A number of speakers have said they would cancel events after Viet Thanh Nguyen’s event was called off last week—Herb Scribner writes for The Washington Post
The organization 92NY announced Monday that it will put its notable literary reading series on pause after facing backlash following the cancellation of an event last week, according to the New York Times.
The decision comes shortly after Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s planned speaking event on Friday was called off after the novelist signed an open letter critical of Israel.
Nguyen was set to speak about his new book, “A Man of Two Faces,” on Friday with novelist Min Jin Lee at 92NY, a Jewish organization formerly called 92nd Street Y. The center said it postponed the event to an unspecified time in the future.
After the event was canceled, a number of writers and critics announced on social media that they planned to ax their own appearances at 92NY. Critics Christina Sharpe and Saidiya Hartman, as well as novelist Dionne Brand, all backed out of an upcoming event, according to the Times. Poet Paisley Rekdal and critic Andrea Long Chu also announced on social media that they would cancel their appearances.
The organization 92NY did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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In a statement sent to The Washington Post on Sunday, 92NY addressed the decision to drop Nguyen’s event: “We are a Jewish institution that has always welcomed people with diverse viewpoints to our stage. The brutal Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and the continued holding of hostages, including senior citizens and young children, has absolutely devastated the community. Given the public comments by the invited author on Israel and this moment, we felt the responsible course of action was to postpone the event while we take some time to determine how best to use our platform and support the entire 92NY community.”
Nguyen was one of 750 writers and artists who signed an open letter critical of Israel. The letter, which was published on Oct. 18 in the London Review of Books, called for “an end to the violence and destruction in Palestine.”
“We plead for an end to all violence, an end to all oppression and denial of human rights, and a path toward a just and sustainable peace for all,” the letter read.
Nguyen said in a Facebook post Saturday that “no reason was given, no other date was offered, and I was never asked” about the change, which, he said, means the event was canceled. People on social media suggested a bomb threat had been made, he said, but he “heard no such thing from 92Y staff.”
He said on Instagram that the event’s organizer, Bernard Schwartz, who directs 92NY’s poetry center, moved the talk to McNally Jackson Books at Seaport in New York out of “principled refusal to agree to postponing.”
“I have no regrets about anything I have said or done in regards to Palestine, Israel, or the occupation and war. I only regret that Bernard and other staff at the Y have been so deeply and negatively affected by standing up for art and writers,” Nguyen said.
Deb Seager, a Grove Atlantic director of publicity, said in a statement that “we were surprised and disappointed in their decision not to go forward” with the Oct. 20 event in New York City.
“Grove believes strongly in the importance of freedom of expression, and we support Viet Thanh Nguyen and all of our authors in this regard,” she said.
Lee, who was set to speak with Nguyen about his book at 92NY, told the New York Times that she hoped the postponement would not create any harmful feelings toward Jewish people in New York.
“Whenever we think of any institution and any nation, I hope we remember it’s made up of individuals,” she told the Times. “There’s always that plurality.”
Nguyen said on Facebook that sometimes “art is silenced in times of war and division because some people only want to see the world as us vs. them.
“But art,” he continued, “is one of the things that can keep our minds and hearts open, that can help us see beyond the hatred of war, that can make us understand that we cannot be divided into the human versus the inhuman because we are, all of us, human and inhuman at the same time.”
