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 […]
Wesley Yang and the Search for Asian-American Visibility
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses Wesley Yang’s collection of essays, The Souls of Yellow Folk, for the New York Times Book Review. THE SOULS OF YELLOW FOLK Essays By Wesley Yang 215 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $24.95. My disappointment with Wesley Yang’s collection of essays, “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” stems from the difference between […]
Could Asian-Americans Turn Orange County Blue?
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses Asian-American influence in Orange County for the 2018 midterm elections in this op-ed for New York Times. When I was a freshman at the University of California, Riverside, in 1988, I drove a carload of excited fellow Vietnamese students to nearby Orange County. It was only 13 years after the end […]
Bill Ruehlmann: In “The Displaced,” we see immigrants, see ourselves
Bill Ruehlmann reviews The Displaced by Viet Thanh Nguyen for The Virginian-Pilot. Sometimes a true story by a complete stranger can hit you like a stomach punch. There are 18 of them in “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives” (Abrams Press, 190 pp., $25), edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, also recipient […]
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, […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen on trauma, displacement, and identifying as a refugee
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the role of trauma for refugees as well as his personal experiences in this interview with Ravi Gurumurthy and Grant Gordon for Displaced. Here is the transcript: Ravi Gurumurthy: (music). Ravi Gurumurthy: Hello and welcome to Displaced. I’m Ravi Gurumurthy. Grant Gordon: And I’m Grant Gordon. Ravi Gurumurthy: And […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen: ‘As a refugee, I’ll tell you how it is’
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his personal experiences and the state of refugees with Angelo Mastrandrea in this interview for il manifesto. There is an English version below the original article. Lattes, premiati Yu Hua e Antunes Lo scrittore cinese Yu Hua è stato il vincitore del Premio Bottari Lattes Grinzane 2018 per la sezione Il germoglio, […]
Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen Calls for More Marginalized Communities’ Voices in Literature
Viet Thanh Nguyen reads from The Refugees and speaks on the need for marginalized communities’ narrative voices at Cornell University. Refugee and Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen spoke on the need for more marginalized communities’ narrative voices in literature during a reading in Goldwin Smith Hall on Thursday. The reading was part of the […]
Pulitzer Prize-winning author talks immigration, refugees at UMD lecture
Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks at the University of Maryland about refugees and their stories in this article for The Diamondback. A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist urged University of Maryland students on Tuesday to seek out and share the stories of refugees and other groups who often feel unwanted in their home country and in the United […]
Viet Thanh Nguyen and Vu Tran: “Narrative Plentitude” | Talks at Google
Viet Thanh Nguyen and Vu Tran discuss narrative plentitude and Asian representation in popular culture during this Talk at Google. Here is the transcript: Viet Nguyen: Thanks for the introduction. Thanks to Barb and to Jinja for bringing us both out here. And I just want to say, you guys have a great building, workspace, […]
TBS eFM This Morning Seoul
Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his personal experiences as a refugee and the current refugee crisis in this interview with eFM This Morning Seoul. Here is a transcript: Speaker 1: (Singing) Alex Jensen: Now, to celebrate our new fall season, we have a special guest. An English professor and novelist, Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won […]
“REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING”: AN INTERVIEW WITH VIET THANH NGUYEN
Karl Ashoka Britto interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen about his novels and personal experiences as a refugee for Public Books. Since the 2015 publication of his Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen has emerged as one of the literary world’s leading public intellectuals. At a time of rising xenophobia and anti-refugee sentiment in the […]
“Good” Refugees, “Bad” Refugees: A Conversation in Paris with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Christine Buckley interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen about his books and refugees for the Los Angeles Review of Books. VIET THANH NGUYEN goes to bed early. Like 10 o’clock, before the sun goes down in the Parisian summer. Which was why we met for an apéro at 6:00 p.m. one hot evening, two days after a French team […]
True War Stories
Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about the Vietnam War in the special issue of the Asian American Literary Review. Reprinted in Oklahoma Humanities Magazine. ON TRUE WAR STORIES: There’s no such thing as a good war story. War is hell. Like many Americans and people the world over, I enjoy war stories that depend on what […]
