In Trump’s vision of a white America, immigrants should be grateful and servile
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the meaning and effects of Trump’s recent comments about immigrants in this op-ed for The Washington Post. When Donald Trump first proclaimed “Make America Great Again,” many white Americans focused on the slogan’s explicit appeal. Why wouldn’t we want America to be great again? But many of us who do not […]
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 […]
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 Washington Post. Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author of “The Sympathizer,” which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the short story collection “The Refugees.” When I was 4 years old, […]
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 first-year PhD student at Berkeley, I told the English department chairman, a famous Americanist, that I wanted to write a dissertation on Vietnamese and Vietnamese American literature. “You can’t do that,” […]
