grow up Catholic? Did you have statues and rosaries all over the place, like my family does?

If I turn the camera around you can see that I'm facing three Catholic pictures on the wall that my parents have hung up. You know, Jesus, Mary and Joseph; St. Teresa; and Pope John Paul II. These are the kind of things that I grew up with on my bedroom wall. And my parents were extremely devout Catholics. They were born in the North before 1954, and then they were part of that wave of Catholics that came south. I was raised as a Catholic, I went to Catholic school, and then Jesuit prep school, and went to church every week. So I grew up saturated in Catholic mythology, if that's what you want to call it, but Catholic culture as well. Ironically, despite all the money and effort that my parents spent on turning me into a Catholic, I'm not a very good Catholic.

You went to Bellarmine Jesuit Prep in San Jose. How was that experience, being a first-generation Vietnamese-American in a mostly white, affluent school?

It was a mixed experience where, on the one hand, it was a great education. I read all kinds of things that I think most people my age weren't reading. So I was reading Faulkner, and Joyce, and Karl Marx. And I was also being inculcated with Jesuit and Catholic values of service to others, which was a major part of the curriculum at Bellarmine, and that has always stayed with me.... But on the other hand, it was primarily a white school, and mostly white curriculum, and that had a negative impact on me and other students of color at the time. We didn't have a political consciousness, so we couldn't articulate who we were. We knew that we were different.

The topic of identity comes up a lot in The Refugees. How do questions of belonging and identity, race and racism differ for Asian-American citizens now, in comparison to your generation?

I've seen younger Asian-Americans who've grown up in California, in the urban neighborhoods, take being Asian-American for granted. They've always been surrounded by Asian-Americans, and so for them there's less of an impulse to make identity into an important issue because it's simply a fact of their life. They haven't experienced discrimination, they haven't even experienced not being a part of the majority. That's a very different experience than what I had. I think that's why when I went to college, taking Asian-American studies classes and ethnic studies classes was very important to me.

In almost all your stories, amid the tensions and all the struggles, there always seems to be a strong woman in the background. Was that intentional?

Yeah, definitely. And it's very different from The Sympathizer. The Sympathizer is told from a very heterosexual, masculine point of view, and there's a lot of sexism as a result of that. But in The Refugees, I really set out to try to capture a diversity of experiences, which meant I was literally mapping out stories thinking, "Okay, do I have women? Do I have young girls? Do I have older men? Do I have civilians? Do I have veterans?" I really wanted to get a broad demographic of the Vietnamese-American community.

You have stories about women's roles, sexuality and sexual orientation, and fidelity. What's the one thread that runs through all of these stories?

It was obvious to me that people's lives, even as they were defined and constricted by ethnicity and race, they saw themselves as Vietnamese people in a white country. Within that, they defined themselves through sexuality and gender, their place as men and women, or as boys and girls learning to become men and women. They were very conscious of the choices that they were making according to their gender and their choices in sexuality as well. That was very much part of the drama of being Vietnamese in this country. I would grow up hearing stories of domestic violence and of parental abuse of children, and men going back to Vietnam and never returning because, obviously, they found another partner. And people losing their identities because they no longer could be the patriarchs of the family.

Being a second-generation Vietnamese, reading these stories--they certainly resonated with my experience, and I'm sure with the generation before me.

I do hope that Vietnamese-Americans, especially, find something relevant in these stories. I don't know how it was for you when you were growing up here, but when I was growing up, you didn't have these kinds of stories. And I also hope that the book is going to be read in Vietnam. It's supposed to be translated, and I think there's a lot miscomprehension in Vietnam about the lives of the Vietnamese diaspora. So I hope the book helps to explain some of those experiences for the people in Vietnam.

By Quang D. Tran

Quang D. Tran, S.J., is a priest studying prevention science research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Caption: "Our job is to humanize the communities that we come from," says the essayist and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Caption: The Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Society at a parish in Houston, Tex., 2016. Viet Thanh Nguyen's stories look at different dimensions of the Vietnamese diaspora.

Tran, Quang D.

Viet Thanh Nguyen humanizes in 'The Refugees'
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Byline: Samantha Lu

It takes a certain type of genius to write endings the way Viet Thanh Nguyen does: with candor, poetic grace and a haunting emotional spark that sticks. In his newest collection of short stories, "The Refugees," Nguyen's endings don't merely slap on some haphazard finishing touches; they ripen each story's content, leaving them to bloom and tickle the mind even after the book has finished.

"Black-Eyed Women," the first story of the book, is a satisfying, immersive introduction to Nguyen's style. It follows a Vietnamese ghostwriter who lives with her aging mother; the two women are visited by the ghost of the writer's brother, who died years earlier when the family was fleeing the war. Nguyen is intimately masterful in the way he describes the awkward first meeting between the sister, now a middle-aged spinster, and her brother's waterlogged spirit, who swam for years to get to America. As the details of her brother's death and the circumstances of that day are revealed, the suspenseful buildup to the story's broiling emotional climax is heart-stoppingly memorable, at times difficult to read and persistently hard-hitting.

The stories in "The Refugees" have several common themes -- family, alienation, independence and personal growth -- but the book never feels repetitive. This is due in part to the drastically different main characters and situations that live in each story world, from a woman whose ailing husband mistakes her for a former lover to a young man with a host family comprised of a gay couple adjusting to life in America. Many of the stories also involve strained relationships between parents and children. Sometimes the problem is due to a generational conflict, and other times it's more influenced by culture, but the pain and anger depicted is immediately understood by anyone who has ever argued with their parents (or their children!).

Most characters in the book are either related to an immigrant or an immigrant themselves. "The Refugees" implores readers to remember that, in the end, refugees are people. Nguyen delicately balances relatable, fundamentally human conflicts with cultural identity issues that not everyone may have personal experience with.

"The Refugees" is almost disarmingly realistic in its candid depictions of imperfect lives; it's easy to forget that the stories are fiction and read them as a collection of memoirs. "Fatherland" recounts 23 year old Phuong's excitement when Vivien, her stepsister from her father's first marriage comes to visit Saigon; the first contact the two have ever had. Because she grew up in Chicago, Vivien is glamorous, wealthy, and successful, everything Phuong wants to become. But when Phuong finds out that Vivien's "perfect" life is actually a facade, she's left to deal with the rubble of her broken expectations, a process that reveals her inner strength to herself and the reader.

Nguyen reminds us that regardless of where we are from, human beings react to conflict in the same ways. When faced with those who are unlike us, it's important not to close off, as Carver learns when he struggles to reconcile with his daughter in "The Americans," and not to judge too quickly, as Phuong realizes in "Fatherland." The best we can do is to keep an empathetic, open mind.

'Refugees' is timely, timeless in telling of human stories
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"The Refugees" (Grove Press), by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen's new book, "The Refugees," is both timely, given the current debate about refugees in America, and timeless in its exploration of universal human struggles.

This gorgeous collection of short stories recalls Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies," but with Vietnam as the loose center around which the richly drawn characters orbit. There's Liem, a newly arrived refugee whose "habit of forgetting was too deeply ingrained, as if he passed his life perpetually walking backward through a desert, sweeping away his footprints." There are longtime residents Mr. and Mrs. Khahn, distant from their American-raised children, as well as those who stayed behind, like Phuong, wistful for a different future. And there's Claire, an American transplant with no familial ties to the southeast Asian nation who explains to her incredulous father that she has a "Vietnamese soul."

Nguyen convincingly takes on the voices and lives of these myriad characters, whose stories highlight not only the unique horrors that drive people to become refugees, but also the universal experiences that affirm their humanity -- from the transformation of a 13-year-old "brave enough to say what I had suspected for a while, that my mother wasn't always right" to the heartbreak and turmoil of a woman losing her husband to the fog of dementia.

Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his 2015 novel "The Sympathizer." The writing in "The Refugees" is resonant and evocative, abounding with delightful descriptions: "tears of rust streaking the walls," ''a countertop with black veins in the grouting," ''a white Toyota Land Cruiser speckled with measles of rust."

Above all, the mark of a good short story is a reader's investment in the characters within pages of meeting them -- and sadness at having to let them go shortly thereafter. This reader felt that over and over in "The Refugees." It is a must-read.

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Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who appears in Santa Ana on Tuesday, discusses his journey as a writer
Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA). (Feb. 17, 2017): Business News:
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Feb. 17--Even as a refugee child some 40 years ago, Viet Thanh Nguyen remembers loving the books he found everywhere in his first American hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Some of my earliest memories were of going to the public library and to the book mobile and bringing books home," says Nguyen, who won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in literature for his debut novel, "The Sympathizer," and who will take part a Register Book Club program on Tuesday. "And somehow learning to read in English -- it was certainly not something my parents taught me, I must have learned it in public school in some fashion," he says. "But I learned it very quickly and I grew up immersed in the public library as my home away from home." In a story earlier this week we talked with Nguyen about the inspiration behind "The Sympathizer" and "The Refugees," the just-published follow-up. That piece didn't explore how Nguyen, 45, first fell in love with the idea of writing, and later figured out how to make that his career alongside his work as a professor of English and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. To hear Nguyen tell it, as soon as he could read he also wanted to tell his own stories. "Even from a very early age I had some inspiration to tell stories," he says. "As I remember, in probably the second grade in San Jose, writing a little book and getting a prize for it from the public library. "It was probably the earliest seed of thinking, 'Oh, this is fun.' And the impulse just grew gradually over the years." It was not, however, a goal that his Vietnamese immigrant parents really understood, and so, Nguyen says, he kept quiet about his dream for many years. "I don't think I ever came home and said, 'I'm writing a story,' or, 'I'm writing a play,' as I did, for instance, in high school," he says. "Those were things I did on my own time, and being a writer was something private to me, it wasn't something that I spoke about to anyone, really. "I thought being called a writer, that's something that other people bestow on you," Nguyen says. "People who call themselves writers, who are just kids or just writing in their journals or notebooks, I thought that was pretentious. so I thought it was something I had to do in secret until I was ready to be publicly acknowledged." In college, which he finished at the University of California, Berkeley, Nguyen says he told his parents he was majoring in English, holding off their dream that he become a doctor or lawyer by telling that he planned to go to law school after he graduated. "That was probably a half-truth," he says. "I thought, 'Well, if I've got nothing else to do I'll go to law school,' but I was also trying to fend off my parents for four years in order to get to do what I wanted to do. And that seemed to work because at the end of the four years I went on to get my doctorate in English, which they were puzzled by, I think, but they were relatively liberal and let me do that. "Sometimes I think one of the reasons they let me do that was because at least there was a doctorate involved," he says. While it seems like Nguyen has unleashed a flood of work in the last three years -- "The Sympathizer" and "The Refugees" are separated by 2016's non-fiction book "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War," which was a finalist for the National Book Award last year -- he says that in truth the books were in development for years before they arrived. ""By the time I started to write 'The Sympathizer' I'd been thinking of many of the events in that book literally for decades," Nguyen says. "And so that book actually, despite the fact that it's probably the most complex book in terms of how it's written, only took me two years to write, and that began in 2011, so it's a relatively recent book. "The other books began much earlier," he says. "The first words of 'The Refugees' were put down in 1997 and the last words were not put down until 2014. And 'Nothing Ever Dies,' the research for that started in 2002 and I didn't write the final draft until 2014. "Those books were just much more difficult for me to write than 'The Sympathizer,' probably because I started them much earlier and they laid the groundwork. By the time I got to 'The Sympathizer' I'd worked through so many issues that it was easier to write that book." The success he's experienced in recent years has been gratifying for Nguyen, and indirectly his parents, too. "I've given them the books and the books are dedicated to them, but I don't think they've read them because the books are English, and they read English for business but not for literature," he says. "But they are certainly aware of the impact on the public, especially the Vietnamese public, which is very important to them. "I've given them articles about me, interviews with me, in Vietnamese and they take tremendous pride in that." Then he tells a story about winning the Pulitzer and his parents that's one of the best anecdotes in the entire interview. "When my novel won the Pulitzer I didn't tell them," says Nguyen, who is currently working on a sequel to "The Sympathizer." "I think I was on the road when it happened and we're a modest family, we don't go around bragging about our accomplishments. "It was our relatives in Vietnam calling them, saying, 'Hey, he won the Pulitzer Prize!' that alerted them to the news," Nguyen says. "And they were very, very happy, because if the relatives in Vietnam heard about it, it must be a big deal." Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com

___

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By Peter Larsen

QUOTED: "In an era where writers and readers debate who gets to write what, it is refreshing and essential to have this work from a writer who knows and feels the terrain on an intellectual, emotional and cellular level—it shows. Nguyen offers stories of aftermath, but also of complexity. … In topic and in execution, "The Refugees" is an exquisite book."

BOOK WORLD: Viet Thanh Nguyen's 'The Refugees' couldn't come at a better time
Megan Mayhew Bergman
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Byline: Megan Mayhew Bergman

The Refugees

By Viet Thanh Nguyen

Grove/Atlantic. 209 pp. $25

---

Viet Thanh Nguyen's new collection of stories, "The Refugees," is as impeccably written as it is timed. The book, a follow-up to Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Sympathizer," is dedicated to "all refugees, everywhere." This is an important and incisive book written by a major writer with firsthand knowledge of the human rights drama exploding on the international stage - and the talent to give us inroads toward understanding it.

Nguyen's acknowledgments do not shy away from his relationship to the book's title. "Thanks to my father and mother," he writes. "Refugees in 1954 and again in 1975, they are the most courageous people I know. They saved my life." He also thanks his partner, refugee writer Lan Duong, and his Harvard-educated older brother, Tung, whom he calls "the original refugee success story." There is no effort to avoid the identity of "refugee" - this book interrogates the term on political and spiritual levels, and the results are saturated with pain, memory and beauty.

The protagonists of Nguyen's stories are haunted by past lives and the dead. In the first story, "Black-Eyed Women," the narrator and her mother are visited by her brother's unblinking adolescent ghost, who wears the mildewed shorts he'd worn the day he died on an overcrowded boat. "Looking back," the narrator thinks, "I could see that we had passed our youth in a haunted country." She recalls stories from the "ancient crones who chewed betel nut and spat its red juice while squatting on their haunches in the market," and who spun stories about the dead. She cries for "the other girls who had vanished and never come back, including myself."

In this collection, towns are altered by war, relatives by time. In some stories, decades pass between letters home to Vietnam, as in "Fatherland." There is a thorny dissonance between past and present. The living protagonists are often forced to carry traumatic visions with them as they try to make their way in a new country. In "I'd Love You to Want Me," a wife wonders whether her aging husband "remembered their escape from Vung Tau on a rickety fishing trawler." She recalled washing their faces with saltwater and spit, urging decorum. Among Nguyen's characters, it seems painful to remember life as a refugee, but unwise to forget it. "I had not forgotten our nameless blue boat," the narrator of the first story says, "and it had not forgotten me." She could recall its scent, "rancid with human sweat and excreta."

Nguyen is skilled at making us feel the disorientation and alienation of these characters navigating displacement. The narrator in "The Other Man" is "anxiously scanning the strange faces" as he lands in San Francisco, weary, unsettled by the traffic and the plaintive sound of radio jingles. He's even aware of a different quality of light, which "differed from the tropical glare he'd always known." He sorts through idioms and contractions, and impresses a dinner companion from Hong Kong by sucking "the dimpled skin off a chicken's foot, leaving only the twiggy bones." A feeling of homelessness often persists, and the characters are frequently outsiders, forced to ask: Who am I now? One narrator sees his reflection in a windowpane and fails to recognize himself.

The book is fresh, too, in its portrayal of work, central to the refugee experience. One narrator feels lucky to have a job at a liquor store and compares his fate to that of his friends: "The underage ones, like him, had become bar sweeps or houseboys for Americans, while the older, luckier ones dodged army service, becoming thieves or pimps or rich men's servants. Unlucky ones got drafted." Characters recall shining boots of American soldiers, and one works in his mother's grocery store in New Saigon, pricing cans on his knees. Others have forged ahead and become professors, hearing-aid salesmen, ghostwriters and high school counselors, but do so with the knowledge of what hardships came first: penniless months, janitorial jobs and harrowing journeys across the sea.

"The Refugees" is a surprisingly sensual book, despite operating in difficult political and emotional terrain. Nguyen crafts sentences with an eye toward physicality and a keen awareness of bodies and their urges. A brother saves his sister by rendering her androgynous, slashing her long hair with a machete, binding her breasts with the fabric from a ripped T-shirt. One man recalls the pimpled cleavage of a "shivering prostitute" and the rustle of mosquito netting at night as men in a crowded boat masturbated before bed. In "War Years," a mother charges a thief in her sheer nightgown, while "her breasts swayed like anemones under shallow water."

In an era where writers and readers debate who gets to write what, it is refreshing and essential to have this work from a writer who knows and feels the terrain on an intellectual, emotional and cellular level - it shows. Nguyen offers stories of aftermath, but also of complexity. He gives us human beings weary of pity and tired of sharing rehearsed stories that make them seem like "one more anonymous young refugee." In topic and in execution, "The Refugees" is an exquisite book.

---

Bergman is the author of the collections "Birds of a Lesser Paradise" and "Almost Famous Women" and a forthcoming novel, "The Exhibition."

Fleeting connections
Horace McLevee
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Junot Diaz once wrote that short stories "strike like life and end with its merciless abruptness as well."Three new collections offer moments of insight and escape, only to zip away, as ephemeral as life itself.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, was born in Vietnam and came to the United States with his family as a refugee in 1975. Dedicated to "all refugees, everywhere," The Refugees (Grove, $25, 224 pages, ISBN 9780802126399) is a selection of nine stories from Nguyen's 20 years of writing. Set within California's Vietnamese community or in Vietnam, these tales display an extraordinary range of perspectives stretched between two worlds, as parents and children grapple with memories that comfort or haunt. A ghostwriter's dead brother returns as a ghost, dripping wet, but their mother seems to be expecting this surprise guest. An aging couple in an arranged marriage struggle as the husband's dementia causes him to call his wife by another woman's name. We all find ourselves between cultures, and Nguyen considers these boundaries with an empathetic and often humorous eye.

Not All There
The Ontario Review
The New Yorker. 93.1 (Feb. 13, 2017): p93.
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Byline: Joyce Carol Oates

Not All There

Viet Thanh Nguyen's "The Refugees."

Consider the distinctions between the words "expat," "immigrant," "refugee." "Expat" suggests a cosmopolitan spirit and resources that allow mobility; to be an "immigrant" suggests some measure of need. A "refugee" is, by definition, desperate: he has been displaced from his home, has been rendered stateless, has few or no resources. The expat retains an identity as he retains his citizenship, his privileges; the refugee loses his identity amid the anonymity of many others like him. In the way that enslaved persons are truncated by the term "slaves," defined by their condition, there's a loss of identity in the category term "refugees." It might seem to be more humane, and accurate, to give someone who is forced to seek refuge a more expansive designation: "displaced person."

Viet Thanh Nguyen, one of our great chroniclers of displacement, appears to value the term "refugee" precisely for the punitive violence it betrays. Born in 1971, he is, by self-description, the son of Vietnamese refugees, and he has been a refugee himself; he has married a refugee, a fellow-writer named Lan Duong. In the acknowledgments of "The Refugees" (Grove), his beautiful and heartrending new story collection, he speaks of his son, Ellison: "By the time this book is published, he will be nearly the age I was when I became a refugee."

It is hardly surprising that the refugee is obsessed with identity, both personal and ethnic. He is likely to be highly sensitive to others' interpretations of him and of his "minority" culture. And so his peripheral status confers certain advantages, for he is in a position to see what others do not. As Nguyen has recounted, in an afterword to his debut novel, "The Sympathizer" (2015), "I watched 'Apocalypse Now' and saw American sailors massacre a sampan full of civilians and Martin Sheen shoot a wounded woman in cold blood. I watched 'Platoon' and heard the audience cheering and clapping when the Americans killed Vietnamese soldiers. These scenes . . . left me shaking with rage."

Thrilling in its virtuosity, as in its masterly exploitation of the espionage-thriller genre, "The Sympathizer" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and has come to be considered one of the greatest of Vietnam War novels. The book's (unnamed) narrator speaks in an audaciously postmodernist voice, echoing not only Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison but the Dostoyevsky of "Notes from the Underground":

I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of the minor talents, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess.

The speaker is indeed a spy: he was, in the Republic of Vietnam, a Communist mole on the staff of a South Vietnamese general, before being evacuated from Saigon and taking refuge in post-Vietnam War America.

His confession is fraught with irony and his history is tragicomic; unlike the refugees of "The Refugees," he regards himself with the distance of self-loathing, for he has participated in assassinations while following orders. Obsessed with "universal and timeless" questions, he is the epitome of twentieth-century man: "What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing?"

The stories in "The Refugees," too, feature protagonists who are poised between the past of a devastated homeland, Vietnam, and an affluent, adopted country, the United States. The book takes one of its epigraphs from James Fenton's "A German Requiem":

It is not your memories which haunt you.

It is not what you have written down.

It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.

What you must go on forgetting all your life.

To survive, for the refugee, is to be buffeted between the grief-suffused admonition to remember the losses of the homeland and the self-protective counter-admonition to "forget," the effort of which will be enormous and lifelong.

Ordinary existence, to the death-haunted, is populated by ghosts. These are not ideas of ghosts, or poetic metaphors. These are ghosts who leave behind damp carpets and the brine-soaked clothing in which, twenty-five years before, they drowned while escaping a war-torn homeland. They are family ghosts: a fifteen-year-old boy, for instance, who had traded his life to save a sister threatened with kidnapping and rape by pirates. "These fishermen resembled our fathers and brothers, sinewy and brown, except that they wielded machetes and machine guns," we read in the almost unbearably moving opening story, "Black-Eyed Women."

The story's narrator is herself a "ghost writer," taking on projects to which her name is never attached. As her refugee mother has warned, "In our homeland . . . there was a reporter who said the government tortured the people in prison. So the government does to him exactly what he said they did to others. . . . That's what happens to writers who put their names on things." Even in America, there is fear within the refugee community, fear of the young men among them "who had learned about violence from growing up in wartime." Looking back, the ghostwriter can see that the Vietnam where she spent her childhood was a "haunted country," but that her American adolescence is haunted, as well, with "tales of woe": "proof of what my mother said, that we did not belong here. In a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except our stories."

In "War Years," set in an urban Vietnamese-refugee community in the United States, in 1983, a family's well-being is menaced not by white Americans but by fellow-refugees, diehard anti-Communists who request a "donation" from Vietnamese merchants to fund an obvious lost cause: an uprising in Vietnam. It is typical of Nguyen's subtlety, however, that the presumed extortion is on behalf of a sincere, if misbegotten, venture involving the sewing of uniforms for South Vietnamese soldiers by a woman, Mrs. Hoa, who has been deranged by grief over the loss of her husband and two sons in the war that had ended a decade before:

"American sizes are too large for Vietnamese men and the proportions aren't right. Plus the men want their names sewn on, and their ranks and units." Mrs. Hoa reached under the sewing table and lifted a cardboard box, and when we leaned over the table to peek inside, we saw plastic sandwich bags filled with chevrons and the colorful badges of Vietnamese units.

Vividly, the narrator recalls the fanatic Mrs. Hoa: "While some people are haunted by the dead, others are haunted by the living."

In the tenderly elegiac "I'd Love You to Want Me," a marriage deteriorates with the memory of a Vietnamese professor of physics afflicted by early-onset dementia. Susceptible to random, possibly erroneous but powerful memories out of his past, the professor, now living a comfortable American suburban life, begins to mistake his wife of many years for another woman, "Yen." The indignant wife, who has never heard of Yen, finds herself not only mourning the deterioration of her husband's memory but insulted by this curious sort of infidelity, as the professor gradually becomes a stranger to her:

"And who am I?" she demanded. "What's my name?"

He squinted at her. "Yen, of course."

She recalls a visit that she and the professor made to Saigon a few years before, when they'd had difficulty finding their old house on a street that had been renamed. It's a world in which names and identities are not fixed and are easily lost. Although the professor comes to realize that his mind is going, his memories of the mysterious Yen become obsessive. In an ironic reversal, the wife is astonished to discover that the professor is keeping a notebook about her:

Matters worsening. Today she insisted I call her by another name. Must keep closer eye on her . . . for she may not know who she is anymore.

There is a beautifully poignant line about this: "so slowly the book of her life was being closed."

Where another writer might end his story on this bleakly graceful note, Nguyen moves into a coda in which the wife decides to surrender her identity and acquiesce to the professor's delusion: "It's just me. . . . It's Yen." Devoting herself to her impaired husband, she would read to him from a book of stories, short enough to accommodate his fractured attention span: "She would read out loud, from the beginning. She would read with measured breath, to the very end. She would read as if every letter counted, page by page and word by word."

It's a recurring theme in "The Refugees" that the traumatized individual must make his way slowly, word by word. Nguyen's narrative style-restrained, spare, avoiding metaphor or the syntactical virtuosity on display in every paragraph of "The Sympathizer"-is well suited for portraying tentative states. His characters are emotional convalescents, groping their way to an understanding of their woundedness. "Writing was entering into fog, feeling my way for a route from this world to the unearthly world of words, a route easier to find on some days than on others," the narrator observes, in "Black-Eyed Women."

Compulsive and unflinching introspection-another symptom of "refugee" consciousness-may lead survivors to realize harsh truths about themselves, as with an eighteen-year-old refugee who, in "The Other Man," has been taken into an affluent San Francisco household:

He tried to forget the people who had clutched at the air as they fell into the river, some knocked down in the scramble, others shot in the back by desperate soldiers clearing a way for their own escape. He tried to forget what he'd discovered, how little other lives mattered to him when his own was at stake.

Truths about others are no more comforting. At any time, the refugee is likely to be confronted-confounded-by the myopia of non-Vietnamese. In "The Transplant," Arthur, the beneficiary of a liver from a Vietnamese donor, has "trouble distinguishing one nationality of Asian names from another," and is "also afflicted with a related, and very common, astigmatism wherein all Asians appeared the same." In "Fatherland," a Vietnamese girl working in an upscale Saigon restaurant overhears tourists speaking of "delicate and tiny" Vietnamese women, whose "dresses look stitched onto them." A Vietnamese tourist guide entertains his credulous American customers for whom "act was fact"-"we're all the same to them . . . small, charming, and forgettable." As the sharp-eyed narrator of "The Sympathizer" tells us, the "all-American characteristic" is not sympathy or generosity but racial paranoia: "In America, it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren't."

Which you were, of course, could be a matter of context. In "Fatherland," a young Vietnamese-American woman, Vivien, goes to Saigon to visit the children of her father and his second wife, her half siblings. (Vivien's mother had fled to America with her kids after the war.) Her visit is a grand occasion for the family. She gives them expensive gifts and treats them generously, taking them to the sort of restaurants that native residents can't afford. In particular, Vivien's half sister, seven years younger than she, is in awe of Vivien's glamour, and has fantasized about coming to the United States to live with her, and to emulate what she believes to be Vivien's success as a doctor in Chicago. Disillusion comes when she discovers that Vivien isn't a doctor but, rather, an unemployed receptionist with prospects as limited as her own. After the American half sister leaves, the Vietnamese half sister burns photographs of the two together: "Vivien's features melting before her own, their faces vanishing in flame." It is the final image in "The Refugees," ashes blown into the sky above Saigon.

Although only now published together in book form, the earnest, straightforward, relatively conventional stories of "The Refugees" would appear to have been written before the more stylized and experimental "The Sympathizer." But all Nguyen's fiction is pervaded by a shared intensity of vision, by stinging perceptions that drift like windblown ashes. By the end of "The Sympathizer," we have doubled back to its thematic beginning, as the narrator, now a survivor of torture in a Communist reeducation camp, becomes a refugee again amid anonymous "boat people"-a name, the narrator notes, that "smacks of anthropological condescension, evoking some forgotten branch of the human family." Nguyen leaves us with a harrowing vision of the sprawling tragedies of wartime, and of the moral duplicities of which we are capable. And yet "The Sympathizer" ends with a proclamation that would work as well for the displaced Vietnamese of "The Refugees": "We will live! "

The Refugees
Publishers Weekly. 263.52 (Dec. 19, 2016): p94.
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* The Refugees

Viet Thanh Nguyen. Grove, $24 (224p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2639-9

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Each searing tale in Nguyen's follow-up to the Pulitzer-winning The Sympathizer is a pressure cooker of unease, simmering with unresolved issues of memory and identity for the Vietnamese whose lives were disrupted by the "American War." In "Black-Eyed Woman," a writer is visited by the ghost of her teenage brother, who was murdered trying to save her from Thai pirates while fleeing the Vietcong. "War Years" is about a family of Vietnamese grocers in San Jose, Calif., challenged by another refugee to donate money to rebels still fighting the Communists back home. When an armed intruder invades the family's home, the piercing irony is that their youngest son thinks it's safe to open the door because the man is white. In "The Transplant," Arthur Arellano is the recipient of a new liver from Men Vu, a Vietnamese man killed in a hit-and-run, whose son befriends him, then makes him complicit in his shady business selling fake designer goods. The most disturbing story is "Fatherland," in which a man names his second set of children in Vietnam after his first set, who have fled to America with his first wife. When the American Phuong (now Vivien) visits her sister Phuong in Vietnam, Vivien reveals she is not the doctor her mother boasted she was. It is clear that author Nguyen believes the Vietnamese Phuong, more self-aware and resolute, is better off than her American doppelganger. Nguyen is not here to sympathize--"always resent, never relent," as the anti-Communist exiles proclaimed in The Sympathizer--but to challenge the experience of white America as the invisible norm. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Feb.)

QUOTED: "His stories, excellent from start to finish, transcend ethnic boundaries to speak to human universals."

Nguyen, Viet Thanh: THE REFUGEES
Kirkus Reviews. (Nov. 15, 2016):
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Nguyen, Viet Thanh THE REFUGEES Grove (Adult Fiction) $24.00 2, 7 ISBN: 978-0-8021-2639-9

A collection of stories, most set amid the Vietnamese exile communities of California, by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer (2015)."We had passed our youth in a haunted country," declares the narrator of the opening story, a ghostwriter who quite literally finds himself writing about ghosts. One in particular is the ghost of his brother, lost somewhere in the chaos of the Vietnam War, who has somehow managed to swim across the ocean to find his family and is now dripping in their hallway. He is not the only ghost: there are other civilians, the eviscerated Korean lieutenant blown apart in a treetop, the unfortunate black GI, "the exposed half-moon of his brain glistening above the water," and the Japanese private from another war--so many ghosts, so much horror. Some of the living are not much better off. There is, for example, the Madame Thieu-like operator who works the merchants of a refugee shopping district, demanding what amounts to protection money and darkly hinting that they might be accused of being Communists if they do not pay up; she nurses a terrible grief, but that does not make her any less criminal. And then there is the 30-something divorce, torn between cultures, who cannot seem to find himself in the midst of all the expectations others hold for him but is still enraged when others disappoint him in turn. Nguyen's slice-of-life approach is precise without being clinical, archly humorous without being condescending, and full of understanding; many of the stories might have been written by a modern Flaubert, if that master had spent time in San Jose or Ho Chi Minh City. Nguyen is the foremost literary interpreter of the Vietnamese experience in America, to be sure. But his stories, excellent from start to finish, transcend ethnic boundaries to speak to human universals.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Refugees
Terry Hong
Library Journal. 141.19 (Nov. 15, 2016): p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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* Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Refugees. Grove. Feb. 2017.192p. ISBN 9780802126399. $24. ebk. available. SHORT STORIES

Although publishing ten months after Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer, this collection precedes his novel by decades (the earliest entry dates from 1997). In a pre-Pulitzer interview [ow.ly/ qXus3057v1g], Nguyen credits a 15-year experience "characterized by drudgery and despair, laced with a few bright moments when the stories were published or won awards" as the labor necessary to produce his stupendous Sympathizer. These eight stories encompass migration, loss, and disconnect as characters navigate and stumble through memories, experiences, and perceived realities. Two siblings reconnect in "Black-Eyed Women" decades after their deadly boat escape from Vietnam. The children of refugees serve as both witnesses and enablers to their dislocated parents in "War Years," "Someone Else Besides You," and "Fatherland." Unlikely connections haunt two of the most resonating stories: an aging man with dementia begins to call his wife by someone else's name in "I'd Love You To Want Me," while an organ recipient meets the donor's family in "The Transplant." VERDICT For Nguyen groupies desperate for future tides, Refugees is a highly gratifying interlude. For short fiction fans of other extraordinary, between-culture collections such as Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Nguyen won't disappoint. Either way, highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/16.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Nothing Ever Dies
Laura Kolbe
The New Yorker. 92.13 (May 9, 2016): p71.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
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Nothing Ever Dies

by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Harvard).

The winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction here examines the cultural memory of the Vietnam War, both in the U.S. and in Asia. In thematically arranged chapters-on remembrance, forgetting, and spectacle-he produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments, and prisons that form "the identity of war" in Vietnam, "a face with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation's people." Nguyen draws insights from Levinas, Ricoeur, and other philosophers, and his approach has affinities with that of hybridists such as W. G. Sebald and Maggie Nelson. The book is also notable for its inclusivity, addressing Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Korean experiences and the competition for narrative dominance in bookstores and box offices.

In Vietnam, forgetting the 'American war': Plus the many, harrowing lives of Carmen Aguirre, Chester Brown on the Bible, a riveting memoir/ode to plants from a 'lab girl,' and our addiction to junk
Brian Bethune
Maclean's. 129.15 (Apr. 18, 2016): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Rogers Publishing Ltd.
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NOTHING EVER DIES

Viet Thanh Nguyen

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Memory is much on our minds now in regard to war, if only because we are reliving, through 100th anniversary lenses, the war that changed the way we remember war. To read Nguyen, a beautiful stylist and a subtle prober of secret aches and open wounds, on the Vietnam War--or, as they call it in Vietnam, with greater respect for grammar, the American War--is to look through a glass darkly.

That's true even for Canadians, who weren't there, much more so for Americans in general, and an exquisitely painful reality for Nguyen, who calls himself "born in Vietnam but made in America," a man of personal memories he knows are suspect. Four years old when his family joined the exodus of Boat People refugees, Nguyen remembers soldiers firing at their boat; his older brother, seven at the time, denies it ever happened.

Now an associate professor of English and American studies, he knows both memory traditions well, from the moving (the veterans memorial in Washington, the roadside cemeteries, lying thickly upon the ground, of Vietnam) to the far less beautiful. Those who remember the American War think little of their former foes but are more likely to recall the role and fate of women and children--including their disproportionate presence among the 7,000 who have died from still live bombs in the years after the war ended--than those who remember the Vietnam War. The latter are more cognizant of enemy combatants, but focus on warriors and resisters, with no thought for those "who made the bullets and delivered the bullets and paid for the bullets, the distracted, complicit citizenry." Neither side has much room in memory for the South Vietnamese, "who stink of loss, melancholy, bitterness and rage," and none at all for the mass death the two sides jointly brought to Cambodia and Laos.

All wars are fought twice, Nguyen notes, once on the battlefield and again in memory, a trench struggle waged with monuments, "true" war stories (the quotation marks are Nguyen's) and art that makes up the heart of Nothing Ever Dies. Thanks to Hollywood and the dominance of the English language, America, which lost the hot war, has won the memory war, showing how the plastic surgery of soft power "cuts, tucks and transforms memories."

The search for what Nguyen calls a "just" memory is far harder than it seems. Most people, after sufficient time has passed, are willing to accept their shared humanity with their enemies, perhaps especially when that understanding casts a cloak over their shared inhumanity. Humans do have to forget--there is no progress, no real life, without forgetting, Nguyen argues--but that's not the way. The things to be forgotten must be freely offered and openly acknowledged. War has to be buried twice, once at the peace table, and again in memory.

Caption: 'Nothing Ever Dies': Vietnamese who remember 'the American War' recall the fate of women and children, including those still dying from land mines

QUOTED: "Nguyen's lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry … is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy."

Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
Donna Seaman
Booklist. 112.15 (Apr. 1, 2016): p20.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
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* Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. By Viet Thanh Nguyen. Apr. 2016. 364p. illus. Harvard, $27.95 (9780674660342). 959.704.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Nguyen's debut novel, The Sympathizer (2015), a complex tale of the Vietnam War, garnered the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and landed on more than two dozen best-of-the-year lists. Readers will discover the roots of his powerful fiction in this profoundly incisive and bracing investigation into the memory of war and how war stories are shaped and disseminated. "I was born in Vietnam but made in America," states Nguyen, establishing the axis from which he astutely analyzes each country's diametrically opposed experience of the war fought in his homeland and, on a universal level, the ethical aspects of who is remembered and who is forgotten. He recalibrates our perceptions of American might in his adept dissection of the "industrialization of memory" by the military-Hollywood-video-game complex that so indelibly dehumanizes the enemy and justifies and glorifies war. As Nguyen conducts deep immersions in art, film, and literature (with an invaluable look at Vietnamese and Vietnamese American works); visits war memorials in the U.S. and Vietnam; and illuminates the lives of Vietnamese refugees in America, he gauges the impact of creative opposition to the war machine. Ultimately, Nguyen's lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.--Donna Seaman

Seaman, Donna

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
Joshua Wallace
Library Journal. 141.4 (Mar. 1, 2016): p109.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Harvard Univ. Apr. 2016. 384p. photos, notes, index. ISBN 9780674660342. $27.95. HIST

What does it mean to remember a war? Nguyen (English, Univ. of Southern California; The Sympathizer) explores this question through a critical analysis of the films, literature, cemeteries, statues, video games, etc. that memorialize the Vietnam War in the United States, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The author points out that America's recollection of the conflict is more familiar around the world in large part because the country's movie industry has global reach, which is not the case for Vietnam. Nguyen argues that the military-industrial complex has learned the wrong lessons from this war--that victories are not necessary to perpetuate a battle's existence. He advocates "just memory," which includes (among other things) the ability to see both the humanity and inhumanity in ourselves and others as a way to redress this. The author also examines how the conflict is recalled by Vietnamese Americans, South Koreans, Hmong, and others. VERDICT This thought-provoking book is recommended for all students of the Vietnam War and those interested in historical memory. For a work that focuses more exclusively on U.S. memory, see Patrick Hagopian's The Vietnam War in American Memory.--Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX

"Viet Thanh Nguyen." Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2017. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CH1000314500&it=r&asid=0cb1595c5587098cd48799d7c62889c7. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "'The Refugees' Author Says We Should All Know What It Is To Be An Outsider." All Things Considered, 10 Feb. 2017. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481118392&it=r&asid=044221a5e2261d10648145ce4059e2c2. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "Viet Thanh Nguyen." The New York Times Book Review, 5 Feb. 2017, p. 6(L). Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480071115&it=r&asid=acd04ed9aff976c7e5799f7d0629788f. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Tran, Quang D. "Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about the refugees we don't remember anymore." America, 20 Feb. 2017, p. 38+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA484157392&it=r&asid=393908eb6dde8a78e4c0dd5977a51164. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "Viet Thanh Nguyen humanizes in 'The Refugees'." UWIRE Text, 9 Mar. 2017, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA484740226&it=r&asid=6cdf74879d5fa2568b5a5cc842305c65. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "'Refugees' is timely, timeless in telling of human stories." UWIRE Text, 21 Feb. 2017, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481956398&it=r&asid=48b8b843e53f26abd826032a4f295bf2. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who appears in Santa Ana on Tuesday, discusses his journey as a writer." Orange County Register [Santa Ana, CA], 17 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481587948&it=r&asid=ec677db813035a1431ef349b1a8a4719. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Bergman, Megan Mayhew. "BOOK WORLD: Viet Thanh Nguyen's 'The Refugees' couldn't come at a better time." Washington Post, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479654665&it=r&asid=c568ee64584eb4ae499c8289ed9d3b56. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. McLevee, Horace. "Fleeting connections." BookPage, Mar. 2017, p. 11. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483701827&it=r&asid=9591168d589f9929fd60a65aad7ddc0b. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Review, The Ontario. "Not All There." The New Yorker, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 93. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481360536&it=r&asid=1b66d62d012fb56f8d32ddce5f8044af. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "The Refugees." Publishers Weekly, 19 Dec. 2016, p. 94. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475324264&it=r&asid=2ed51f27078cac39e9cf04e9e8ad564c. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. "Nguyen, Viet Thanh: THE REFUGEES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865721&it=r&asid=639b2601e6c1bdf6ed773c468cb47be1. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Hong, Terry. "Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Refugees." Library Journal, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 82+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470367176&it=r&asid=6036ac6f8ad88cb701f26da757c451ca. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Kolbe, Laura. "Nothing Ever Dies." The New Yorker, 9 May 2016, p. 71. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA458724717&it=r&asid=a7c588826a2fe6c7874a7a4692545d8e. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Bethune, Brian. "In Vietnam, forgetting the 'American war': Plus the many, harrowing lives of Carmen Aguirre, Chester Brown on the Bible, a riveting memoir/ode to plants from a 'lab girl,' and our addiction to junk." Maclean's, 18 Apr. 2016, p. 56. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA451634714&it=r&asid=6572ee5ed4e768f4c24be47ebd7ae77a. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Seaman, Donna. "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2016, p. 20. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450036729&it=r&asid=de24aac9f1a35726315419aa1c3c1970. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017. Wallace, Joshua. "Nguyen, Viet Thanh. Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War." Library Journal, 1 Mar. 2016, p. 109. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444094232&it=r&asid=f1a0ef9cb6b0d92080e0b4e68e73b031. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017.

• New York Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/books/review/refugees-viet-thanh-nguyen.html
  Word count: 789

  QUOTED: "It’s a tribute to Nguyen’s range that these eight stories cast a quieter, but no less devastating, spell. The collection’s subtle, attentive prose and straightforward narrative style perfectly suit the low-profile civilian lives it explores."

  Ghost Stories: Vietnamese Refugees Wrestle With Memory in a New Book by the Author of ‘The Sympathizer’
  By MIA ALVARFEB. 13, 2017
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  THE REFUGEES
  By Viet Thanh Nguyen
  209 pp. Grove Press. $25.

  Fiction supposedly “gives voice” to its characters, but what can it do for those who would rather not speak? In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s superb new collection, “The Refugees,” men and women displaced from wartime Saigon and resettled in California don’t say much about the journey, having practiced many versions of silence — from state censorship to language barriers — along the way. To illustrate their plight, Nguyen homes in on their bodies rather than their words, so that a more accurate description of what the book does is “give flesh” to characters at risk of fading from memory, sometimes their own. The nameless narrator of “Black-Eyed Women,” which opens the book, has borne traumas so unspeakable as to reduce her to a spectral shadow of herself — an ironic advantage, in her work as a ghostwriter of disaster memoirs. Less convenient is the actual ghost of her dead brother, whose visit after 25 years calls forth memories of the trans-Pacific voyage only one of them survived. But after touching his fatal wounds, doubting-Thomas-style, the narrator shifts from disappearing into her clients’ dramas toward fleshing out her own.

  Likewise, in “The Other Man,” body language is as loud as the refugee story gets. Arriving in San Francisco in 1975, the abject Liem walks “with eyes downcast, as if searching for pennies.” Air travel has impaired him: “The lingering pressure in his ears bewildered him further, making it hard for him to understand the P.A. system’s distorted English.” When his hosts, Parrish and Marcus, reveal that they’re lovers, the bombshell strikes Liem on a visceral level, sending “a nervous tremor through his gut,” and resonating more deeply than he’ll admit aloud: “The small hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck stiffened as they’d done before whenever another boy, deliberately or by chance, had brushed his elbow, sometimes his knee.” Soon Parrish leaves town on business; and Liem’s body, home alone with Marcus, manages to convey what his voice, in still-halting English, cannot.

  Photo

  The aches and pains of migration become especially literal in the bodies of aging refugees. A professor afflicted with dementia in “I’d Love You to Want Me” starts to call his wife of 40 years by a stranger’s name. How does she reintroduce herself to the husband for whom she has long replaced official names with “endearments like Anh, for him, or Em, for her”? It’s a heartbreaking variation on the couple’s return visit to Vietnam, decades after the Communist regime renamed their former street, and Saigon itself. Other characters reckon with liver transplants and broken hips, sleeping pills and Salonpas, their flesh revealing personal and political stresses that escape speech.

  As concerned with the aftershocks of war as with war itself, “The Refugees” mostly elides grisly scenes like the bombings, killings, rapes and tortures that fill Nguyen’s spectacular Pulitzer-winning debut novel, “The Sympathizer” (2015). Here in free-market America — “where possessions counted for everything,” the ghostwriter in “Black-Eyed Women” muses — violence tends to strike wealth and personal property instead. Mrs. Hoa, a seamstress in another story, hits up her grocer for political donations, threatening a boycott if she’s denied. Nguyen stages the confrontation in the language of military surveillance and “counterattack,” with echoes of a harrowing home invasion from earlier in the story. Car theft prefigures vandalism elsewhere, when a veteran tries to mend his son’s marriage using tactics he learned as a paratrooper. Collateral damage, it seems, can extend from the battlefield to the suburban strip mall.

  If at times I found myself missing the playful, voice-driven punch of “The Sympathizer,” it’s a tribute to Nguyen’s range that these eight stories cast a quieter, but no less devastating, spell. The collection’s subtle, attentive prose and straightforward narrative style perfectly suit the low-profile civilian lives it explores (the only military personnel here have long retired). With the volume turned down, we lean in more closely, listening beyond what the refugees say to step into their skins.

  Mia Alvar is the author of the story collection “In the Country.”

• Kirkus
  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/viet-thanh-nguyen/nothing-ever-dies/
  Word count: 432

  QUOTED: "Essentially a critical study, Nguyen’s work is a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget."

  NOTHING EVER DIES
  Vietnam and the Memory of War
  by Viet Thanh Nguyen
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  KIRKUS REVIEW

  A scholarly exploration of memory and the Vietnam War from an author “born in Vietnam but made in America.”

  While Nguyen (English and American Studies & Ethnicity/Univ. of Southern California; The Sympathizer, 2015, etc.) focuses on the Vietnam War, the war that most intimately affected his Vietnamese family, his fine reflections on how to treat and preserve the memory of war “justly” extends to other neighboring wars such as those in Cambodia, Laos, Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere. The “ethics of remembering” is complicated, as the author explains while walking readers through specific parts of Vietnam, because it involves not just grieving one’s nearest and dearest—e.g., visiting cemeteries of fallen family members—but feeling compassion for others, as the moving, reflective black wall of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., elicits beautifully. Nguyen stresses the importance of recognizing that we are not only the victims of horrible tragedy, but also the perpetrators: “Reminding ourselves that being human also means being inhuman is important simply because it is so easy to forget our inhumanity or to displace it onto other humans.” The author also explores the “memory industries,” such as Hollywood movies that cater to “young men’s erotic fascination with pure sex and war movies.” He looks at many examples of war memorials in Vietnam and Korea that attempt to bring the memory into the present, while books, especially novels by Vietnamese-Americans, convey senses of affirmation and redemption and allow the ghosts, literally, to speak. Grasping our essential inhumanity through art (a “true war story”), Nguyen affirms, is one way to resist the “memory industry,” the ultimate goal of which is to “reproduce power and inequality.” Finally, there is the role of “just” forgetting, which allows people to go on and live as well as to forgive.

  Essentially a critical study, Nguyen’s work is a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget.

  Pub Date: April 5th, 2016
  ISBN: 978-0-674-66034-2
  Page count: 364pp
  Publisher: Harvard Univ.
  Review Posted Online: Jan. 10th, 2016
  Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15th, 2016

• Publishers Weekly
  http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-674-66034-2
  Word count: 254

  QUOTED: "This is a difficult but rewarding read; Nguyen succeeds in delivering a potent critique of the war."

  Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War

  Viet Thanh Nguyen. Harvard Univ., $27.95 (364p) ISBN 978-0-674-66034-2

  Vietnam-born, American-raised Nguyen (The Sympathizer), an associate professor of English and American Studies at the University of Southern California, sifts through the many guises of memory and identity in this eloquent, scholarly narrative of the Vietnam War's psychological impact on combatants and civilians. The Vietnamese who fled the battlefields have little choice but to be known by the carnage that brought them to the U.S. They grapple with their own painful memories, which shadow them or get pushed aside, while their descendants try to cope with elders refusing to share their recollections. Nguyen peruses death and destruction from multiple vantage points, including the killing caves where Vietnamese civilians were annihilated by American bombers and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. But this is primarily a work that comes to grips with memory and identity through the arts. Where literature and film have long been dominated by American works, Nguyen brilliantly introduces a pantheon of artists, including directors Dang Nhat Minh and Bui Thac Chuyen, and writers Le Ly Hayslip and Monique Truong. This is a difficult but rewarding read; Nguyen succeeds in delivering a potent critique of the war and revealing what the memories of living have meant for the identities of the next generation. (Apr.)

• Moderate Voice
  http://themoderatevoice.com/book-review-nguyens-nothing-ever-dies-vietnam-and-the-memory-of-war/
  Word count: 1231

  QUOTED: "Nothing Ever Dies is a powerful meditation. It is a book to be read in small sips and not big gulps. It is worthwhile alone for revealing the intellectual roots of The Sympathizer, but even more so for confirming in compelling and passionate terms how we choose to remember and how we choose to forget, most notably for me that America is indeed fighting a forever War."

  BOOK REVIEW: NGUYEN’S ‘NOTHING EVER DIES: VIETNAM AND THE MEMORY OF WAR’

  Shaun Mullen
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  Every American generation, it seems, has its own war. My grandparents had the Great War, my parents had the Good War, and I had the Vietnam War, with the Forgotten War in between. My children had the Iraq War and, at the rate things are going, my grandchildren with inherit the War in Afghanistan, which at 15 years and counting, is far and away the U.S.’s longest overseas military adventure.

  This bloody roll call tells you a few things about America: Protestations to the contrary, we are a bellicose people who will never run out of wars because, after all, they’re good for business, if not the mortality rates of young men, and remind us of how much better we are than everyone else, especially people who look and dress funny. Wars also distract us from problems on the home front and help prime the old patriotic pump.

  The narratives we hand down about our wars invariably summon memories of heroism and sacrifice. After the tide of public opinion turned against LBJ on Vietnam, a popular catchphrase was “Even if you don’t support the war, you can support the troops,” a semantic trap if ever there was one, and the narratives invariably overlook the enormous suffering of the armies and peoples of the lands we vanquish, which always is for the greater good, of course. Our greater good.

  Nothing-Ever-Dies-cover

  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which contains 58,000 names of American ward dead, is 150 yards long. Do you know how long a comparable monument to Vietnamese war dead with a similar density of names would be? (No, I didn’t think you would.)

  It would be nine miles long.

  §
  Wars are fought twice over — once on the battlefield and once in our memory — and that is the subject of Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, a scholarly, profound and challenging but hugely readable new book by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

  Nguyen cites the works of philosophers, historians, journalists, filmmakers and artists who have plumbed the murky depths of the psychological impact of war on combatants and civilians, but to my mind Nothing Ever Dies is nothing less than the paradigm exploration of the subject as it applies to war in general, but especially my war.

  He writes:

  “The problem of war and memory is . . . first and foremost about how to remember the dead, who cannot speak for themselves. Their unnerving silence compels the living — tainted, perhaps by, a touch or more of survivor’s guilt — so to speak.”
  Nothing Ever Dies arguably is the nonfiction underpinning of his magnificent The Sympathizer, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. (Click here for my review.) This debut novel explores the post-Vietnam identity and politics of America through the eyes of a Vietnamese army captain and spy whose loyalties are deeply divided between East and West.

  I wrote:

  “The analogy is imperfect, but will suffice: The Sympathizer . . . is a terrific bookend to Fire In the Lake, the Frances FitzGerald classic. While one book is fiction and the other nonfiction, both tell the story of the Vietnam War, its aftermath and legacy from a Vietnamese point of view. And both, in their genre different but similarly powerful ways, are reminders to believers of the cocked-hat notion the U.S. could have ‘won’ the war if the politicians had only butted out, that it was a fool’s errand from start to ignominious finish. And while there was a surplus of fools on all sides, the biggest were the brass at the American Central Command in Saigon.”
  Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in the U.S. He is harshly critical of American conduct in the Vietnam War and the amnesia that has conveniently enabled many of us to forget what a humbling defeat it was for our self-aggrandizing imperialist selves. But he is no apologist for the Vietnamese, who called the decade-long conflict the American War and considered it a resounding victory, which it was not. He writes that both countries “have not lived up to their revolutions.”

  §
  In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen references Apocalypse Now, the epic 1979 Vietnam War film starring Marlon Brando as the insane Special Forces colonel who commands his own Montagnard troops as a sort of demi-god. The Sympathizer has numerous indirect references to the Francis Ford Coppola masterwork, including the character of a megalomaniacal Hollywood director who hires the captain-spy to critique his war movie and share his expertise during filming in the Philippines, which happens to be where Apocalypse Now was shot.

  la-bio-viet-thanh-nguyen

  “Apocalypse Now is an important work of art,” Nguyen told an interviewer in the run-up to publication of Nothing Ever Dies, “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to bow down before it. I’m going to fight with it because it fought with me,”

  Nguyen first saw Apocalypse Now when he was 10, a Vietnamese refugee who spoke fluent English, and says he was devastated.

  “People just like me were being slaughtered,” Nguyen told the interviewer. “I felt violated. It was an antiwar movie about the war in Vietnam, but the movie was about Americans. The Vietnamese were silent and erased.” Thus began his scholarly, decades-long pursuit of war and memory.

  He is referencing both the U.S. and Vietnam, and for that matter any other nation, when he writes:

  “The problem of how to remember war is central to the identity of the nation, itself almost always founded on the violent conquest of territory and the subjugation of people. For citizens, garlands of euphemism and a fog of glorious myth shroud this bloody past. The battles that shaped the nation are most often remembered by the citizenry as defending the country, usually in the service of peace, justice, freedom, or other nobles ideas. Dressed in this way, the wars of the past justify the wars of the present for which the citizen is willing to fight or at least pay taxes, wave flags, cast votes, and carry forth all the duties and rituals that affirm her or his identity as being one with the nation’s.”
  In the end, Nothing Ever Dies is a powerful meditation. It is a book to be read in small sips and not big gulps. It is worthwhile alone for revealing the intellectual roots of The Sympathizer, but even more so for confirming in compelling and passionate terms how we choose to remember and how we choose to forget, most notably for me that America is indeed fighting a forever War.

• Pop Matters
  http://www.popmatters.com/review/nothing-ever-dies-by-viet-thanh-nguyen-lucid-and-robust-voice-for-the-forgo/
  Word count: 1178

  Viet Thanh Nguyen Is a Lucid and Robust Voice for the Forgotten
  BY MATTHEW SNIDER
  25 May 2016
  NOTHING EVER DIES IS A TIMELY MEDITATION ON THE POWER OF MEMORY AS AN IMPLEMENT AND A CONSEQUENCE OF WAR.
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  NOTHING EVER DIES: VIETNAM AND THE MEMORY OF WAR
  VIET THANH NGUYEN
  (HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS)
  US: APR 2016

  AMAZON
  Near the beginning of Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen draws on Freud to explain the book’s theme of remembering and forgetting in relation to war. Nguyen writes, “A just memory suggests that we must work through the past or else be condemned to act out because of it.” In guiding readers through this process of working through the past, the book is as much about understanding the way in which the Vietnam War has been packaged and interpreted through memory as it is about the industrial processes of memory overall.

  In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen has written a powerful meditation on the manner in which memories are produced, cultivated, even empowered and subdued, but Vietnam is only one vehicle to document these memory-making (and unmaking) processes. If all we take away from the book is a greater understanding of how Vietnam is alternately remembered or forgotten, surely we have missed Nguyen’s most potent lesson.

  Beyond the Vietnam War itself (known to the Vietnamese as the American War), the book asks us to look honestly at how we represent war, both how we remember it and what we choose (consciously or unconsciously) to forget in making those memories. Nguyen doesn’t write to excoriate the memory-makers, their industry, or even those “passively” (debatably so) taking part in the industry of memory. But he does expect a certain degree of self-honesty from all participants in contemplating their degree of participation.

  For Nguyen, this is no navel-gazing exercise in academic rumination. There are profound consequences to the dishonesty with which we remember wars like Vietnam. Even if, in some ways, it may not be over even today for many, the War We Lost lingers spectrally in American memory even for those born long after its conclusion; after all, as the title says, nothing ever dies. It’s for this very reason that Nguyen expects us to interrogate those memories we have been handed down, not as products of our own memory-making, but as product of what he calls an industry of memory.

  Unlike a memory industry (which might evoke images of knickknack replicas of memorials or History Channel commemorations), an industry of memory exists at the intersection of ideological and material forces capable of determining which victims are remembered and which are forgotten, how others feel about what is remembered, and who even decides which memories become a part of the Memory of the War.

  It is undeniable that the American memory of the Vietnam War predominates, not only in the United States but in countless other countries. For Nguyen, this represents a consequence of the power of the American industry of memory vis-a-vis the Vietnamese industry of memory—both inextricably tied to their political, cultural, ideological, and economic influence on other countries. Where Nguyen leads us in this lesson is to remind us to seek out the humanity in our “enemies” and the inhumanity in ourselves.

  The phrases Never forget and Always remember carry an uncommon currency in American memory relative to their simplicity, but with each, American memory-makers prioritize the conscious remembering of others’ inhumanity toward them. In response, Nguyen asks what might be forgotten by obsessively prioritizing the heroism of one’s own soldiers in memory; and whether we can truly bring about a fair remembering without examining the inhumanity within the human. The processes of the industry of memory may seem difficult to contemplate or even to face, but for Nguyen they are immeasurably important: “If we do not recognize our capacity to victimize, then it would be difficult for us to prevent the victimization carried out on our behalf…” Further along, Nguyen reminds the reader of the succession of wars that have followed Vietnam—and in which each name becomes shorthand for a war, not a place or its people (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan).

  How do we overcome these shortcomings in our processes of remembering and even forgetting? For Nguyen, it comes down to pursuing both a just memory and a just forgetting. A just memory means consciously evaluating the forces, ideas, and systems that discard some memories in favor of others. Part of this process involves telling true war stories. In the American mind, as seen in American cinema and literature, a war story always involves soldiers. We must peek behind the stage to find the other equally indispensable elements of war—victims on both sides, participants on both sides, idle civilians enjoying ballgames and movies at home, the companies who simultaneously produce both the implements of war and the luxuries and necessities of everyday civilian life at home, and equally important, those whose lives must continue long after the war has ended.

  When we strip away the gore and glory of war stories and, as Nguyen writes, “see how boring wars actually are, how war seeps into everyday life, then we might want to imagine stopping wars.” War’s remoteness can be both an insulation and an amplification of our expectations of it; that remoteness breeds a world in which endless war seems routine and natural and where achievable peace seems farfetched and naive. Nguyen leaves us to consider the perversity of this.

  Nguyen’s writing is appropriately quiet and well-paced, but he also writes with the fastidious precision of a humanities professor, a nomenclature that—outside of university humanities departments—can seem self-indulgent and tiresome. But many times throughout Nothing Ever Dies, he dispenses with this tendency and when Nguyen gets going, he’s a lucid and robust voice for the forgotten—forgotten people, forgotten places, and forgotten memories most of all. At the moments when he writes most persuasively, Nothing Ever Dies shines through the humanities parlance and delivers a critical lesson on how we remember and how we forget, how even memory can be an industry and how to tell a truly good war story.

  Nothing Ever Dies is one man’s powerful entreaty to a country which has seen nearly endless conflict (one war running upon the next) for generations. Will Nguyen’s words be heeded, or will they be heeded by anyone with the power to bring about the necessary changes to avoid the endless succession of American wars and conflicts that have continued almost unbroken since Vietnam? It’s not clear, but what Nguyen does accomplish is to foreground a discussion that is vital to the future of authentic storytelling, memory-making, history recording, and art, regardless of the actors or the conflict.

  NOTHING EVER DIES: VIETNAM AND THE MEMORY OF WAR
  Rating: 8/10 stars

• Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/12/the-refugees-viet-thanh-nguyen-review
  Word count: 267

  The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen – review
  The Pulitzer prize-winner’s dazzling short stories explore both emotional and physical pain
  Viet Thanh Nguyen: his stories are full of people striving against the odds
  Viet Thanh Nguyen: his stories are full of people striving against the odds. Photograph: Columbia University/AP
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  Anita Sethi
  Sunday 12 February 2017 05.00 EST

  Viet Thanh Nguyen arrived in the US in 1975, living in a camp for Vietnamese refugees. Winner of last year’s Pulitzer prize for his debut novel, The Sympathizer, his superb new short story collection has a poignant dedication: “For all refugees, everywhere.”

  A ghostwriter narrates the opening tale, in which she is haunted by her brother, who died during a treacherous boat journey. “Does it still hurt for you?” the ghost asks. These eight exquisite stories explore the lingering effects of physical and emotional pain.

  In one, about a wife dealing with her husband’s dementia, a song stirs memories. In another, the son of Vietnamese grocery store owners in San Jose recalls his mother’s courage when held at gunpoint. Throughout, there are people striving against the odds to make ends meet and begin again. “Writing was entering into fog,” observes the ghostwriter, but Nguyen crafts dazzlingly lucid prose.

  • The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen is published by Corsair (£12.99). To order a copy for £8.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

• Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/27/the-refugees-viet-thanh-nguyen-review
  Word count: 870

  QUOTED: "With anger but not despair, with reconciliation but not unrealistic hope, and with genuine humour that is not used to diminish anyone, Nguyen has breathed life into many unforgettable characters, and given us a timely book."

  The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen review – stories of anger, humour and hope
  Set in Vietnam and among the Vietnamese communities of California, this accomplished collection from the Pulitzer-winning author sees characters face up to the ghosts of the past
  Unforgettable … Viet Thanh Nguyen
  Unforgettable … Viet Thanh Nguyen
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  Yiyun Li
  Friday 27 January 2017 10.00 EST Last modified on Wednesday 15 February 2017 07.53 EST

  About 15 years ago, I taught A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power’s book on genocides, to a group of 18- and 19-year-olds in a midwest university in the US. In my class there was a young man who had spent his boyhood in Bosnia as Nato bombed his hometown. My other students, awed by his connection to the genocide in the textbook, asked him what it was like to grow up in a warzone. “A pretty normal childhood as you had here,” he said. “We played poker inside a lot, and when there was no bombing we kicked a ball in the street.”

  In the past few years the world has seen a rapid increase in refugees, with the number hitting 60 million. The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s story collection following his Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer, reminds us that “literature is news that stays news”, as Ezra Pound put it. Set in the Vietnamese communities in California as well as in Vietnam, the stories do not aim to surprise us with new twists or shock us with sensational details, as war and refugee stories could easily choose to do. Rather, like the young man from Bosnia, Nguyen’s characters tell these stories because they are the only ones known to them.

  Two of the most touching pieces, both about siblings separated by geography and history, bookend the collection. In “Black-Eyed Women”, a Vietnamese-American woman works as a ghostwriter. (“At least your name’s not on anything,” is the only approval that the narrator’s mother gives, reflecting a fear carried from the time when writers in their home country would meet unspeakable fates.) As befits her profession, the narrator is visited by the ghost of her elder brother, who died young on the boat when the family took flight from the war. The ensuing tale of love and loss, violence and violation, may not be unfamiliar to the reader, but the contrast between the tenacity of the brother’s ghost (he has taken decades to swim across the Pacific to reach America) and the sister’s self-willed exile into a half death – which is almost a rebellion against being alive – makes the story linger.

  As an echo, the closing story, “Fatherland”, explores a more complex situation between two siblings. The narrator, a young Vietnamese woman, meets her half-sister, visiting from the US for the first time. Adding to the tension is the fact that her father has named the narrator and her siblings after his first set of children. Two sisters, one American and one Vietnamese, yet named the same by the father – it may sound strange, but isn’t it the fate many refugees have to face: a life left behind, that could have been theirs; and a life in an adopted country, the veneer of newness easily dinted by the ghost of the past?

  The collection is full of refugees, whether from external turmoil or from a deeper, more internal conflict
  The theme of doubleness – choice and inevitability, home and homelessness, starting afresh and being stuck – is present not only in the stories of Vietnamese refugees, but also of those who have become refugees from their own homes and loved ones. “Smiling at your relatives never got you very far, but smiling at strangers and acquaintances sometimes did.” So a pilot, who fought in the Vietnam war and is now revisiting the country for the first time, thinks while waving at the locals from a tour bus. He’s estranged from his daughter, just as a Mexican American in the collection is estranged from his wife, or a young man from Hong Kong is estranged from his father. The collection is full of refugees, whether from external turmoil – natural or manmade disasters – or from a deeper, more internal conflict between even those who are closest to each other. With anger but not despair, with reconciliation but not unrealistic hope, and with genuine humour that is not used to diminish anyone, Nguyen has breathed life into many unforgettable characters, and given us a timely book focusing, in the words of Willa Cather, on “the slow working out of fate in people of allied sentiment and allied blood​”​.

  • Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants is published by Fourth Estate. The Refugees is published by Corsair. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £11.04) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

• Independent
  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-refugees-viet-thanh-nguyen-book-review-a7569841.html
  Word count: 658

  The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen, book review: Never has a short story collection been timelier
  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s new collection of short stories about displacement and exile are an antidote to Donald Trump’s plan to ban refugees from entering America

  Lucy Scholes Wednesday 8 February 2017 16:30 GMT0 comments

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  With President Trump’s recent attempt to ban refugees from entering America, the quiet but impressively moving tales dissecting the Vietnamese experience in California in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees are a powerful antidote to all the fearmongering and lies out there.

  It’s notable that Nguyen, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 2015 novel The Sympathizer, doesn’t linger on the horror stories that pepper his protagonists’ pasts. The first two stories in the collection offer snapshots of fear, violence and destruction: “Black-Eyed Woman” details a pirate attack on the ramshackle boat the protagonist and her family crossed the Pacific in that cost her brother his life; while in “The Other Man” Liem, now living with a host couple in San Francisco, “tried to forget the people who had clutched at the air as they fell into the river, some knocked down in the scramble, others shot in the back by desperate soldiers clearing a way for their own escape”, when he fled the slaughtering Communists in Saigon. “He tried to forget what he’d discovered, how little other lives mattered to him when his own was a stake.”

  READ MORE
  Pulitzer Prize-Winner Nguyen interview: 'I feel I have two faces'
  In both these stories, however, such memories don’t denote the true trauma. In “Black-Eyed Woman” the ghostwriting protagonist’s living death is contrasted with her brother’s actual demise. When his ghost appears in her and her mother’s California home, brine-soaked after his decades-long swim across the ocean to find her, he brings with him a revelation. “You died too,” he tells her when she asks the question that’s plagued her all her life – why him, and not her? – “You just don’t know it.” Meanwhile, in “The Other Man” it is Liem’s deep-felt estrangement from his father, not his more obvious topographical dislocation, that lies at the heart of the story.

  READ MORE
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  Interwoven with the particular sorrow of displacement and exile are examples of universal suffering: a woman losing her husband to his advancing dementia, each time he calls her by another woman’s name a new wound; or a man crippled by his divorce who realises too late the life he wanted. There are also stories told from the other side. In “The Americans” questions of belonging and empathy are examined through the prism of a retired African-American airman visiting Vietnam with his wife and daughter. He dropped plenty of bombs on the country, but this is his first time setting foot on its soil. And, just as in “The Other Man”, issues of paternity and homeland also intertwine in “Fatherland”, the final story in the collection and one of the best, which examines the doubleness inherent in the refugee experience by means of one man’s strange decision to give both sets of children – the first three long since taken by his first wife to begin a new life in America; the second living at home with him and his second wife in Ho Chi Minh City – the same names. A rich exploration of human identity, family ties and love and loss, never has a short story collection been timelier.

  ‘The Refugees’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen is published by Corsiar, £12.99

• NPR
  http://www.npr.org/2017/02/09/512910786/memory-and-loss-haunt-the-stories-in-the-refugees
  Word count: 921

  QUOTED: "It's an urgent, wonderful collection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling—it can bear witness to the lives of people who we can't afford to forget."

  Memory And Loss Haunt The Stories In 'The Refugees'
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  February 9, 201710:00 AM ET
  MICHAEL SCHAUB
  The Refugees
  The Refugees
  by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  Hardcover, 209 pages purchase

  Even if you've read the news reports or seen the horrifying photographs, it's hard to fathom the terrible extent of the Syrian refugee crisis. The United States has accepted more than 10,000 Syrians fleeing the country's civil war, but that's a drop in the bucket — millions of Syrians have been forced out of their home country, hoping other nations will take them in. Some have, some have since closed the door.

  In his first short story collection, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his novel The Sympathizer, takes a look at how it feels and what it means to be a refugee. The characters in his stories are mainly Vietnamese citizens and their families, forced out of their country at the end of the Vietnam War, trying to make a home in a strange new land. It's a beautiful collection that deftly illustrates the experiences of the kinds of people our country has, until recently, welcomed with open arms.

  The book begins with the haunting "Black-Eyed Women," about a ghostwriter who lives with her mother; both were refugees from Vietnam. When the writer's mother mentions that she was visited by the ghost of her son, killed by pirates on the boat voyage to America, the writer wonders whether she might be on the verge of senility.

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  Author Viet Thanh Nguyen Discusses 'The Sympathizer' And His Escape From Vietnam
  But then she herself gets a visit from her brother's ghost, and realizes her lifelong struggle to forget him has always been doomed to fail. "More often ... I go hunting for the ghosts, something I can do without ever leaving home," she muses. "As they haunt our country, so do we haunt theirs. They are pallid creatures, more frightened of us than we are of them. That is why we see these shades so rarely, and why we must seek them out."

  Remembrance is a common theme in Nguyen's stories, particularly the kind of unwelcome memories that haunt the pasts of those who have endured trauma. In "The Americans," a married couple visit their daughter, who works as an English teacher in Saigon. The father has never been to Vietnam, apart from flying it as an American pilot in the war.

  And he feels ill at ease on Vietnamese soil, finding it hard to forget his actions during the war: "The tonnage fell far behind his B-52 after its release, and so he had never seen his own payload explode or even drop, although he watched other planes of his squadron scattering their black seed into the wind, leaving him to imagine what he would later see on film, the bombs exploding, footfalls of an invisible giant stomping the earth." It's a beautiful story about love, fear and loss, rendered perfectly by Nguyen.

  Every story in The Refugees succeeds on its own terms, but the most affecting one, perhaps, is "The Other Man," about an 18-year-old man named Liem who seeks refuge in America in 1975, after the fall of Saigon. He's taken in by a gay couple, immigrants themselves, one from England and one from Hong Kong.

  It's an urgent, wonderful collection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling — it can bear witness to the lives of people who we can't afford to forget.
  Michael Schaub
  Even as he makes a new life for himself in California, he finds himself beset by memories of his narrow escape from Vietnam. "As he lay on his cot and listened to children playing hide-and-seek in the alleys between the tents, he tried to forget the people who had clutched at the air as they fell into the river, some knocked down in the scramble, others shot in the back by desperate soldiers clearing a way for their own escape," Nguyen writes. "He tried to forget what he'd discovered, how little other lives mattered to him when his own was at stake."

  The Refugees comes at a time when Americans are being forced to reckon with what our country is becoming, what values we truly hold dear. It's hard not to feel for Nguyen's characters, many of whom have been dealt an unfathomably bad hand. But Nguyen never asks the reader to pity them; he wants us only to see them as human beings. And because of his wonderful writing, it's impossible not to do so.

  It's an urgent, wonderful collection that proves that fiction can be more than mere storytelling — it can bear witness to the lives of people who we can't afford to forget. As one of Nguyen's character reflects, "Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more. We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts."

• Star Tribune
  http://www.startribune.com/review-the-refugees-by-viet-thanh-nguyen/414016003/
  Word count: 615

  REVIEW: 'The Refugees,' by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  FICTION: Pulitzer-winning novelist tells intimate stories about Vietnamese-Americans.
  By Tom Zelman Special to the Star Tribune FEBRUARY 17, 2017 — 10:47AM
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  Uprooted populations, filling enclaves in First World cities or subsisting for years in refugee camps around the world. Scapegoats for joblessness and terror, people leaving scenes of violence in their home countries. Images in the media of suffering that lose their ability to shock.

  With tenderness and intimacy, with softly shaded ironies, Viet Thanh Nguyen personalizes a group of Vietnamese-Americans living on the West Coast in his story collection, “The Refugees.” The older folks are exiled from their Fatherland and culture by the forces of history; the younger stranded between the ghost-ridden silence of their parents’ generation and the promise of American plenitude that they themselves can’t seem to grasp.

  Nguyen’s first story, “Black-Eyed Women,” opens the door to the horror the refugees faced trying to escape the Communists by sea. Most of the story, though, is set decades later, as a murdered brother returns to the family, telling his surviving sister, “You died, too … You just don’t know it.” For this middle-aged woman, as for most of Nguyen’s characters, the act of survival is the never-ending need to forget, to transcend the ghosts.

  If the past is irretrievable but haunting, the present is just confusing. Identity for all of Nguyen’s characters appears to be a flimsy thing, mutable and often accidental. In one story a character named Louis Vu (Louis Vuitton?) sells knockoff luxury goods, and in another, a professor suffering from Alzheimer’s calls his wife by another woman’s name (a former wife?). We read about a sad-sack gambler who receives a liver transplant and heaps gratitude upon a man who might possibly be the donor’s son.

  Unsurprisingly, “The Refugees” is full of complicated family dynamics, cultural rifts and surprising resolutions. “The Americans” offers the reader a family vacation: a black Vietnam vet (Carver) and his Japanese wife travel to Vietnam to visit their daughter, who is teaching English to poor people, and her Vietnamese boyfriend. The concluding story, “Fatherland,” narrates a meeting between a Vietnamese girl and her identically named half-sister from Los Angeles.

  Nguyen offers flashes of the ferocity and vigor that characterized the older generation before their flight from Saigon. In “Someone Else Besides You” a widowed father — an ex-military man of action — moves in with his divorced son, determined to repair his son’s marriage through violence. And in “War Years,” a young narrator helplessly watches the escalation of a feud between his iron-willed mother and another refugee, sorry for “the accumulation of everything I could do nothing about.”

  “The Refugees,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  “The Refugees,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  Nguyen won a Pulitzer Prize last year for his novel “The Sympathizer,” and he is a National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for his nonfiction book, “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.”

  The nine unpredictable and moving stories that make up “The Refugees” are a remarkable achievement, portraits of people living in a phantom zone called America. I found that I was unable to read more than one story a day — they so filled my mind.

  Tom Zelman teaches English at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

  The Refugees
  By: Viet Thanh Nguyen.
  Publisher: Grove Press, 209 pages, $25.

• A.V. Club
  http://www.avclub.com/review/viet-thanh-nguyens-refugees-will-haunt-its-readers-249452
  Word count: 681

  Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees will haunt its readers, especially in these times
  By Rien Fertel@rienfertel
  Feb 6, 2017 8:00 AM

  Photo: Jimmy Hasse
  Photo: Jimmy Hasse
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  The Refugees

  Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
  Publisher: Grove Press
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  It is hard to imagine a world without refugees. Border-crossers fleeing war ravaged communities; evictees seeking refuge from economic misfortune; the persecuted, the hated, the victims of floods, fires, and hurricanes. Climate change, we’re warned, will soon force millions of people, whole cities and countries, to pack up all that is worth taking—or, to be sure, that which is most portable—and just go.

  We are all refugees in the making, Viet Thanh Nguyen reminds us in his short-story collection, The Refugees, all potential exiles destined to be haunted by a place and the past. Nguyen’s debut novel, The Sympathizer, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His follow-up, Nothing Ever Dies, a series of essays on war, memory, and identity, was a 2016 finalist for the National Book Award in non-fiction. These earlier books were sparked by Nguyen’s experiences as a refugee of the Vietnam wars, but The Refugees, a collection of eight previously published stories, seems even more indebted to his life as a displaced person.

  In “Black-Eyed Women,” the collection’s opener, and the strongest and most recently published among the group, the narrator, a Vietnamese refugee, works as a ghostwriter for individuals made famous for their suffering: “the kind that healthy-minded people would not wish upon themselves, such as being kidnapped and kept prisoner for years, suffering humiliation in a sex scandal, or surviving something typically fatal.” While at work on a particularly trauma-inducing memoir, the ghostwriter is visited by a ghost, her long-dead brother, a refugee from the living world, murdered and buried at sea while fleeing Communist Vietnam. She asks why he wears the same clothes he wore that awful day. “We wear them for the living,” he tells her. “The dead move on,” the ghostwriter learns. “But the living, we just stay here.”

  Refugees, whether dead or alive, traffic in memories. Stories are the currency of those damned to survive. In “War Years,” another narrator recalls a painful episode from his boyhood, his mother’s feud with a Mrs. Hoa, who earnestly seeks donations in support of anti-Communist guerrillas back home, yet cannot come to terms with the decades-long disappearance of her own husband and son, both guerrilla fighters. “While some people are haunted by the dead,” Nguyen writes, “others are haunted by the living.”

  In The Refugees the living are haunted by their lovers, their children, themselves. They are wealthy, poor, and middle-class. Tour guides, shopkeepers, and hucksters. They are Vietnamese, American, and Vietnamese-American. One mother is still haunted by “the fearful expressions on her children’s faces” who survived a journey on the South China Sea many years ago. A father is haunted by the nation he once flew over as a pilot—“if you’re going to bomb a country,” he says to comfort himself, “you should at least drink its beer.” His daughter now works as a teacher in a rural outpost in that country: “I have a Vietnamese soul,” she tells him, much to his disgust. Others are haunted by the strangeness of California, by months spent in refugee camps, by years, if not lifetimes, spent living in another world.

  Fans of The Sympathizer might miss Nguyen’s finely filigreed prose, byzantine-absurdist plotting, and Kubrickian dark humor in these stories. Still, The Refugees will haunt its readers, especially in these times, when refugee stories need to be told, shared, and told again, ad infinitum. “Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more,” Nguyen writes. “We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.”

  Purchase The Refugees here, which helps support The A.V. Club.

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