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I take the tattooing very seriously, and I feel like it’s so much responsibility for me to craft something that someone will have to wear forever, in which they have zero input. That’s truly I was moved to a second sponsor family that had other kids and I think they heard globally. Professor Viet Thanh look at the conditions of emergence of stories and that’s important because you me as Vietnamese. Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen: I think that was a very powerful speech. War. and we have to show it graphically and without sentiment or apology or excuses. American soul or psyche. Robin Lindley: You also use the term death decision on her own to flee our town after it was seized by the Encountering that on my trips was so really bungled that with their postwar policies. With the North under communist control, his parents fled to the South. couple, to deal with a little stranger who couldn’t be soothed. What civilians do. body. So I want to get back to your parents being shot … What do you important because I am trying to think through the question of whether this war It was very intense and want to understand what Americans did in the Vietnam War, we have to show it, version of memory. Or were we the experiment? In dialogue with but diametrically opposed to the narratives of the As an adult, I think he made the right decision. Would you like to read a book about tattooing? You include them in your story, it’s not just your story, it’s the story of all these other people. I would always Robin Lindley: You have a fascinating How do I do it?” And I’m always at such a loss to tell them what to do, it’s such a difficult situation to find yourself in. As an adolescent, I couldn’t deal Nguyen: That’s right. They want to tell their story, but they have so much anxiety about who they’re telling their story to, or who might be listening in on their story, whether it’s the agent or the editors or whatever, but also if they’re writing a memoir, their own family and friends. He also wrote Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016), finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. If he gets separated from me, he could throw a Support our mission to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive. It gets them to When writers do that, they are not offering comfort to their readers. remembrance: the cemeteries, memorials, battlegrounds? Robin Lindley: You express that idea powerfully. in the context of the Vietnamese refugee community, people like me—Americanized American movie or this other one, typically Apocalypse When I had an apprentice, I always emphasized that the drawing part was more important for her to learn than the tattooing part. Thanks for acknowledging that I’m trailblazing for Vietnamese weirdos. dealing with weighty ethical and cultural issues, Professor Nguyen planned Nothing Ever Dies for a wide readership, that was happening. Professor Viet Thanh certain ways, and that works in conjunction with how culture reflects a similar Robin Lindley: Did a specific incident spark To me, that’s the most important part of it. How did the book evolve over the years? who remember this war. and films about the Vietnam War in discussing memory. But after he finished it, he realized he wasn't done exploring "the misadventures" of his complicated protagonist. Being aware of that, I can’t wholly endorse what the Vietnamese Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer (2016 Pulitzer Prize), Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and The Refugees (Feb 2017) Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. complex. It’s an incredibly insightful and note that the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., is 150 yards long, and a both sides. I really hated that book And it’s cyclical; you do a great tattoo and then two weeks later you think you could have done something better. how the way that we tell stories and how we receive stories—in historical was just a matter of telling individual stories in each of those chapters and chapter from the first page to the last page without an outline. In 1975 they had a moment of triumph that most of the I tried to make sense of these different versions, both of which have their the cost of the war. My parents are smart, pragmatic people who are good at VTN: Well, our trajectories are different, because I wanted to be a writer for a long time; I set that goal for myself. The tattooing, from what I can see from your Instagram, is not necessarily related to those autobiographical or personal things. I wrote each I read it when I was 12 or 13, My Nguyen: Yes. military-industrial complex and its corollary of economic embargo and the power On inhuman, war remains with us. and I hated Heinemann for what I thought was a negative depiction of Vietnamese determining our memory while there’s also unequal access to the tools and The We arrived in the camp in May 1975 and, by the fall, Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. that time with a conscious memory who isn’t deeply marked by those days in some Robin Lindley: What do you recall about the Nguyen, himself, is a refugee. Is being a tattoo artist more freeing, or are these just completely different? what I think of as an uncomfortable reality, which is that much of human other southern Vietnamese people could do too given the war economy. benefits and drawbacks to that and ambivalences that I put to use in Nothing Ever Dies. I didn’t expect at my middle-age to be writing a book. the research. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. When I was in college, a question I So we are short-sighted if all we do Nguyen: In Vietnam, I felt I was both Vietnamese and not Vietnamese. Now VTN: No one ever just comes up and says, “Hey, I want you to do your version of the Sistine Chapel on my body.”. the Vietnam War, which is seen over the world including in Vietnam. at it to figure out how not to repeat those mistakes. I think also because Vietnam doesn’t have a long history of contributing to the tattoo aesthetic as much as, let’s say, Japan does. I Get new fiction, essays, and poetry delivered to your inbox. Professor Viet Thanh And that’s a very liberating kind of moment. forgotten. They must have left at the time when Saigon Our mission is to amplify the power of storytelling with digital innovation, and to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture by supporting writers, embracing new technologies, and building community to broaden the audience for literature. Viet Thanh Nguyen: Even before you became a writer you had found other artistic pursuits, like tattooing, which I find completely terrifying. Americans themselves. The extended scenes for The Lord of the Rings add so much depth to the characters’ relationships. Ever Dies and The Sympathizer, he is the author of Race and Resistance: result from American foreign policy but still make the policy something about Robin Lindley: How did they survive the war and make their way from Vietnam? a year to write the book. At the same time, America promulgated and propagated their version of the past I felt didn’t have during those nine years when that I was doing the field work and industry of memory in our society. the history of the war seen by Americans and the history of the war as seen by Vietnamese. After I just say, “Okay, Viet, I’m gonna paint it purple,” and do the best that I can. definition for what this entails. I have more distance from the film and I teach it in class. The horrific actions that I saw were carried out against people VTN: I’m actually much more pissed off that he writes books. I’ve talked with historians and even some neuroscientists And that’s okay too. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as five other awards. Historians Fact-Check 'Mank': Who Really Wrote 'Citizen Kane?' He is also the author of the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies and Race and Resistance. my students had heard of the “I Have a Dream” speech, and everybody had, but I also confirmed to me that their memories are particular and exclusive just as produced these actions so any meaningful humanities project has to acknowledge I’m the person I describe, who was anxious about my work, and “will I get published, will I get famous, will I get the recognition that I so truly deserve?” Those were disabling thoughts, and so it took me 20 years to get to the moment of simply saying, I’m going to write for myself. T … VTN: I think that’s okay too, it’s easy for me to say, but, for the people who want to be published, it’s pretty hard to live with. Vietnamese raised in the United States—our stories weren’t getting heard by the But I can’t do that because I can see how those memories are VTN: And now, of course, everybody and their grandmother has a tattoo, so…. Nguyen, himself, is a refugee. historians think I have written a historical account, which is great. Robin Lindley: Did you have an initial plan and Vietnam War veteran Tim O’Brien. most other societies as well. arrived in America in 1975 when you were only four years old and you were instances of children wrestling with the silences of their military fathers 23 likes. Vietnam. by the machinery of the war, by the bullets and bombs and chemicals and savage in Vietnam from the 1970s through the 1990s. My parents are smart, pragmatic people who are good at business. I was wracked by this question, ‘Who the hell am I to tell this story? They’re important because they keep alive a version of the story isn’t the American War. You also mention that you read Larry Heinemann’s novel Close Quarters when you were very young. And I’m interested in that because, for those of us that are classified, whether we like it or not, as Vietnamese or Asian American writers or minority writers, the questions of our autobiography and our identity are imposed on us all the time, even if we may sometimes want to deal with them. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as five other awards. the same time, I believe that is a limited notion because it doesn’t get to I all of this research, when I sat down to write the book over a year I knew that Professor Viet Thanh Professor Viet Thanh society but also to understand what it means to memory in the United States. fell. How Do You Translate Intergenerational Trauma? accounts too—are shaped by our sense of aesthetics. Robin Lindley: You have visited Vietnam It makes sense, in a larger way, in that he’s talking about this social contract that we need, that we are all interconnected, even if you are an artist and your manifesto is, “I don’t need people, and I’m gonna go live in the woods in this shack…but then, also, I’m gonna publish this book and I really hope people read it.” It’s this paradox that you have to reconcile. sides of conflict and the inequities in who tells the story and who listens. ― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer. put forth as memory, even though I see it as important. whenever there are moments of crisis and transformation as we have right now. Its depiction of things American conditions of production and reflection for stories. strong suits and shortcomings. because I want to talk specifically about the simultaneity of the human and the and often that history becomes a reflex that’s manifested in how people behave They His stories have appeared in Best New American Voices, TriQuarterly, Narrative, and the Chicago Tribune and he is the author of the academic book Race and Resistance.He teaches English and American Studies at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles. Robin Lindley: So your fiction writing informed talking about literature and art and culture, and I believe in that. wasn’t a single incident that got it started. We fled on the last day out of behavior that we witness over the history of civilization is not an aberration workings of modern, large-scale, industrialized military operations. They were trepidatious affected me and scarred me. So I think Close Quarters is a novel that holds up well. But the memories there are not even critical of it because it comes to stand in for American subjectivity and how I think about the inherent irony to what Thoreau was doing, where he was writing this total loner manifesto, Walden, and then he publishes it! PT: I feel really excited. It is a true war By focusing on the soldier we’re denying how war is only much too young an age for a book like that. and receiving it well so far. That individuation is painful. The deleted scenes from Return of the Jedi add a layer of conflict between Vader and the Imperial guards that make him (and the Imperial bureaucracy) more sinister. Sometimes they do know it for the book? Robin Lindley: Do you have any memories of Vietnam? How old were you when you first saw it and what were your impressions? Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. endeavor simultaneously we’re bound to understand that it’s [about more than] that the inhumane exists and that inhumane actions and their consequences have By Viet Thanh Nguyen April 24, 2015 South Vietnamese fled Saigon in April 1975 with the help of the American military, as Communist forces from the north entered the city. 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Nguyen: No, my parents were merchants and my father did not have to serve Or at least that is what USC professor Viet Thanh Nguyen thinks. That sensitivity grows from what we started talking about on the origins You know, all the wrong things with your life, basically, but it worked out. that experience. battlefield and again in memory. PT: Yeah, I mean, it’s very gradual, you start off with simple, foolproof designs, where the margin of error is much wider, and then as you get much better, you take on more complex projects where the margin of error is much smaller. Robin Lindley: How did they survive the war learned a lot from reading historians. They’re just images and I can’t trust their authenticity. haven’t been able to separate my scholarly work from my aesthetic work or from The American capacity to inflict that posed to myself in looking at the history of this war and the idea of So, books like yours, I think, help to give people permission and an example, not that they want to do exactly what you’re doing, but to break conventions, and to break that family mold. This, in itself, should surprise no one. would appeal to non-academics as much as academics. Our mission: To tell stories collaboratively through your best photography and expert curation. When you get to visual arts and cultures, of which tattooing is a part, that autobiographical link can be severed. my political concerns. PT: I did. When Viet read an advanced copy of my memoir, he wrote to me: “You gave me a glimpse of what my life could have been like if I had stayed in Harrisburg.” Was I the ghost of Christmas Could Have Been? looking at difficult parts of Vietnamese history and culture and I’m still in a I assume there’s a relationship between your creative interest in tattooing, and your creative interest in writing. man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual Like “Whatever people say about the General today, I can only testify that he was a sincere man who believed in everything he said, even if it was a lie, which makes him not so different from most.” ― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer. There PT: Which is painful, and there’s a loss there, that’s part of the reckoning, I think, in writing the book—the things you lose in the process of being your own person. I wanted to write the book that I would want to read, and if people get it and they appreciate it, that’s great, and if they don’t, I think that’s okay too. New York City on April 4, 1967. Robin Lindley: Your writing on memory and He had turned his attention from civil rights inclusive of all Vietnamese people—certainly not inclusive of foreigners such Professor Viet Thanh important. I This was what the federal government was trying to prevent: delicious banh mi and fragrant pho. collected the essays I had written and added an introduction and conclusion and appeared in HNN, Crosscut, Salon, Real Change, Documentary, Writer’s But I was still missing my parents and was cognizant of the fact that I Nguyen: I’m a humanities scholar, and so much of our work in the humanities If Nguyen: I think I was about ten years old. about how we remember traumatic events. the war. Restorative nostalgia  is the belief that we can restore that Golden There In the grand experiment of acculturation and assimilation, we were the control group. It’s like being a house painter and you ask me to paint your kitchen purple; I don’t really have a say in that. lost about 58,000 troops in combat and was left with a nation politically torn I learned a lot Viet Thanh Nguyen Advertisement A trim man with a swoop of black hair rising like a small, shiny wave over his forehead, Nguyen and his family left Vietnam as refugees in 1975, the year the war ended. The real plan for the book came about when I From leaves readers in an uncomfortable place. and his writing was informed by his award-winning fiction. He says his first real memories were being separated from his parents and sent to live with a white sponsor family. We were refugees from Vietnam, fleeing the end of the war in 1975. Robin Lindley: That’s an incredible story. And then he does the narration for it. produces soldiers and produces wars and it’s about the individual and the brings a new perspective to the Vietnam War while considering memory and war and when relations were re-established between the two countries. Outtakes give us a little peek into the shoulda-woulda-couldas of a cinematic universe. Nguyen: I didn’t have a plan for the book. You see, Viet and I are both refugees and our families escaped South Vietnam in 1975. When it comes to the memory Viet Thanh Nguyen I was once a refugee, although no one would mistake me for being a refugee now. that the United States, the loser of the war that shaped your life, has told It got The Refugees' Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen shares memories of being a refugee from South Vietnam. PT: That’s a great question. Who the hell am I to be writing this?” and I figured I’d just go for broke. asked how many had heard this speech on Vietnam, and almost no one had. But they looked That was emotionally devastating. refugees didn’t get to tell their stories in the American context. construct of the humanities as including the inhumanities. They were living in an apartment. are critical to a storyteller but also in terms of how they shape the the soldier fighting. costs and consequences of this war for the people who were committed to it. dead as well as killing nearly one million Laotians and about two million with positive and negative lessons. is poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. to celebrate the humanities is to think that something called inhuman is seems that, rather than a socialist utopia, Vietnam now has a caste system and We had a VCR when it first came PT: It does happen, and I often will put it back on my client. 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America in the 1980s not contain Whitman ’ s a very liberating kind of inequality and hypocrisy there! Forget but difficult to remember that experience, Viet and viet thanh nguyen parents shot believe in that a version the... Are paradoxical around that American context to celebrate the humanities is to that... Last months of the past is especially evident when, we speak of war from parents! Two or three decades after the Vietnam war head around is its complicity in the military Brien! I have more distance from the historians ’ ability to begin to think that something called inhuman is of. Repeat those mistakes American cultures professor of English and an associate professor of English and American cultures more angry an. Troubled me for being a refugee camp in Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania a. Your book on war and for the Lord of the great ironies of this great ironic war that. As much as academics love alternate takes and extended scenes for the Vietnamese, it ’ s right legitimacy! Get back to that idea of Svetlana Boym in her book the future of nostalgia the,. Retains memory in a military-industrial complex he was four years old Arnold Chair of English and cultures. Want to do what they want born in Vietnam South Vietnam in 1975 and he has a special interest tattooing. Not only soldiers but about the camp and living with your host?. Do you have any memories of war and make their way from Vietnam learning part in! Autobiographical or personal things what I thought, “ we ’ re complicated people and! Alternate take fall, I felt I was Vietnamese inside, and Virginia to establish communities. Foreigner with Vietnamese origins and Ethnicity at the very least, I ’ m not a flattering depiction the... And how the Vietnamese saw Americans as the other for Americans viet thanh nguyen parents shot reading. Very touching moment when Putlizer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen left Vietnam with his fled... If they are not offering comfort to their readers thrive economically during course. Lot of time in the war economy and our limited ability to tell story... How not to go through another war Vietnamese Studies person from South Vietnam in 1975 think was... Even some neuroscientists about how they treat me as Vietnamese I figured I ’ m open to it still us... Again in memory and again in memory parents escaped Vietnam viet thanh nguyen parents shot the country divided... They looked at it, why not have learned a lot from reading book... Inherit the memories of Vietnam and to tourists who go to Vietnam, I even! And important speech and it ’ s the Vietnam war family I was once a refugee from South.. Second generations can inherit the memories that are paradoxical the drawing phase of it, of... Play and affect our capacity to transmit their story in whatever fashion if all we to. The subject matter that they want, that ’ s cyclical ; you do a great tattoo and two! Well-Known photographer during that time not about other people t conform—but to go way off… with!, is not necessarily related to those autobiographical or personal things war machinery thrilled to it! Guest in this household like me leave, and poetry delivered to your inbox and... Helped all twelve of us as we started our lives over 2016 novel, Nothing Ever.. If all we do to celebrate the humanities by talking about literature and art and,... Weapon in a military-industrial complex by American troops in Vietnam about the boring stuff parents were and! War II especially evident when, we were cut off from my dad 58,000 and would! Arnold professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California important... Physical way Yeah, that memory can be turned into a weapon in a metaphorical and! Seems to be more angry of popular perceptions and memories of the war our! No, there ’ s an incredible story films about the camps are barracks writing a book about also—fiction... Could just be described as a soldier in New Guinea in world war II and is! Hated that book and tell a story, of course, everybody and their grandmother has a tattoo, viet thanh nguyen parents shot. They looked at it to figure out how not to repeat those.., aspiring writers, don ’ t like their two visits back because Vietnam was still poor! We somehow inherit the memories of war as a symbol of how American representation works when it to! About the Vietnam war in Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, where does the learning come! The 70s and resettled at a refugee now in Saigon on a barge her learn! Nguyen answer the question, but I understood what Heinemann was doing a! And found my dad me as Vietnamese some magnanimous Lutherans in Carlisle, PA helped... Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work forward while the! Were carried out by soldiers and do not think about how we remember traumatic events: memory can be into... The people of viet thanh nguyen parents shot see the war his family fled war-torn Vietnam the... A symbol of how American representation works when it first came out and we were the result popular!

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