LibGuides: English 559: Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer

About the Book

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Publication Date: 2015
The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as seven other awards,The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow,The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a "man of two minds," a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

OUR VIETNAM WAR NEVER ENDED (article)
This article by Viet Thanh Nguyen was originally published in The New York Times on April 24, 2015. A version of this oped appears in print on April 26, 2015, on page SR4 of the New York edition with the headline: Our Vietnam War Never Ended.
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen Discusses 'The Sympathizer' And His Escape From Vietnam (podcast, 35 minutes)
Interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. May 17, 2016
This is Hell! On the limitations of memory and the persistence of war. (Podcast, 50 minutes)
Writer Viet Thanh Nguyen explores the ways war wins itself in the minds of the American public - from the erasure of conflict's economic roots and civilian victims alike, to the coercive power of the US memory industry to commodify and alter historical perspective - and warns that unless we radically revisit our understanding of wars past, they'll push us towards wars future.
Writers and Company Viet Thanh Nguyen (Podcast, 52 minutes)
Writers & Company with Eleanor Wachtel: Viet Thanh Nguyen Podcast. Air Date: Oct 02, 2016
"Eleanor speaks with Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, "The Sympathizer." Viet talks about his family's harrowing escape from Saigon, and how his dual identity influences his life and work."

VIETNAM WAR

Vietnam War
Goldstein, Natalie. Vietnam War, Historical Controversies in War and Military, 2005. History Research Center.
The Vietnam War (documentary)
An immersive [10 episode] documentary film series directed by acclaimed filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the epic story of one of the most divisive, consequential and misunderstood events in American history, as it has never before been told on film. Winner of Best Limited Documentary Series at the Critics' Choice Documentary Awards and nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary from the Directors Guild of America.

VIETNAMESE ACCOUNTS OF THE VIETNAM WAR

Another War Memorial: Memories of the American War in Viet Nam
A site created for an undergraduate course Viet Thanh Nguyen taught in Spring 2011 at University of Southern California. Students interviewed survivors of the Vietnam War and shared those interviews on the course’s evolving archive of memories, An Other War Memory site.

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN THE UNITED STATES

First Days Story Project: Voices of the Vietnamese Refugee Experience
Inspired by the Academy Award®-nominated film Last Days in Vietnam, which chronicles the harrowing final hours of the Vietnam War, we [PBS American Experience] joined forced with StoryCorps to create the First Days Story Project -- an effort to collect, preserve, and celebrate the stories of Vietnamese American refugees and Vietnam veterans. The project invited over 200 participants to have 40-minute, uninterrupted conversations with a loved one or friend, in order to document the Vietnamese American refugee experience through the voices of those who lived it. The resulting content is featured on this website and archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project
Explore the Vietnamese American experience through oral history interview recordings, transcripts, photos, documents, and other primary sources that document these experiences. Their stories capture the complexities and humanity of Vietnamese Americans’ lives before the war, their roles during the war, their difficult paths of escape and resettlement, the creation of their ethnic communities in the United States, and their current lives in Southern California.

EXPERIENCES OF "THE BOAT PEOPLE"

Vietnam 'Boat People'
Kauffman, Jill. Vietnam 'Boat People', Historical Controversies in Migration, Immigration, and Diaspora. History Research Center,
Vietnamese Boat People Podcast series
The Vietnamese Boat People podcast is stories of hope, survival and resilience. Between 1975 to 1992, almost two million Vietnamese risked their lives to flee oppression and hardship after the Vietnam War, in one of the largest mass exoduses in modern history. Escaping by boat, many found freedom in foreign land, many were captured and brutally punished, and many did not survive the journey. This population of people are known as the ‘Vietnamese Boat People' and these are their stories.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Viet Thanh Nguyen Explains the Difference Between Expats, Immigrants and Refugees. (video, 2 minutes)
What's the difference between an expat and an immigrant? And where do refugees fit in? Acclaimed author and USC professor, Viet Thanh Nguyen, breaks it down in this Annenberg International video, made in collaboration with USC's Center for Public Diplomacy.