
Review by Eleanor J. Bader
When Pulitzer Prize-winning writer-activist Viet Thanh Nguyen was asked to deliver Harvard’s annual Charles Eliot Norton lectures in 2023, he admits that he was intimidated. After all, a string of luminaries had preceded him – Leonard Bernstein, Nadine Gordimer, Czeslaw Milosz, Toni Morrison, Igor Stavinsky, and Wim Wenders, among them – but in accepting the honor, he agreed to probe what it means to write as an “other.”
To begin, he had to face his otherness as an amalgam: On one hand, he’s an outsider because of his race (Vietnamese) and working-class, refugee background. But he’s also an insider because of his occupation (English professor at USC) and current social standing (MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowship recipient).
Furthermore, Nguyen understands that his privilege is not representative of other “others.” Nonetheless, he defines otherness as encompassing all who are “out of step, out of tune, out of focus, even to themselves.” This, he writes, includes “the Asian, the minoritized, the racialized, the colonized, the hybrid, the hyphenated, the refugee, the displaced, the artist, the writer, the smart ass, the bastard, the sympathizer, and the committed.”
That is, pretty much everyone aside from white, ruling-class males.
The essays in To Save and To Destroy move seamlessly between the personal and the political, and while Nguyen presents a plethora of sometimes-obtuse literary references, he expresses heartfelt solidarity with refugees and those in exile. While he contests their categorization as voiceless – he believes everyone has a voice, even if it’s ignored – he is unfailingly sympathetic to individual struggles. Particularly moving is his account of displacement’s impact on mental health. In fact, by zeroing in on his mother’s psychiatric hospitalizations, the book provides a deeply-felt account of exile’s toll. It’s beautifully wrought.
Nguyen’s deepest wish is for humanity to move into “expansive political solidarity” for collective liberation. It’s an inspiring, if aspirational, vision.
New Pages | Book Review : To Save and To Destroy: Writing as an Other by Viet Thanh Nguyen