Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Power of Imagining & Building New Futures
Alexandra Da Dalt discusses the impact of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s talk about refugees, immigrant, communities of color, and writing in this piece for Rain…(read more)
Essays
John Kelly’s Ancestors Wouldn’t Have Fit In Either
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…(read more)
Ripping children from parents will shatter America’s soul
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)
The blackface incidents at Cal Poly show why we need more education about racism
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)
CANON FODDER
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)
A Novelist’s Exuberant Love Letter to a Mexican-American Clan
Viet Thanh Nguyen reviews Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels for The New York Times. Luis Alberto Urrea’s sorrowful and funny new novel, “The…(read more)
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen on the struggles of being a refugee in America
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)
What I’ve learned from my 4-year-old
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)
The Forgotten Victims of Agent Orange
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)
The Great Vietnam War Novel Was Not Written by an American
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)
Viet Thanh Nguyen Reveals How Writers’ Workshops Can Be Hostile
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s critique of American writers’ workshops for The New York Times. Literature and power cannot be separated. American literature is read around…(read more)
In Praise of Doubt and Uselessness
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)
Vietnamese and Vietnamese American Lit: A Primer from Viet Thanh Nguyen
“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)
Viet Thanh Nguyen on Being a Refugee, an American — and a Human Being
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., on Vietnam—and Today
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)
Trump Is a Great Storyteller. We Need to Be Better.
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)
