the displaced viet thanh nguyen

Viet Thanh Nguyen (born March 13, 1971) is a Vietnamese-American novelist. I’m Amy Goodman. Dina Nayeri And that indicates that what Viet is doing is he’s doing what he says should be done. One sponsor took my parents, one sponsor took my 10-year-old brother, one sponsor took 4-year-old me. In this era of President Drumpf, as President Drumpf and Vice President Pence head to Dallas today to speak at the National Rifle Association, and this caravan that President Drumpf has railed against has made it to the U.S.-Mexico border, the participants lawfully applying for asylum one by one, your thoughts? ARIEL DORFMAN: So, you know, in the 19th century, as colonialism rose all over the world, and Europe expanded, very, very drastically, not everybody could go and visit these countries and see these exotic “savages,” these natives. Talk about your concerns at the time, well over a year ago, and what you feel now. The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives consists of essays of various writers who fled their homelands in search of a new existence. December 5, 2020 AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. And what do we do with the past? AMY GOODMAN: And how does that affect your life here in the United States, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a professor at University of Southern California, chair of—what’s the name of the department? They asked me, “Do you want to change your name?” And I thought—. And I have to use English to fight back. We are joined by two remarkable refugees. Find books So, my novel, in this case, very specifically, is trying to take the most innocent kid you can imagine, who everybody can identify, every—most Americans can identify, and saying, here comes this captive, somebody who was taken across a border against his will, like slaves have—right?—and so others have, or like Viet himself—he didn’t want to come here necessarily, he was just brought here, right?—and force us to look into what that life means, and also ask how we can forgive ourselves and forgive the past, because I don’t think that it’s a question always of revenge and of anger. 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). 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). 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen reads with contributors Kao Kalia Yang and Vu Tran from The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. Unlike him, I will never be a stranger to my children. Explain. VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I was born in Vietnam in 1971. Because of this, I insist on being called a refugee, since the temptation to pretend that I am not a refugee is strong.” Talk about this. I was very moved by that. They’ve always been with us. He will be presenting on his academic work or, at the literary events, reading from and talking about his most recent books: the novel The Sympathizer (2015), the cultural history Nothing Ever Dies (2016), the short story collection The Refugees (2017), and the children’s book Chicken of the… (read more), Viet Thanh Nguyen joins the Pulitzer Prize board as its first Vietnamese-American member. So, “Ode to Joy” was carefully chosen for you, Ariel. And I insist on that, because I think it’s so important for people who are—who have been refugees to assert these kinds of identities, so we can continue to talk about the difference between refugees and immigrants, and the necessity to empathize with refugees, which is, I think, very important for both former refugees and writers to do. And my memories really start after we make it to the United States and we were put in one of four refugee camps in this country. Well, I mean, what I said in that New York Timespiece was, basically, “You know, America, you are now, legitimately, speaking about how the Russians intervened in your elections, right? —The Millions. VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, you know, it’s really interesting for me to interview people like Arundhati Roy and then talk to Ariel Dorfman and realize—it’s very inspirational that people have been carrying this on for years and years and years. His latest book is called The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, at home, to his own shock, some of his closest immigrant rights allies ended up calling him the “deporter-in-chief.” He deported millions and millions and millions of immigrants to this country. But, you know, basically, we tell love stories, we tell betrayal stories, we tell stories about everyday people, and we hope that some of the voices will seep through. Becoming a refugee means watching as those anchors are severed, one by one, until at last you’re floating outside of society, an untethered phantom in need of a new life. The community celebration offers music, dance, art, speaker series,… (read more), Viet Thanh Nguyen So, Drumpf can eat his tacos, you know, all he wants, but the fact is, we’re already here. 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). “Now, America, You Know How Chileans Felt.” We’re going to talk about that in a minute. In so doing he gives ordinary Westerners a heart-wrenching insight into the uprooted lives led in their midst…the collection succeeds in demonstrating that this dispersed community in some ways resembles other nations. It took me a while for me not to—not to sort of let tears—I’m very sentimental about these things. But I feel an enormous sympathy for those who have lost everything and who move across these borders. My books are called—you know, The Sympathizer was called an immigrant novel, and I said, “That’s absolutely wrong.” I’m a refugee. Viet Thanh Nguyen Although more immigrant than refugee, Grande makes helpful distinctions between the two modes of entry into a new country; … David Bezmozgis If they formed their own country, it would be the world’s 24th largest—bigger than South Africa, Spain, Iraq or Canada.”. LISTEN TO THE INTRODUCTION NOW* Viet Thanh Nguyen (born March 13, 1971) is a Vietnamese-American novelist. Even for readers seeking to help, the sheer scale of the problem renders the experience of refugees hard to comprehend. — Entertainment Weekly, “In this collection of 17 essays (one consisting of cartoons) by writers who were forced to leave their homes, Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer-winning novelist and himself a Vietnamese refugee to America, begins to assemble one. So I sort of emphasize that a lot. "I was once a refugee, although no one would mistake me for being a refugee now. —The Economist, “…an incisive and heartbreaking exploration of the refugee crisis…” Your email address will not be published. And one of the things that traumatizes me now, sincerely, Amy, is that I thought that, in some sense, this couldn’t happen again, and I find it happening all over again in some very strange authoritarian way. —PBS Online, “Poignant and timely, these essays ask us to live with our eyes wide open during a time of geo-political crisis. Literary, translation, and film rights are handled by Nat Sobel at … Ariel Dorfman, best-selling author, playwright, poet, activist, new book is Darwin’s Ghosts, a novel, before that, a book of essays, Homeland Security Ate My Speech: Messages from the End of the World. VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, one of the essays in The Displaced is by Reyna Grande, who came as an undocumented immigrant. And they were displayed in zoos, and millions of people, as if in reality shows, would go there. In The Displaced, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, himself a refugee, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers to explore and illuminate the refugee experience. ", "One of my father’s greatest gifts to me, and indirectly to his grandchildren, is this: His decision to immigrate has allowed me to be the parent he could never be. I think that until we—until Americans deal—and I feel myself an American in that sense, very proudly so, as a Chilean American, Argentine American—I feel I’m a Vietnamese American, I feel these are all the possibilities. Required fields are marked *. The United States has been meddling in the southern countries south of the border for a very long time, and would rather think about these people as undocumented immigrants or people who are trying to invade this country, when in fact questions of immigration are totally related to U.S. foreign policy and U.S. drug policy and things like this that the United States would rather disavow. So I think it’s a powerful political protest that’s bringing to visibility the human crises that are taking place around these efforts for people to move. . We’re not listening.” We’re just not listening to them. So I’m saying, “You know, America, one of the things that this is a great opportunity for you to ask yourselves—well, you don’t like the Russians intervening in your elections. And so, for whatever reason, I just resisted. And they’ve made their own industries, right? AMY GOODMAN: Last night, I heard you in conversation at the New York Public Library, Viet, speaking with Arundhati Roy, who was our guest yesterday, the great writer from India. I don’t know how I learned English. ", "For those who can never quite accept her, a refugee is like a ghost. And we’re joined by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, now has written a book called The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives. VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah, I think people mean that as a compliment, but it’s not really a compliment. 404D Taper Hall Featuring original essays by a collection of writers from around the world, The Displaced … ", "They had been mere children before the meal, playing a game I was not particularly interested in, but after that morning glory meal, they became the warriors of my childhood in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. And I want that to invade the language. He is also the editor of a new collection titled “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.” We are also joined by the Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman, who has been described as one of the greatest Latin American novelists. But, for me, it was also a time to think about what it is that the Drumpf presidency represents. So the war wasn’t over for Americans either. You’re very playful, which I love, you know? But they’re the—again, corporate America just doesn’t hear in Vietnamese. Maybe it’s time for you to stop intervening in other people’s elections.” And also—I didn’t even mention that there—I mean, you know, Russia was invaded by the United States after the revolution of 1918. So, the idea behind this is, we are going to find out that one of those photographs, the man whose photograph is being plastered on the face of this young American kid, in fact, was a captive in a human zoo in Europe. Living in exile, he became one of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s most vocal critics, as well as a celebrated playwright and novelist. And you say, “refugees are the zombies of the world, the undead who rise from dying states to march or swim toward our borders in endless waves. You would have found us tagging along with our parents for parent-teacher meetings to help translate and working at our family-run businesses on the weekends. And his legacy is always there, so memory is very important to me in that sense, as well. Monuments Project: Expanding the American Story, Catch Viet at one of these appearances in the coming months and say hello! He lives in Los Angeles. They lost relatives, property, careers, identities, selves. USC PAM Event: Southeast Asian Refugee Narratives, December 9, 2020 Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, the editor of The Displaced, brings together a host of prominent refugee writers including Thi Bui and Joseph Azam to explore and illuminate the refugee experience. They’re unwanted where they come from. ", "For four years, [my father’s] family lived deep inside Russia, a time characterized by constant hunger. AMY GOODMAN: Maybe a way to convince President Drumpf to try to stop his efforts at building this wall is to say, “You’re going to be keeping all these refugees in.”. I’ve met many Americans of the generation of the war, whether they were soldiers or antiwar protesters or just people observing on TV. Your browser does not support the audio element. They’re creatures from who-knows-where—from Thailand, from Patagonia, from Africa. Aleksandar Hemon Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. Kao Kalia Yang. AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about that other September 11th, 1973. To them, she’s come from another world, an obscure and incomprehensible world, and now resides in the shadows of this one—an alien entity, an intruder. There’s like a very vibrant Vietnamese-language press, Vietnamese-language pop culture, which I tried to empathize in The Sympathizer with those songs. This panel, a part of BookCon, was moderated by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. So, I feel as if that’s my major concern now. AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to have to leave it there, but we’re going to continue the conversation and post it online at democracynow.org. These people had lost everything. The Displaced is also a commitment: ABRAMS will donate 10 percent of the cover price of this book, a minimum of $25,000 annually, to the International Rescue Committee, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid, relief, and resettlement to refugees and other victims of oppression or violent conflict. Reyna Grande questions the line between “official” refugee and “illegal” immigrant, chronicling the disintegration of the family forced to leave her behind; Fatima Bhutto visits Alejandro Iñárritu’s virtual reality border crossing installation “Flesh and Sand”; Aleksandar Hemon recounts a gay Bosnian’s answer to his question, “How did you get here?”; Thi Bui offers two uniquely striking graphic panels; David Bezmozgis writes about uncovering new details about his past and attending a hearing for a new refugee; and Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang recalls the courage of children in a camp in Thailand. Along these paths are friends lost, debts that can never be repaid, kindnesses that can’t possibly be returned, promises and hopes broken, slights and affronts that are hard to forget or say aloud, places of refuge filled with people who bravely come together from all corners, moving from place to place, looking for safety, for community, for home. And “Bang Bang” was one of those. But it turns out that this is policy of the United States, has been intervening in elections everywhere, including democratic Chile, where they helped to overthrow the government by using some of the exact same tactics, except, of course, there was no social media, right?” But the CIA used very, very similar methods of trying to intervene and to change the way in which people voted, thought, dreamt, worked, acted. And it’s a language in which I understand American history and American culture. Download books for free. Viet Thanh Nguyen is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times.His novel, “The Sympathizer,” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016. Organizers say 158 members of the caravan have already crossed the border, where their asylum requests will be processed. The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives | Viet Thanh Nguyen | download | B–OK. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. His dad works at the Polaroid factory. His latest book is a novel. And having a president that is as nice and as articulate and as intelligent as President Obama didn’t really change these kinds of American imperial policies. 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). Do you each have a question for each other? VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I grew up in a Vietnamese refugee community in the 1970s and 1980s in San Jose. Copyright © 2018 - Abrams Press, An Imprint of ABRAMS, *Excerpt from the recording THE DISPLACED: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives by Viet Thanh Nguyen, reprinted under a license arrangement originating with Brilliance Publishing, Inc., www.brilliancepublishing.com. Then we should find out what our role, the role of the United States, has been in overthrowing Iran—I mean, everywhere that they’ve intervened. But in the United States, you can do that. A year earlier, nearly 40,000 refugees entered during that same period—four times more. They were all part of a month-long caravan that brought refugees fleeing violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to the U.S. border. 7 likes. In Chile, there was a coup. Of course they probably had seen refugees—people like myself, not the huddled desperate dangerous characters who were portrayed in the popular media. And the Vietnamese people are really into pop music. And so, this was the environment that I grew up in. I’m just saying, the important thing is that this intervention of the Russians in the U.S. election should not be only a case of lamentation about, oh, how terrible this is, oh. Forty-five years ago, he fled Chile after a U.S.-backed coup displaced President Salvador Allende. And in 1975, when Vietnam fell, or was liberated, depending on your point of view, my family became refugees. Talk about that connection to the United States. It’s a great honor to have you with us. AMY GOODMAN: You talk about immigrants being more reassuring than refugees. Maaza Mengiste But this is the hymn that people would sing in the streets of Santiago as they were being beaten by the police, saying, “We dream of a world where someday we will all be brothers, we will all be sisters,” right? He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. The book—oh, the latest book is called The Displaced. Every inch forward is a reminder of one’s frailty. I’m very interested in love stories now, because I think it’s very important that we understand how that love and a woman—especially I’m interested in empowering women in the stories, right? You know, Drumpf represents American instincts that have been with us since the founding of this country. 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