Viet Thanh Nguyen reflects on John Kelly’s words about undocumented immigrants coming from south of the border. Originally published by The New York Times. I had forgotten that memory of my mother, sitting by herself, reading aloud from a church newsletter. It was the only way she could read, having had only a grade school education…. (read more)
Viet Thanh Nguyen reflects on the Attorney General’s statement of intent to separate children from undocumented parents at the U.S. border. Originally published by The…(read more)
Viet Thanh Nguyen reflects on the blackface incidents at Cal Poly in this piece originally published by the Los Angeles Times. For the second time in a…(read more)
Originally published in The Washington Post. Books by immigrants, foreigners and minorities don’t diminish the ‘classic’ curriculum. They enhance it. In 1992, as a…(read more)
David Canfield of Entertainment Weekly offers an exclusive excerpt of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s introduction to The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, to be released on April…(read more)
Originally published in the New York Times. LOS ANGELES — A bathroom at 4:45 a.m. is quiet. I try to wake at this time, three…(read more)
This New York Times article, co-authored with Richard Hughes, confronts the lack of recognition and reparations for the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. Phan Thanh…(read more)
Viet Thanh Nguyen writes on the many Vietnamese-American works ignored by both the American and Vietnamese mainstream. This article was originally published by the…(read more)
The following article by Viet Thanh Nguyen was originally published by the Los Angeles Times. Almost exactly 20 years ago, I arrived in Los…(read more)
“Sometimes people have said that I give voice to the voiceless Vietnamese. If you know anything about Vietnamese people, you know they are not…(read more)
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Vietnam war refugee reflects on American identity. The following article was originally published in the Financial Times. I am…(read more)
Martin Luther King, Jr., is best known for his speech “I Have a Dream.” Relatively few people know of his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered…(read more)
Viet published an op-ed in the New York Times about storytelling in the age of Trump. Here is the unedited, 1400-word version. The link…(read more)
One of the saddest ironies of my own history is that the United States might have achieved its goals in Southeast Asia without ever…(read more)
This essay by Viet Thanh Nguyen was originally published by the Los Angeles Times. Donald Trump has triumphed, an accomplishment that many, except his…(read more)
This commentary originally appeared in The New York Times on November 9, 2016. Worst-case scenario in the next four years: fascism, a wall, mass…(read more)
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and USC professor Viet Thanh Nguyen joins Barack Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, and Tom Hanks in being elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ 238th class. Originally published by USC Dornsife. In 2016, Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his novel The Sympathizer, which takes an unconventional and critical look at differing… (read more)
Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen called on 17 fellow refugee writers from across the globe to shed light on their experiences, and the result is The Displaced, a powerful dispatch from the individual lives behind current headlines, with proceeds to support the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Today the world faces an enormous refugee crisis—22.5… (read more)
Timothy K. August discusses The Sympathizer and other novels by Viet Thanh Nguyen in this review for Literature Interpretation Theory. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize win has fundamentally changed the way Vietnamese American writing is read. Or at least Nguyen is actively trying to change the way that Vietnamese American writing is read. Leveraging the access that… (read more)
