PEN Out Loud: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Maaza Mengiste and Lev Golinkin
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Maaza Mengiste, and Lev Golinkin discuss The Displaced, an essay collection by refugee writers at the Strand Bookstore. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer), and authors Maaza Mengiste (Beneath the Lion’s Gaze) and Lev Golinkin (A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka) discuss the critically acclaimed anthology The […]
An interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Piper French interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen about his books, The Sympathizer, The Refugees, and The Displaced in this article for Asymptote. In his nonfiction treatise on memory and the Vietnam War, Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen invokes the German writer W. G. Sebald’s concept of “secondhand memory”—the impact of war and trauma on those “seared […]
College admissions are corrupt because universities are. Here’s how to fix them.
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the college admissions scandal and solutions for the future in this op-ed for The Washington Post. The scandal around rich people buying college admissions for their underqualified children is disgusting and disheartening for everyone, but especially for those of us who teach and study at universities. My own University of Southern […]
VIET THANH NGUYEN The Sympathizer. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Kurt Johnson reviews The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen for The Newtown Review of Books. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel The Sympathizer shows the Vietnam war from a Vietnamese perspective, critiquing Hollywood’s renderings of the conflict in the process. When Ed Burns and Lynn Novick’s 17-hour documentary The Vietnam War was released in 2017, it rightly received […]
The MLK Speech We Need Today Is Not the One We Remember Most
Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam”, and its messages for this article on TIME. Most Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr. for his dream of what this country could be, a nation where his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen: “Memory is politics in my books”
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses The Sympathizer and The Refugees and the role of memory in his books in this interview with Eugenio Gianetta in Esquire. Ci incontriamo appena prima di pranzo al Borgo Antico di Monchiero, una località magica, immersa nel foliage di stagione, vicino ad Alba e al Castello di Grinzane Cavour. È lì […]
Christmas reading for the voltage finder
Malin Krutmeijer reviews The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen as part of holiday book recommendations for Aftonbladet. ”Sympatisören” av Viet Thanh Nguyen (Tranan) Det är med skohorn jag klämmer in Viet Thanh Nguyens Pulitzerprisbelönade Sympatisören i spänningsgenren, men den är faktiskt en spionroman. Spännande är det också, när den namnlösa huvudpersonen återberättar sina år som kommunistagent under Vietnamkriget. Han […]
A double-spy strange odyssey
Jakob Carlander reviews The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen for Upsala Nya Tidning. Jakob Carlander får nya perspektiv på Vietnamkriget efter att ha läst den amerikanske författaren Viet Thanh Nguyens prisade roman “Sympatisören”. Det finns ett talesätt som många flerkulturella människor genast kan identifiera sig med: Den som har två hemländer har inget. Den amerikanske […]
Race, Displacement, and the Public Intellectual: An Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Anthony Ocampo interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen about race and their intellectual worlds in this interview for Contexts. Viet Thanh Nguyen is a Vietnamese American novelist and academic whose books include The Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies, Race and Resistance, and a new edited collection, The Displaced, alongside his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning book The Sympathizer. Nguyen, University Professor of English, American […]
Sống sót / Survival
In this article for the Daily Bruin, Kristie-Valerie Hoang interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen and reports on the Vietnamese-American identity and struggle in California. December 1978. Quyen Di Chuc Bui spent three nights in a Santa Ana parking lot when he first moved to California. During his arrival to the Golden State, the winter nightfall and […]
Victims of War, and Now Victims of the Trump Administration
Viet Thanh Nguyen and Eric Tang discuss the deportation of Vietnamese refugees under the Trump administration in this Opinion piece for the New York Times. What is an appropriate punishment for a crime? The plight of thousands of Vietnamese refugees convicted of crimes in the United States and now threatened with detention or deportation demands an answer […]
He portrays a fragmented Vietnam and refugee life in the United States
Maria Edström reviews The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen for Göteborgs-Posten. Viet Thanh Nguygens prisade debutroman Sympatisören berättar om det “amerikanska kriget” ur en vietnamesisk spions synvinkel. Maria Edström läser en överlastad roman som lyfter först när den skildrar ett förött flyktingliv i USA. ”Vietnam är nära, utanför ditt fönster” sjöng den svenska Vietnamrörelsens sånggrupp […]
General Education S2E14: High Frequency: Viet Thanh Nguyen
On the last episode of General Education by Daily Trojan, Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the Asian American identity, refugees, and the USC community. Karan talks with University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen for this season’s final episode of General Education. Nguyen will start teaching at USC again next semester, after being on […]
I Love America. That’s Why I Have to Tell the Truth About It
Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, talks about immigration in America and his experiences as a Vietnamese refugee in this essay for TIME. Love it or leave it. Have you heard someone say this? Or have you said it? Anyone who has heard these five words knows what it means, because it almost always refers to America. Anyone who has heard this sentence knows it is a loaded gun, pointed […]
A CENTURY OF READING: THE 10 BOOKS THAT HAVE DEFINED THE 2010S (SO FAR)
Emily Temple lists Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer in LitHub‘s ten books that have defined the 2010s. Some books are flashes in the pan, read for entertainment and then left on a bus seat for the next lucky person to pick up and enjoy, forgotten by most after their season has passed. Others stick around, […]
