Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks with Marco Werman about the political gap within the Vietnamese American community for The World.
Vietnamese Americans traditionally vote Republican. They also tend to be anti-Communist and deeply suspicious of China. Many are part of the first generation that arrived in the US after the trauma of losing their homeland, South Vietnam, to the Communist North in 1975. But many of the children of that first generation are moving away from their parents’ politics and are more liberal. Marco Werman talks to two Vietnamese-Americans who illustrate the generation gap. Viet Thanh Nguyen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Sympathizer” and is supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the upcoming presidential election. Pham Do Chi is a retired economics professor at American University and a former economic adviser to the IMF. He’s voting for President Donald Trump.
