[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Thanks
for the introduction.
Thanks to Barb and to Ginger
for bringing us both out here.
And I just want to say, you
guys have a great building,
workspace, whatever
you want to call it.
I'm just bummed I didn't get
invited for the full day.
[LAUGHTER]
So I could make use of
the massage facilities
and your video games
and everything else.
VU TRAN: I just
want the tea thing.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
Yeah, the Teabot.
That's pretty amazing.
VU TRAN: Yeah, the
Teabot, yes, yes.
I would like to have that.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: I
could get used to that.
VU TRAN: Well, it's great to
be talking to you again, Viet.
And thank everyone for coming.
I thought we would begin our
conversation with "Crazy Rich
Asians."
You mentioned it
during our tour,
and I thought that would
be a good place to start.
I think by the movie and
the book's definition,
I don't believe either of
us are crazy rich Asians,
but you're doing quite well.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yes.
I think we're only
one out of three.
We're Asians.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
But the movie is a
starting point for an op-ed
you wrote recently in
"The New York Times"
about narrative plenitude.
About how a movie as popular
as "Crazy Rich Asians"
can never be on its own.
It can never, on
its own, vitalize
the presence of
Asian-Americans on the screen.
And that we need as many
of those kinds of movies
to do that.
And this idea you kind of
came up with in your book,
"Nothing Ever Dies,"
and speaks to a scenario
where stories featuring
certain races or communities
are in abundance.
And in that abundance,
allows for not only
a range of portrayals, but
also a range of quality
of portrayals, right?
It bestows upon
them the privilege
of being mediocre
because there aren't
enough high-quality portrayals
to absorb the low-quality ones.
Whereas, you say,
narrative scarcity
does not allow for something
like that-- for mediocrity,
for example.
And that its narrow or
inhuman, or simply mediocre
portrayals ends up defining
that race or community.
So I wanted to ask you
if you could talk more
about this idea of
narrative plenitude,
and how it affects the
Asian-American community,
and your own personal
confrontation with it.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, you
grew up in Oklahoma, right?
VU TRAN: I did.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: So
I think you probably
had an even harder
time of it than I did,
and I grew up in San Jose,
in northern California
in the '70s and '80s.
And San Jose, in
northern California,
it's a diverse, multicultural
place and everything like that,
right?
And I grew up in a
rougher part of town,
and so I was surrounded
by Vietnamese refugees
and Mexican immigrants
and people like that.
But even so, at a
certain point, I
had a very personal
confrontation with this idea
that there weren't enough
stories about people like us.
And that is, I went to a
very elite high school.
It was mostly an
all-white high school,
except that there was
a handful of us who
were of Asian descent.
We knew we were different,
we just didn't know how.
But every day at
lunch, we would gather
in a corner of the campus
and we would call ourselves
the Asian Invasion.
[LAUGHTER]
And this was the
mid-1980s, right?
So the only language we had for
ourselves was this racist term.
And obviously, instead of being
crazy rich Asians at the time,
we knew we were the Asians who
were threatening to take over.
And the funny thing
was, last year, I
had a chance to go back
to visit that campus
and give a talk to
all 1,600 students,
and we really have taken over.
[LAUGHTER]
But that's another story.
But looking back at that time,
I think what I realize now
that I didn't know
then, is that we were
living in narrative scarcity.
That we didn't have
enough stories about us,
and that the only stories
that we could refer to
were these racist stories
about Asians who were invading.
Obviously, the idea of
Asian wars and things
like that, which many of us
had come from, or fled from.
And looking back, I know
that what I needed--
what we all needed--
back then were more
stories, right?
And we needed more writers.
We needed more filmmakers.
We need more artists.
We needed more politicians.
We needed more journalists who
would be getting our stories
and our voices out there.
And that is the difference
between narrative scarcity
and narrative plenitude.
Narrative scarcity means
very few of the stories
out there are about you,
whoever you happen to be.
Whatever kind of minority
you happen to be coming from.
Narrative plenitude is
when almost all the stories
are about you.
And that's one of the
sure signs that you
are part of some kind of
majority, when you can take it
for granted that some
fundamental part of who you are
is being shown to you in the
stories that you encounter.
And when you live in an
environment like that,
you totally take it
for granted, right?
So when somebody makes a stupid
Hollywood movie, you can say,
that's just Hollywood.
That's just a movie.
That's a story.
My students say it all the time.
I say, you're right.
One story that's a bad
story is just a story.
But when all the stories
are saying the same thing,
then it's more
than just a story.
It's actually saying something
fundamental about the culture.
And so again, when all
the stories are about you,
it's saying something
about who you
are as a part of this culture.
And when most of the stories are
not about you, or not about us,
then when the one story
comes out that is about you,
enormous weight is put on that.
So for better or for worse--
VU TRAN: You can't
casually dismiss it.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: You
can't casually dismiss it.
So when "Crazy Rich Asians"
came out, the reason why there
was so much pressure put on this
is because Hollywood had not
made a movie with
Asian-American leading
actors in about 25 years,
since "Joy Luck Club," right?
And so everybody was
like, this better
be a good movie because
if it's a good movie,
it'll change all
of our fortunes.
And if it's a bad
movie, we'll never
get another movie
for another 25 years.
That's a totally unfair
expectation to put on a movie.
But this is what narrative
scarcity is about.
And I think the
ramifications of that simply
beyond the world of
artists and storytellers
is that it's true pretty much
everywhere else, if you're
a part of a minority,
you're not allowed
the luxury of mediocrity.
If you succeed or if you fail,
your success or your failure
is somehow tied to
your entire group.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right?
I'm assuming-- I
don't know if it's--
and it's true in a
lot of corporations.
I don't know how
true it is here.
But you feel this
weight, this burden,
of being representative
for your people, whatever
that people happens to be.
And so I think, to go back,
just talk about writing,
I don't know if that's
something that you feel,
but certainly I think
I felt that way.
VU TRAN: And was it immediate?
What was the evolution of
that kind of confrontation
with this scarcity?
Did it always come to
you in political terms,
or was it just you noticing,
oh, I'm not on the screen,
I'm not in books, I'm not on TV?
How did that evolution kind of--
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well,
when I was growing up,
it gradually dawned on
me that I'm Vietnamese,
I come from a family
of Vietnamese refugees.
I'm a Vietnamese refugee.
And that pretty much the
only way my experience,
or my family's experience,
or the experience
of all these Vietnamese
refugees in San Jose
meant anything to the
rest of the country
was through the Vietnam War.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right?
That's the only reason
anybody had anything to know--
that's only reason anybody else
had to know anything about us.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
The problem, though,
is that, in this country, when
people hear the word Vietnam,
they don't oftentimes think
of the country right away.
Maybe things have changed now.
Maybe now, when you
say Vietnam, in 2018,
people would think banh mi or
pho, or something like that.
But in 1984, when
you said Vietnam,
people meant the Vietnam War.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: And
when they say the Viet--
when people say the
Vietnam War, they really
mean the American War.
So it gradually dawned
on me that there
were no stories
about us, and there
were very few
stories about Asians,
in general, in the 1980s.
So I remember going
to a bookstore
when I was about 18 or 19,
and finding the "Joy Luck
Club" by Amy Tan, which had
just gotten published that year
or the year before.
And just being amazed that
there was a book, a novel,
by someone who was
Asian or Asian-American.
That was a mind-blowing--
VU TRAN: And that
it was popular.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: And
that it was popular,
and it was actually
a pretty good book.
So I was blown away by that.
That made a huge
difference to me.
It made me think, where
has this book been?
Or where have other
books been like this?
And that set me down
the road as a student,
as a college student, of
trying to find everything
that had been written by
Asian-American writers, first
of all.
And then, secondarily,
by Vietnamese and
Vietnamese-American
writers, and there's
a handful of that
work out there.
So sometimes I think
about the very first
Vietnamese-American
writer to get published,
which was around the 1960s,
and how lonely that person
must have been.
Now you and I come out
and there are literally
dozens of Vietnamese-American
writers out there.
But you couldn't
make that assumption
two or three decades ago.
VU TRAN: Well, I want to
talk about the Vietnam War,
especially in terms of its
portrayal on the screen.
But I was first curious,
in what realm or mode
of representation--
whether it's movies, books,
or other art forms--
do you think narrative
scarcity is most dangerous?
And in which mode around
the representation
do you think narrative plenitude
can be most beneficial?
Does that makes sense?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I
go around the country giving
talks, and one of the things
I try to tell everybody
is, look, people like
you and me, we're
professional storytellers.
We write books for a
living, or I write op-eds
for "The New York Times."
But we're all storytellers,
in the sense that we've all
absorbed some stories
that we take for granted,
and we tell these stories
to each other all the time.
Most often, for example,
about what this country is.
What is America?
What is it supposed to be?
VU TRAN: Right.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
These are stories
that we tell each other.
And so when the
current president
says, make America great again,
that's a story in four words.
And it's an enormously powerful
story for a lot of people.
Even if there are people
who disagree with the story,
it's an enormously
powerful story.
So we go home and we tell
those kinds of stories
to other people.
Here's a story that
I encountered when
I was growing up in San Jose.
My parents had opened the
second Vietnamese grocery
store in San Jose, downtown.
I remember walking
down the street
from my parents' store
when I was around 10 or 11,
and seeing a sign
in a store window.
And it said, another American
driven out of business
by the Vietnamese.
That's not just a sign.
That's a story in nine words.
And it's a story that,
in fact, Americans
have been telling each
other for a very long time.
It's just another American
driven out of business
by "fill in the blank."
It's been told before.
It was told during
my parents' time.
It's being told again
with different populations
for "fill in the blank."
So that's an example
of narrative scarcity
and narrative plenitude.
Because at that
time, in the 1980s,
we Vietnamese people
didn't have the access
to try to contest that story.
I didn't know how to make
sense out of that story,
or how to fight back against it.
And meanwhile,
narrative plenitude
means that there are people
out there with the power
to go around telling
these kinds of stories
and spreading them around.
Asian invasion is
a story like that.
VU TRAN: And it's a story that
can be disseminated much more
widely, and reinforced
more powerfully now
with social media.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: A five-word story
like that can spread much more
powerfully nowadays.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: Which
underlines their power.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: That's a
good example because, obviously,
some people--
I'm not very good at Twitter.
I have, like, 16,000
followers, which is nothing
in the world of Twitter.
There are 15-year-old kids out
there with 100,000 followers.
I don't know what they're doing.
They know how to
use that medium.
They know how to tell stories in
140 of 280 characters or less.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
So there are so
many ways to tell
stories out there, not
just through the world of
books or movies and so on.
And that's one of the things
that social media has done,
is actually they've
transformed that landscape.
And I think that's been
empowering for a lot of people.
As they realize they
actually are storytellers,
they can bypass all the
established gatekeepers
that you and I have to
rely on, like New York
publishers and the like.
So hopefully, that
brings to people
this sense that,
in fact, all of us
are engaged in narratives
in different ways.
VU TRAN: Well, you talk
about, in "Nothing Ever Dies,"
video games.
That is another
narrative that is--
I don't think some
people realize
how powerful video games are,
in terms of how they represent
the worlds in those games.
You talk about first-person
shooters, for example.
Can you talk a little
bit about that?
Particularly, I'm interested in
how, in a first-person shooter,
the points of view--
when you're trying
to kill the enemy,
you have to distance
yourself from that enemy,
and you can't bestow
that enemy any humanity
because your absolute goal
is to destroy your enemy.
And something like a
first-person shooter game
can really present a
very dangerous narrative.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well,
the video game industry
is more economically profitable
than Hollywood, I think.
It's billions of dollars
and all that kind of stuff.
And we who are writers--
oftentimes, when we're only
in a room full of writers,
we'll make huge,
grand statements
about the power of literature.
Oh, literature will
save us, writing
will save us, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like, yes, it's true for
those people who read books.
OK?
Or an even smaller population
of people who read novels.
But almost everybody
plays video games.
And so the reach of
video games, and the way
that they disseminate
stories, is really powerful.
VU TRAN: You call it
seductive, which I think is--
I never thought of
it in those terms.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
You're not seduced
when you play video games?
VU TRAN: I don't
play video games.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Oh.
Good for you.
VU TRAN: I don't
know why I don't.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
VU TRAN: But yeah, seductive
is a very good word for it,
more so than any book
or movie, I feel like.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: I speak
as someone easily seduced
by video games.
So throughout stages of
my life, I have gone out
and bought the latest
game console on credit,
played it nonstop for
a week, then got sick
and disgusted with myself,
and then returned it, OK?
Because I know that if
I kept it in the house,
I would just never stop
playing those things.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
But what I say
is that yes, novels
and Shakespeare
and so on, these
are stories that--
if they're good or
if we like them--
seduce us through the
power of storytelling,
and get us to empathize with
the characters in the plays
or the books and the
stories and so on.
But that's what video
games do, as well.
They get to empathize--
and we're talking about
first-person games here.
They get us to empathize
with these characters
and these narratives
that have been created.
And people spend more time
playing these games than they
would reading Marcel Proust.
OK, he wrote four volumes
of "In Search of Lost Time,"
this thick.
Your average teenager,
never going to read it.
Your average adult, never
going to read these things.
But your average
game player will
spend dozens of hours
playing these games,
and they're artificially
created worlds.
And yes, I think
they're powerful,
and yes, I think
they're seductive.
And what happens there is
that stories can really
have implicit meanings.
How many people
here actually play
first-person shooter games?
Some.
OK, good.
Unfortunately, that's
the kind of game I like.
I don't know what
it says about me.
That's the only game I
like playing, shooting
and destroying and
killing things.
VU TRAN: Actually, me, too.
I say I don't play video games.
But when I did, those are
the only games I would play.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right.
And on the one hand,
yeah, you can probably
say they're harmless.
On the other hand, are they?
I mean, what are they
actually training us to do?
What are they-- how are they
training us to see the world?
And the reason it comes up
in a book like "Nothing Ever
Dies, Vietnam and
the Memory of War"
is that I'm trying to make
this connection between that
and, in general, as Americans,
our perspective on the world.
When we think about
the world, how
do we think about the world?
Americans are involved
all over the world.
And when we talk strictly
about war and the military,
we have over 800 bases
around the world.
This is a reality that most
Americans are not engaged with.
And our military presence
is all over the place.
But usually, when
we think about it,
we think about it
from the perspective
of American soldiers or
American pilots or whatever.
And when we actually
see the world,
oftentimes, it's
through, literally,
the gun scopes of
American weaponry,
or the cameras of drones.
That, to me, seems like
a direct connection
to the first-person shooter.
Not to say that everybody who
plays a first-person shooter is
going to be going out
there piloting a drone,
but that's part
of the connection.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
It's a quite subliminal
conditioning.
So I guess my
question for you then
is, how would you then
advise Asian-Americans,
or any American, in their
effort to build on something
like "Crazy Rich Asians"?
Beyond just creating and
engaging in these narratives,
what else can we do?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Well, I look
back on that time in the 1980s,
when there were very few stories
by and about Asian-Americans,
and I think, yes,
part of the problem
was structural racism, that
we're preventing our stories
from getting out there.
But part of the problem
is Asian parents.
Those of you who
are Asian parents--
VU TRAN: Oh, please
talk about this.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: --or going
to be Asian parents, and so on.
VU TRAN: Asian parents, please.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
Asian parents bear some
responsibility in saying
don't be writers, don't
be artists, to their kids.
Don't be creatives.
Go into tech or
medicine or whatever.
And all of that is very
laudable and understandable
and everything like that.
But I go around--
again, I'm convinced of
the power of storytelling.
I'm convinced of the
power of narrative.
You don't have to breed
your kid to be a writer
or something like
that, but you have
to be open to the possibility
that stories really matter,
and that there's
only so many doctors
and lawyers and pharmacists and
nurses that we need out there.
We need other people doing
different kinds of things, too.
So that is an op-ed I want
to write for "The New York
Times," saying, Asian
parents, do your bit
to change the world.
And one of the most rewarding
things that's happened to me
when I go out and I
speak-- a couple of times--
has been when an Asian
parent has come up to me.
I was at Brown University,
and this Vietnamese woman
came up to me.
She's like 40-something.
And she said, oh, I--
she either worked
at a nail salon
or she owned a nail salon.
And she said, my son
goes here to Brown.
And I said, what
does he major in?
And his major was so weird.
It was like the stereotype
of a Brown humanities major.
I don't even know what it is.
It wasn't English, it
wasn't women's studies.
It was freakier
than those things.
It combined them.
And I said, what do
you think of that?
And she said, I'm
so proud of him.
And I was like, that's
a story I want to hear.
So hopefully, there are
more parents out there
like that, who believe in these
possibilities for their kids.
VU TRAN: I agree with you.
In a word, I would say I
wish Vietnamese parents would
embrace weirdness.
As a culture, we
don't like weirdness.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: In whatever
form that is.
To be OK with it, to be
somewhat comfortable,
or at least comfortable with
your discomfort with weirdness.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: Right?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: And allow your
kids to embrace it, as well.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: I
think that part of that
is due, obviously,
to Asian-Americans
being a relatively
small minority
in the last few decades.
And so of course, when
there is fewer people,
there's more pressure because
of the scarcity issues, right?
And the narrative
scarcity, this idea
that you have to go out there
and represent your people
and all of that, so you've got
to be a good boy or good girl,
whatever, and go out
there and be a doctor
and do all those
kinds of things.
But we--
VU TRAN: The model Asian.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
Yeah, model Asians.
But if we're speaking
just about Asians,
we've crossed the
magic threshold.
I think we're 5% or 6% of
the national population.
There's more of a
critical mass out there.
I don't know if the
problems with Asian parents
are any different than
any other parents.
I'm assuming if you take
a cross-section of America
as a whole, a lot
of parents out there
want their kids to be doctors
and lawyers and engineers,
in order to foot that $60,000
tuition bill and so on.
But again, just with
a smaller population,
there's just more
pressure on us.
VU TRAN: I was also
thinking of something you
said in "Nothing Ever Dies."
You refer to Little
Saigon in Orange County
as the greatest work
of collective memory
these defeated people--
Vietnamese people--
have created,
in the sense that this
recreation of home
in Southern
California in America
has allowed us, particularly
southern Vietnamese,
to control our memories of
ourselves from back home,
and also, our own
presence here in America.
And I guess it's
economic success
as a mode of cultural capital.
And it made me think that,
at the center of this
is Vietnamese cuisine, and all
those Vietnamese restaurants
that have come out of-- that
started in Little Saigon,
and have spread out
all across the country.
The fact that Vietnamese
cuisine is taken seriously now,
Vietnamese food, everyone
not only knows what pho is,
or most people do, but
they also even know
how to pronounce it now.
[LAUGHTER]
And I wonder, have you thought
of this as a kind of narrative
itself, Vietnamese cuisine?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: So there's
a Little Saigon in Chicago,
right?
I don't know what you call it,
but there's a neighborhood--
VU TRAN: Yeah, yeah.
Argyle, Argyle, yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
So for those of you who have
not been to Little Saigon
in Orange County, that's that
neighborhood, 100 times larger.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: And
so yeah, basically,
one of the ways that you
become American in this country
is that you own real estate.
And it's through owning
real estate that you make
your presence felt. And so these
so-called ethnic neighborhoods
are a very important way of
Americanization because you
drive to Orange County, you
drive to Westminster or Santa
Ana, you cannot help but see
streets and streets and streets
full of Vietnamese businesses
with Vietnamese signage and all
of that.
It's a very bold proclamation
that we are here.
And it is an enormously
important part
of telling that narrative.
And from out of
that concentration--
this is a very American thing.
I've been to Paris, for example,
and in France, the French
don't like this.
They don't like
ethnic concentrations.
But in this country, because
of our particular history,
we do, or we allow it, anyway.
And so we tell that
kind of a story.
And then, of course,
besides the real estate,
there's the food that
you're talking about.
And food is an important story.
How do we go from a moment
in the 1970s and 1980s
where the American racist
perception of Vietnamese
is that we ate dogs?
These were stories that
were circulating back then.
And now we've gone
from that to pho.
We've gone from that moment to
Rachel Ray making horrible pho.
[LAUGHTER]
OK?
I was like, you've
just taken something
and put the word pho on it.
It has no relationship
to the actual food.
I'm sort of OK with that.
I'm sort of OK with that.
Because it means
that we've actually
changed the vocabulary,
we've changed the story.
VU TRAN: We've gotten
far enough for someone
like that to do something--
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right.
We've gotten far
enough for someone
to debase us in our
food, appropriate us.
Trader Joe's has-- oh, my god.
Trader Joe's.
I went there, I made a mistake.
I just wanted to try it.
Goi cuon, the spring roll.
They have it at Trader
Joe's, the vermicelli
wrapping around vegetables.
It was horrible.
It was horrible.
But at least we've
gotten that far.
VU TRAN: That's what you mean.
That kind of plenitude allows
for mediocre, or even awful
stuff like that.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right.
VU TRAN: And it's
kind of a good thing.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right.
Because I think most
people will know
that if they go and they get
pho from Trader Joe's, it's
going to suck.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
I think people
are smart enough to know that.
[LAUGHTER]
So that's not
necessarily a bad thing.
It's actually a good thing.
For example, when "The
Refugees," my short story
collection came out, I went to
Costco once, and they had it.
They had a pallet full--
not a pallet full.
They had several stacks of
"The Refugees," and I thought,
I'd made it.
[LAUGHTER]
I've made it.
VU TRAN: You've
made it to Costco.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
And so it's the same.
You made it to Costco, you
made it to Trader Joe's.
That's what we're striving for.
And this goes into the
whole authenticity thing.
Nobody in their right minds will
think they're getting good pho
from Trader Joe's.
But the point is that,
then, people will know--
people will say, I know
where to get the good pho.
I'm in the know, so I know where
the authentic Vietnamese food
is.
And so that's part of the
dynamic of narratives, as well.
Oh, these people
over here, they don't
know enough, the difference
between good banh
mi or good pho and bad
pho, and bad banh mi.
We do.
We don't have to be Vietnamese,
but we're really hip.
We know what's going on.
And so that's true for
narratives of all kinds,
whether it's movies
or books or food.
Because now, very hip and
smart Americans will go,
yeah, I know about fish sauce.
I was at Brown.
I was just joking around.
It was a continental
restaurant in Providence,
and I was just looking at my
plate of fish, whatever it was.
And I thought, it'd be
better with fish sauce.
And the waiter said,
we have fish sauce.
And he did.
He was not Vietnamese.
This was not a
Vietnamese restaurant.
So I thought, we made it.
In this continental
European kind of restaurant,
they have a bottle fish
sauce for people who ask.
But we have a secret ingredient
beyond that that most Americans
do not know about--
VU TRAN: Do tell.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: --that's even
more authentic than fish sauce.
Shrimp paste.
VU TRAN: Oh, god.
Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: Are we going to
get there with shrimp paste?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: That
is the nuclear option.
VU TRAN: Oh, wow.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: But back to
this kind of model Asian,
especially the kind of
economic model of success
that a lot of immigrants,
particularly Vietnamese, really
celebrate.
And it comes out of the success
of a place like Little Saigon.
And I wonder about the
problematic aspects of that.
For example, it does
reinforce this notion that
to be a success, it has
to be an economic success
or financial success.
And that also, more
deeply, I think this is--
it seems to me this is
how Vietnamese also end up
supporting arguments
against immigration
and against the newer
refugees coming in.
It's this kind of
contradiction where--
people always wonder
like, why would--
OK, so my parents
voted for Trump, right?
And when you have an
example like that,
people ask, how could
they, as refugees,
now support someone
who does not--
who's so against
immigration and refugees?
Why do you think we do this?
I feel like it's kind of
founded on this idea of what
is a successful immigrant,
don't you think?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
VU TRAN: Does that make sense?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah,
it totally makes sense,
and it's true.
There are a lot of fervent
supporters of Donald Trump,
for example, in the
Vietnamese-American community,
and they will wear the red Make
America Great Again hats also.
And I think there's a number
of different narratives
that are happening there.
One is the idea of
the American dream.
The Vietnamese
refugees really believe
that they've succeeded
in the United States,
and they've done
it the right way,
and everybody else should
do it the right way.
And therefore, that means going
through the legal procedures
and everything.
They also participate in a very
important American narrative,
too, which is that this is
a country in which people
get the right to forget
where they came from.
VU TRAN: Yeah, right.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: If you're
an American of three or four
generations, you may
have a very fuzzy notion
of who your ancestors are,
how they came here, and so on.
And just because they were
immigrants two or three or four
generations back
doesn't mean you're
going to be empathetic with the
new immigrants that come in.
You're an American now.
And part of what it means
to be an American-- part
of our history-- is that we
have barriers and borders
and exclusionary acts
and things like this.
And the
Vietnamese-Americans now,
who want to maintain
that border and so on,
they're participating in
that same American narrative
to become American
and to forget where
it is that they came from.
So it's not surprising.
It's ironic because
we're intimate with it,
and it's more recent history.
But it's completely American
to do these kinds of things.
VU TRAN: You've written
that the secondary goal
of this ethics of memory--
this is in "Nothing Ever Dies"
again.
"The second goal of
this ethics of memory,
especially for those
formally cast as others,
is to be empathetic
to the ever-new others
on the horizon."
And it seems like
it's too easy for us.
Too often, this doesn't happen.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: To be
empathetic to new others?
VU TRAN: To new others.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
I think we're all
capable of empathy.
Again, this is what narratives
and stories are supposed to do.
It's supposed to
teach us empathy
about people who
are not like us.
We read books and
we watch movies
about people who
are not like us.
But where do we draw
that circle of empathy?
How far out does it extend?
Obviously, hopefully, most of us
are empathetic to our families,
for example.
We're empathetic
to other Americans.
But who counts as an American?
So it's totally possible to
say I empathize with Americans,
but my definition of Americans
excludes certain kinds
of people in this country.
So I think that part of
the political tensions
in our country is that there are
competing projects of empathy
that are happening here.
And competing projects
of storytelling
about what America is.
There's some people
who want to say
we should expand those
borders of empathy
to include the undocumented
or refugees or immigrants.
And there's other
people who are saying,
no, we just want to
take care of Americans,
whatever Americans mean.
And I don't think
these people who
advocate for that would
say they're not empathetic.
They think, I am empathetic.
I'm just empathetic with the
people we need to take care of.
VU TRAN: To a degree.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: To a degree.
The near and the dear.
VU TRAN: Yeah, yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: And I
feel that we, as writers,
our project is about approaching
the far and the feared, whoever
that happens to be.
This could be literal
populations of people--
foreigners, immigrants,
undocumented,
the people we're at war with.
Or the far and the fear
could be what's inside of us.
That's what we, as writers,
are supposed to do.
And so I think that's why,
today, the literary community
is in such an uproar against
the current administration.
Because it just feels as if
our definitions of empathy
are radically,
radically different.
And it is partially
based on different ideas
of storytelling, different
ideas of narrative,
different ideas of who should
be at the center of our stories.
VU TRAN: But with this
new-found empathy,
where people do have a
language to both express
why certain
representations of them
have been either not
satisfactory or dangerous,
how do you then deal
with products of the past
once you see them
in this new light?
For example, you go back to--
you were talking
about the Vietnam War
as portrayed in
movies, and you've
written at length on that.
That was the kind of
narrative plenitude
that Vietnamese-Americans
did have, but in the bad way.
For example, you've written
about "Apocalypse Now,"
and how that became a
space for white Americans
to deal with both their
humanity and humanity.
But in doing so, it left
the Vietnamese only inhuman,
and distanced them.
An example like
"Apocalypse Now"--
and there are many
other examples of that--
what do you then do with that,
now that you have this new
insight?
Does that make sense?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
How many people here have
actually seen "Apocalypse Now"?
Oh, you come from the
generation that has.
I go around now, and people are
like-- teenagers and college
students, they've
not seen this movie.
VU TRAN: Really?
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
Yeah, they haven't.
I'm shocked they haven't.
They haven't.
VU TRAN: It used to be
a cool thing in college
that you had this
poster on your dorm.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
It's been a long time
since we've been in college.
[LAUGHTER]
It's a very generational shift.
So you know what the
movie's about, right?
And I think that,
for those of us who
feel like we've been
excluded from narrative
plenitude for whatever reason,
there's oftentimes an impulse
that we need to tell
our own stories,
we need to get our
voices out there.
And we've seen that
we've been depicted
as inhuman or as stereotypes
or whatever in mass media.
So we're going to tell a
story-- once we have the chance
to tell the story, we're going
to tell a story about how human
we are, about how
empathetic we are.
And that's powerful.
But I also think it's actually
very limited at the same time.
Because what it means to
have narrative plenitude,
and to be a part
of the majority,
is that you can take for
granted that you don't
have to prove your humanity.
That's why, in an economy
of narrative plenitude,
you can have movies
about white people
who are serial
killers, for example,
and people are not
going to go out
of that movie theater saying,
oh, my god, all white people
are serial killers.
You don't, right?
You get to immerse yourself in
the world of the serial killer
and think, yes, bad person,
but I can empathize.
If it's a well-done
movie, you empathize
with the full range of human
possibility, from the inhuman
to the human.
OK.
So that's why, for
example, the TV shows
that I was watching when I
was writing "The Sympathizer"
were TV shows like "The
Sopranos" or "The Wire."
These are shows
that are not going
out there trying to prove
the humanity of Americans.
It's simply looking
at these people
who are capable of a range
of good and bad things,
as we all are.
That's what we have to do.
That's how I feel.
When we have the opportunity
to tell our own stories,
we have to proceed
from the assumption
that we're already human,
which means we're already
inhuman at the same time.
And my response to
"Apocalypse Now"
was not to write a
novel that simply
shows the tragedy of
Vietnamese refugees
and our human
story and all that.
No.
"The Sympathizer"-- for those
of you who haven't read it,
shame on you.
[LAUGHTER]
But it is a story about a
spy who has to do bad things.
And he's an alcoholic,
and he's a womanizer,
and he's a murderer and
all this kind of stuff.
It's a really good story, OK?
Precisely because it doesn't
try to prove any humanity
or try to make the Vietnamese
people look good or anything
like that.
It does the same
kinds of gestures
that these stories like "The
Sopranos" or "The Godfather,"
and so on, take
for granted, which
is that you can have antiheroes
as your representatives,
and no one's going
to mistake them
in somehow telling the entire
story about, in this case,
Vietnamese people.
VU TRAN: But how do you
reengage with something
like "Apocalypse Now" or
"Platoon," or "Deer Hunter"--
the kinds of things
that are not going
to go away from the culture.
How do you re-engage it,
especially if you had--
previous to this
new insight, you
had a positive
relationship with it?
I mean, I think a lot of
the response nowadays,
well, I'm canceling it out.
It's a larger
question, too, but what
do you do with Woody
Allen, for example,
now that you know what
you think you know?
Have you thought about it?
How should the culture--
if it sees a movie
like "Apocalypse
Now" in this new light, how
should it reengage with it?
Should it reject it completely?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: No, no, no.
I have never gone out
there and said-- just
to use "Apocalypse Now" as an
example-- we shouldn't watch it
or we should ban it or
something like that.
Never, never.
My way to respond to it was to
make fun of it, to satirize it.
There's a big chunk of the
novel "The Sympathizer"
that is basically a satirization
of "Apocalypse Now."
And it's a part of our culture,
canonical texts like this,
and we need to respond
to it like that.
But it's a very
intimate question for me
because, for example,
I grew up a huge fan
of the "Tintin" comics.
I don't know if any of you have
read "Tintin," for example.
OK.
I go back and I look at it
as an adult, and I'm like,
oh, there's some racism
in the "Tintin" comics
that I enjoyed so much.
But I actually have pretty much
bought the complete collection
in French and in English for my
son, who's like five years old,
and we read it together.
And I have to think about,
well, these are great stories.
He's really into them.
But he's also being exposed
to a certain idea about race
from the 1930s to the 1960s.
And Hergé was a liberal.
He had some liber--
by the standards of the
day, he was actually
sympathetic to the colonized
and things like that.
But there's no doubt
that visually, there
are some racist--
what we would now consider to
be racist images in these books.
And I send my son to a
school in which, apparently,
the year before he
enrolled, a parent got--
it's a French school, so
they're very intimately
aware of "Tintin."
A parent got so mad
about this issue
that she wanted to have "Tintin"
pulled from the shelves,
and then she took her
kid out of the school.
She was white, all right?
And I wouldn't do that.
Because I think my
son, sooner or later,
is going to see these
kinds of images,
and I want to be the one to
expose them to him first.
I don't want him to be
on a school playground
and have someone say
racist terms to him,
or do racist gestures
or something like that.
And then he's going to be all
confused and come home to me.
That's probably going
to happen anyway.
But these images are
already out there.
We have to confront them.
And so that's why I read
these books with him.
And he'll look at it
and he'll say, oh,
there's a black man in here.
I'm like, that's a
very racist depiction
of a black man in here.
And he's five years old.
He's not going to come back at
me with some kind of discourse
about this.
But I know he's absorbing
it, so we have this capacity
to talk about that.
And I think that's
what we have to do
with these kinds of stories.
VU TRAN: Allow for
that confrontation.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah, right.
VU TRAN: Before I give
it to audience questions,
I do want to ask you
about the book you're
writing-- you're working on
now, or at least the one book.
I don't know if you're
working on multiple projects.
But it's a sequel to
"The Sympathizer."
You're calling it
"The Committed."
Is that a pretty definite title?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Pretty close.
VU TRAN: OK.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Yeah.
VU TRAN: And you've
been working on it.
It takes place in
Paris, and you've
been working on it in Paris.
And I have a couple
of questions,
in terms of how your work
in fiction, in many ways,
dramatizes many of the
ideas that you worked out
in your nonfiction works,
your critical works.
And I wonder, working
on "The Committed,"
have you moved beyond
some of those ideas?
How have your ideas
evolved, especially
in light of the success
of "The Sympathizer"?
And how Paris has
affected it, actually
living there and working there.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
Well, like most of--
many people in this
room, probably, I
have very romantic notions
of Paris and France,
and my wife and I spent
seven months there
on our honeymoon in 2003.
And then, France is a
part of our heritage
as Vietnamese people.
We were colonized by the
French for 70 or 80 years.
And so I wanted to
confront that heritage.
And "The Sympathizer"
is about a guy
who's half French
and half Vietnamese.
So "The Committed," setting
that in Paris was an opportunity
to engage with that, and
deal with a country that
has a very different sense
of race and difference
in culture than the
United States does.
And I wanted to
challenge myself,
and it has been challenging.
Because the experience
of the French,
in regards to all
these things, is
so different than the Americans,
and even for the Vietnamese
who are in France.
I go to France and I'm like,
racism, racism, racism.
That's not racist.
They were just being stupid.
And the Vietnamese people
here are doing great.
We're so well-adjusted.
It's very hard to wrap--
VU TRAN: Wait, these are--
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
--my American mind--
VU TRAN: --these
are French saying
this, or Vietnamese French?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: French
people of Vietnamese descent.
OK?
So they wouldn't say
French-Vietnamese
or Vietnamese-French.
They don't have hybrid
identities, supposedly.
So it's a learning
experience for me
to try to figure out
how to acknowledge
the legitimacy of these
French perspectives,
and yet also be critical.
I can't help but be critical.
And so the narrative
is partly about that.
It's mostly about drugs
and sex and violence
in Paris of the early
1980s, and politics.
But underlying all of that,
there is also a concern--
VU TRAN: But have you
found yourself questioning
your own stance on
certain things because
of these Vietnamese in Paris,
and their casual reaction
to racism?
VIET THANH NGUYEN: I have.
Because we're Americans.
We're very used to how the
American system of differences
work here, right?
And it's a system that gives
us opportunities, but also
gives us traps.
So I knew--
I don't back away from being
Vietnamese as a writer.
I say I'm a writer, but I also
say I'm a minority writer,
I'm a Vietnamese writer.
I'm all these kinds of things.
But I also knew that
the way by which I
am perceived in this country
is through being Vietnamese.
And that the way
to tell my story--
the story that people
expected me to tell
would be about Vietnam
or the Vietnam War,
and that's true for all
minorities in this country.
We're only allowed one
historical experience
that the rest of the
country knows about.
That's the opportunity,
and it's also the trap.
Because then you're like,
oh, he's Vietnamese.
He's going to write
about the Vietnam War.
And so what I had to
do there was simply
to take up that opportunity,
but to do it on my own terms.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: OK.
So in France, the
difference would
be that at least the
French would say,
that is a total trap to be
stuck on your own difference.
You should, instead, try
to be universal, tell
the universal story.
And I personally think "The
Sympathizer," for example,
is a universal
story, but it's read
through a Vietnamese
history here.
So I have to look
at France and think,
would I be different
if I was there?
Would I actually
simply be French?
Would that be a possibility?
Do the French-- are they--
do the French have
something that we don't?
Is it actually true that race
is not such a big deal there,
et cetera?
Personally, I don't think so.
But I understand why
they think that way.
And I want to acknowledge
that in the book,
but also show how
it's also really
limited by the French
experience, as well.
VU TRAN: Well, what people
don't realize sometimes
is that the universal is
actually very specific.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Exactly.
VU TRAN: Yeah.
It's not about getting everyone
to recognize themselves.
It's about being specific
enough so that it resonates.
We should have time
for audience questions.
AUDIENCE: Sorry.
I'm Matt again.
So I think your talk was really
interesting because I'm-- we
were talking about this
earlier, during the tour,
that I'm from the North Midwest.
And part of my family, I have
several members that came back
from Vietnam with great uncles.
And so you're [INAUDIBLE]
by this identity,
but they kind of
did the opposite.
They assimilated in a very,
very, very non-diverse culture.
And so I don't know when
you see people who do that,
if you have certain views or
is that anti your own culture,
or is that appropriate?
Just wanted to get
your thoughts on that.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
You're talking about--
so they're not white.
AUDIENCE: Right.
They came back from Vietnam,
but rather than hold
on to any of their culture,
they completely gave it up
to become completely
American and mirror
the small communities
they're in.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Right.
It's hard for me to say because
I had the luxury of growing up
in California, which
is obviously much more
diverse than North
Dakota, and San Jose
is the second-largest
Vietnamese population
in the United States.
So if I was in that
situation, and I
was the one Vietnamese
person, or one
of a handful of Vietnamese
people in that environment,
or any kind of minority
that you're talking about,
that's a survival
strategy to do that.
It can't come without costs,
though, at the same time.
So I've met more second
generation Vietnamese-Americans
who've emerged out of
those circumstances,
and they migrated to a bigger
city or a more diverse state.
And usually, they're
pretty regretful that they
were raised in that
kind of environment
where their history and their
specificity was denied to them.
And the situation that
you're talking about
looks a lot more like France.
Because most of the Vietnamese
I met there were like, well,
we ended up in a
place where there
is no other Vietnamese
people, so we had
no choice but to assimilate.
They were OK with that
because that's the only option
that they really had.
And then they became
assimilated, functional members
of French society and
everything like that.
But at the price--
if it is a price--
of not feeling
comfortable associating
with other Vietnamese
or Asian people.
I would see that as a cost.
That wouldn't necessarily be
the case in France or in North
Dakota if people never left.
So in other words, I don't want
to make a judgment about people
who don't have any
other option when
they're put in that situation.
AUDIENCE: That makes sense.
[INAUDIBLE] That
makes perfect sense.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: But
the culture that we
do share, though, is
something like Hollywood.
We all have Hollywood, right?
So that's what the issue
of narrative scarcity
and narrative
plenitude is about.
You could be the only
Vietnamese person
in North Dakota, or
that particular city,
and if you don't see yourself
at all in mainstream culture,
you're encouraged to
forget your differences.
But what if that mainstream
culture was different?
You could still be the only
Vietnamese person in that
particular place, but if you
had access to all these books
and all these movies and
so on-- all these stories--
it would completely
change your perception
of who you are out there.
AUDIENCE: Excuse me.
Thank you for coming
and joining us.
My name is Nelson.
My question is, I'm Cuban.
I was born on the island.
I grew up in Miami,
which is basically Cuba.
But outside of
that area in Miami,
what I come across
in conversations
when I meet someone and they
figure out, or I tell them,
that I'm Cuban is older
generations immediately
think of Cold War, communism.
Younger generations just go
immediately to tourism, food,
maybe.
I'm just curious, seeing
parallel situations
between Vietnam,
maybe in a more--
for lack of a better word, a
violent history with the US,
but kind of similar with
communism and the struggles
they had there, do you find
a more nuanced conversation
when you meet people when
you talk about Vietnam?
Or is it basically sticking to
what older generations think
about Vietnam and what
younger generations think
about Vietnamese food
or going to visit
the Vietnamese part
of a neighborhood
and eating banh mis, or
whatever it might be?
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
It's a big country,
so there's so many different
experiences that people have.
So when I go to speak
to college campuses,
it's a very different experience
than going to Palm Springs
and speaking to a
retirement community,
or going to Idaho, which
is 87% or 89% white.
So I can sort of feel
the differences there,
in terms of responses.
So when I'm on a college
campus and the people are young
and they're diverse,
and they're obviously
being college educated,
the level of responses
is really different.
Because they already know about
pho and banh mi and all this,
and they're hungry for these
more nuanced statements
about what America is, and
what our stories should be.
For example, if I
go to Palm Springs--
just to use that example--
and the average age is like
60 or 70 in the audience,
it's a totally
different experience.
It is more like what
you're talking about.
The notions of awareness of
the stories that we're talking
about is much more limited.
So for example, I
went to Palm Springs.
First question from
the audience was--
this was several months ago--
have you seen that new
Ken Burns documentary
about the Vietnam War?
OK?
And in my mind, I was like,
that's an 18-hour documentary.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't have 18 hours.
And if you have 18 hours
to watch a documentary,
you have enough time to read
a book by a Vietnamese person.
Because whoever asked me
that question-- whenever
that question came up
in audiences like that,
they had never read a book
by a Vietnamese person,
or seen a movie from a
Vietnamese point of view.
So it's a radically
different set
of experiences from one end
of the country to the next.
I went to Clemson University.
First question from
the audience was
a guy who looked
like he literally
was a Confederate
veteran, and it
was about the Confederacy, which
had nothing to do with my talk.
So the beauty and the challenge
of a country like this
is that you will have people
who know exactly what you're
talking about, and
you'll have people
who have no idea what
you're talking about.
And again, what we're doing with
trying to expand our stories
and our narratives
is to eventually get
to all of these
different people.
But also, especially, to the
next generation, as well.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thank you so much for speaking.
As a Nigerian-- a person
who was born in Nigeria--
I can definitely hear my story
and my parental experience
reflected in a lot
of what you say,
although Nigerians
are a bit more
invisible, in the sense of how
we blend into American society.
But what I hear a lot
about writing from you
is this idea of the
need for vulnerability.
So in order to
really tell the story
that you want to
tell in your books,
you have to face the idea
that you're not necessarily
going to talk about the
Vietnamese experience in a way
that people expect.
So I just want to know, what
influences did you have,
as far as books that you read,
experiences that you had,
that allowed you to step
fully into that state
of vulnerability
as a writer, young
and then moving through your
career, that kind of shaped
the way you thought about,
these are the stories
that I'm going to tell,
regardless of what people think
that I should be talking
about, or what they're going
to try to engage me
on, even though it
has nothing to do with
my book or the talk
that I came to give.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: One of
my writing instructors,
when I was in college,
Bharati Mukherjee
read one of my short stories.
And he said, you're not cutting
close enough to the bone.
I was like 19 or 20.
I was like, what does that mean?
If it literally means cutting
to the bone, I can do that.
Taking a knife to
cut yourself is OK,
and most writers would
do that, I think.
If you could get a good
story by cutting yourself,
you would totally
do it, all right?
[LAUGHTER]
But what she meant, I
think, was that I wasn't
getting vulnerable enough.
I wasn't going
deep enough inside.
That's really hard to do.
Because I think most of
us don't want to do that.
We've built up these protections
against the things that
have hurt us, the things
that make us most vulnerable,
in order to function.
And I didn't know how to do
that as a person or as a writer.
And you asked for
a list of books,
and I can give you a ton.
All great books are about
writers getting vulnerable,
whether they're
autobiographical or not.
You may not see the mechanism
in operation, but maybe--
I don't know if you feel
this way, but to be a writer,
you have to be
vulnerable to yourself.
Because the experience
that matters
the most is not going out
there and chopping lumber
or working in a nail salon,
or whatever-- or going to war
to accumulate experience.
The most important experience
is your emotional experience.
That's what you
draw from in order
to imbue feeling into your work.
So Toni Morrison, let's
say, writes "Beloved."
She was not a slave.
She had to somehow find those
emotions within herself.
So I don't know what emotional
journey she undertook.
In my case, the stories
that I had to confront
were not the stories in books,
although I read a lot of those.
The story I had to
confront was my own,
to confront my own family's
refugee experience, confront
my own refugee experience.
Stuff that I had lived through,
that we had lived through,
that I had just--
I had never forgotten them, but
I had sort of steeled them off,
and not felt those emotions.
That was difficult
to go back there,
and to look at
those experiences.
There's no one who can teach you
how to do that except for maybe
your therapist.
But in my case, it was--
thank god I never
saw a therapist.
I had to do it through
my writing instead.
So hopefully, that
answers the question.
SPEAKER 1: We have
one final question.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I have a question in 20
parts, so this is great.
[LAUGHTER]
So my name is Andy [INAUDIBLE].
I'm a first-generation
Vietnamese-American, born here
in Chicago.
And I actually wanted
to talk to both of you
about your view of ethnic
enclaves, I'll call them.
So growing up in Chicago,
I actually didn't grew up
in Argyle, or Vietnamese
people call it "Ah-guy."
That's where the
Vietnamese area is.
VU TRAN: And "Chi-kah-go."
AUDIENCE: It's true.
And "Chi-kah-go," yeah.
And so I grew up
kind of away from it.
So we would come
here and think, wow,
there's 1,000 Vietnamese people.
So cool.
And then, when I was
18 or 20 or something,
I went to Westminster,
and I was blown away.
It was like Vietnamese
flags everywhere.
I thought I was in
Vietnam, frankly.
So I wanted to get your
POV because I'm torn.
Because there is the power of
having all of the people in one
place, but that also breeds
different types of prejudices.
There are areas in
Vietnamese towns
where there's just a lot
of prejudice in the area.
So I was going to say, what
do you think the balance is?
My wife and I went to Paris and
there is different types of--
you don't really see all these
Vietnamese all in one place
because they have a
different sense to identity.
So just your POV would be great.
VU TRAN: Well, I can
only speak for myself.
I feel like I have to constantly
fight the need to be special
because I grew up in Oklahoma.
I was the only Vietnamese
person I ever saw.
And yes, that comes with
feeling like an outsider
and feeling alienated.
But also, I always had a
feeling of specialness,
too, if that makes sense.
And when you start
engaging with your--
when I start engaging with
Vietnamese communities,
I had to fight that urge--
that desire to be special.
And it made me try to break
down what that actually means,
and why I felt the
need to have it,
and what was the cost of that.
That's been my
experience with it.
I'm only now engaging more
with the Vietnamese community.
And it's brought perspectives
to me that I've never had.
I'm 43.
It's very meaningful
to me, but I'm still
finding that need to be the only
Asian person in the room, which
is weird that I
would even want that.
VIET THANH NGUYEN:
Well, to pick up
on one element of
what you said, Andy--
maybe the implication
of what you're saying--
Vietnamese people
can be racist, too.
And a matter of fact,
they're pretty--
we're pretty racist.
OK?
Just judging from--
VU TRAN: Very much so.
VIET THANH NGUYEN: --from
the comments that I hear
in Vietnamese, in
Vietnamese-language
communities, and so on--
the casual racism, the
deeply embedded prejudices
that people have.
What it goes to show
is that it doesn't
matter if you are a minority.
Just because you've been
the victim of racism
doesn't mean you can't
be a racist yourself.
And as a matter of
fact, oftentimes you
are a racist yourself.
These are the unfortunate
dynamics of human experience.
And what that meant for
me, both as a writer,
but also as someone who's
Vietnamese and someone who
thinks about politics
and political stories,
is that my commitment
as a writer is twofold.
One is that it is certainly
to the Vietnamese community,
and to tell our stories
and all that kind of thing.
But the second obligation
is to truth and justice,
to use these grand words.
And if your community is
doing something wrong,
you need to stand up against it.
That's the role of the writer.
The role of the
writer is complex.
It's both to represent,
but it's also to oppose.
And again, the dynamics of being
a minority in this country,
or any country, oftentimes,
is you feel simply
the desire to represent.
We've been misrepresented.
There's not been
enough representation.
Therefore, we have to represent.
But again, if your community
is doing something wrong,
you have to represent that.
Now, that is the real
challenge, I think.
And if we think of
ourselves as Americans,
many American writers do
not go out there thinking
we have to represent America.
That's not the first thing
that most American writers
or artists are thinking about.
They're thinking, my first
obligation is to the art,
and then it's to the
truth and justice.
And it's oftentimes in
opposition to America itself.
Either America, in terms of
what it's doing overseas,
or America, what's happening
wrong within our country today,
whatever that happens to be.
That's part of what it means
to be a part of the majority.
And that's also, if you're
a minority writer, that's
what you have to do, as well.
You cannot feel that your
first obligation is only
to your ethnicity or your
culture or something like that.
That's part of it, but
the first obligations
are to your principles,
your art, truth, justice,
things like that.
And so that's part
of, I think, what's
going to happen with something
like Vietnamese-American
writing and so on.
They have to depict
those kinds of things.
They have to depict both
the beauty of Little Saigon,
but also, of course, the
fact that it's a deeply--
it's almost a fascistic
community out there.
And you step out of line,
they will get in your face,
and make sure you
don't say another word.
Thank you very much, Google,
for coming out today.
[APPLAUSE]
