Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen ( The Sympathizer ) gives a talk about belonging at a live performance at the Litquake Festival. San Francisco State University’s Dr. Russell Jeung speaks about founding Stop AAPI Hate and Asian identity and belonging. He describes how the pandemic seems to have revived and strengthened longstanding hate towards Asian Americans, and explains his term for collective action against this, “flocking.” Thao Nguyen (of the Get Down Stay Down) plays a new song called “Keep It Moving.” Chapters: 00:04:58 Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks about belonging at a live event during in San Francisco. 00:27:05 Dr. Russell Jeung speaks about his research on belonging, collective action, and the founding of Stop AAPI Hate. 00:40:20 Thao Nguyen introduces her new song. SongWriterPodcast.com Instagram.com/SongWriterPodcast Facebook.com/SongWriterPodcast TikTok.com/@SongWriterPodcast YouTube.com/@SongwriterPodcast SongWriter is a music and songwriting podcast that turns stories into songs. Host Ben Arthur invites writers, poets, and musicians to share a story or poem, then pairs it with an original song written in response. Along the way, the show explores the creative process through intimate conversations and performances. Guests have included Questlove, Susan Orlean, David Gilmour, David Sedaris, George Saunders, and many more. Distributed by PRX, SongWriter also appears on the syndicated radio program Acoustic Café and in Paste Magazine. Learn more at SongWriterPodcast.com . Season seven is made possible by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation

For generations, the Statue of Liberty has stood as a beacon representing the promise of America as a land of freedom and opportunity for immigrants from all over the world. But in 2025, as immigrant communities are being vilified and terrorized across the US, as people of color are being kidnapped off the street by armed, masked agents of the state, as immigrants are kidnapped and disappeared to prisons in foreign countries like El Salvador, as billions of taxpayer dollars are allocated to erect migrant concentration camps and a giant wall on the US-Mexico border, it should be horrifyingly clear that the promised America embodied in the Statue of Liberty is not the America we live in today. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen about the reality immigrant families face in the US today and about the critical relationship between the rise of authoritarianism at home and the violent expansion of American imperialism abroad. Guest: Viet Thanh Nguyen is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His latest feature piece for The Nation Magazine is titled “Greater America has been exporting disunion for decades” Additional resources: Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Nation, “ Greater America has been exporting disunion for decades ” Michael Fox, The Real News Network, “ Families of the detained see echoes of dictatorial past in El Salvador's gang crackdown ” Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “ A dangerous myth: The US has never been 'a nation of immigrants' ” Credits: Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer. Sign up for our newsletter Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Donate to support this podcast

I. Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Roots of Trump’s Imperial Ambitions Guest: Viet Thanh Nguyen is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. He is the author of the novel The Sympathizer which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His article Greater America: Exporting Disunion was featured in the July/August 2025 of the Nation Magazine. II. The US Bombing of Iran Guest: Phyllis Bennis is co-director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). She is the author of several books including Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer and her latest, Understanding Palestine & Israel. The post Viet Thanh Nguyen: In War Americans Experience Blowback; Then, US Bombing of Iran appeared first on KPFA .

What does it mean to be the “other”? Viet Thanh Nguyen, a South Vietnamese-born American writer links his personal story to US actions abroad and at home, discussing ICE raids, protests, and the war on Gaza, showing how these issues are deeply connected. In this episode: Viet Thanh Nguyen ( @viet.thanh.nguyen.writer) , Author, “To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other” Episode credits: This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li, Sonia Bhagat, and Haleema Shah, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Mariana Navarrete, Sarí el-Khalili, Kisaa Zehra, Remas Alhawari, Marcos Bartolomé, and guest host Natasha Del Toro. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. Joe Plourde mixed this episode. The Take production team is Marcos Bartolomé, Sonia Bhagat, Sarí el-Khalili, Tamara Khandaker, Phillip Lanos, Chloe K. Li, Ashish Malhotra, Haleema Shah, Khaled Soltan, Amy Walters, and Noor Wazwaz. Our editorial interns are Remas Alhawari, Mariana Navarrete, and Kisaa Zehra. Our guest host is Kevin Hirten. Our engagement producers are Adam Abou-Gad and Vienna Maglio. Aya Elmileik is lead of audience engagement. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Joe Plourde mixed this episode. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X , Facebook , Threads and YouTube

It’s been 50 years since the fall of Saigon, but the impact of the Vietnam War still reverberates across generations and continents. On the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and historian Mai Elliott —two writers whose lives were shaped by the conflict. Nguyen, author of the bestselling book and TV series "The Sympathizer," recounts growing up in a tight-knit refugee community in California, where “melancholy, rage, anger, bitterness, sadness—the whole gamut of emotions” defined the postwar experience. Elliott, who interviewed insurgents during the war, came to see its human cost up close, saying, “I didn’t care who won the war by the end of it—I just wanted it to stop.” But the episode is not just about the past. It’s also about Vietnam’s present—and future. The country has become one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies and most strategically important players, carefully navigating a relationship with China and the United States. “If Vietnam gets too close to China, it could lose its country,” Elliott explains. “Too close to the US, and it could lose its regime,” Nguyen adds that while tensions remain between the Vietnamese state and its diaspora, Vietnam’s diplomatic pragmatism is rooted in a thousand-year history of resisting Chinese domination while embracing growth opportunities. As Washington and Beijing compete for influence in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is charting its path—one shaped by memory, resilience, and the long shadows of war. Host: Ian Bremmer Guests: Viet Thanh Nguyen and Mai Elliott Subscribe to the GZERO World with Ian Bremmer Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/2/audible/79735 to listen full audiobooks. Title: To Save and to Destroy Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen Narrator: Viet Thanh Nguyen Format: mp3 Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins Release date: 04-08-25 Ratings: 5 out of 5 stars, 3 ratings Genres: Social Sciences Publisher's Summary: Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC-Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans. The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing?

In this episode of The Archive Project , we feature Viet Thanh Nguyen in conversation with author Tommy Orange from the 2023 Portland Book Festival. Viet Than Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his debut novel The Sympathizer , which sold more than one million copies worldwide, catapulted him to national fame. Since then, Nguyen has gone on to publish two more books of fiction, and a work of nonfiction, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War . He joined us for the Festival on the occasion of the publication of his debut memoir A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial . He was joined on stage by novelist Tommy Orange, who wrote the celebrated novel There, There . The two dive into a discussion about Nguyen’s new book, which is formally inventive and unusual in the sense it’s a mix of history, personal memoir, and a biography of his parents–telling an intergenerational story of a family’s forced migration from Vietnam to the United States and the deeply personal impacts this journey. With a wry and ironic sense of humor, Nguyen offers us a tender view into his family’s history; the truth, ironies, and lies behind the so-called American Dream; and how he has come to understand his role as a writer at this specific moment in American life. Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Committed , which continues the story of The Sympathizer , awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, alongside seven other prizes. He is also the author of the short story collection The Refugees ; the nonfiction books Nothing Ever Dies , a finalist for the National Book Award, and his memoir A Man of Two Faces . He is also the editor of an anthology of refugee writing The Displaced . He is the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. He lives in Los Angeles. Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There , was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.

In 2015, Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, The Sympathizer. Now, nearly a decade later, the book has been adapted into an HBO miniseries of the same name. This week, Michael sits down with Viet for a conversation about his latest book, A Man with Two Faces, which expands beyond the familiar beats of memoir, and features the author’s trademark interest in the broader political and colonial implications of the personal. Reading list:The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2014The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2021A Man of Two Faces, Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2023 Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth,1968 Quarterly Essay: Highway to Hell, Joëlle Gergis, 2024 You can find these books and all the others we mentioned at your favourite independent book store. Socials: Stay in touch with Read This on Instagram and Twitter Guest: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Ep.117: "The Sympathizer" - Viet Thanh Nguyen (Throwback) Interview This a Throwback Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen and also a highlighted interview to honor AAPI month along with showing love and light to the HBO show "The Sympathizer" which was inspired by Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize NY Times best selling author. He also has 4 other books out: The Committed The Refugee A man with Two faces Nothing ever dies. And his children's novel: Simone Links below: https://www.amazon.com/Simone-Viet-Thanh-Nguyen/dp/1662651198/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2L3XDKQ560BCG&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.7hNMgyY51lBpYkGR06lAoLKgGNCMjXpLR-GzGiYM1bhpGcveXn5IjieBDe6GlVr0Tf2TXyLh4DVvnHpiUVRr3xim2ljSoILCxQfeaE2G42-DgLIjbnvO_BqB9E-w9uvOr0f6dnvjAgDWcxmH0C8BadDqFM-OeKwnLiFtjOvGmgFDhTJSsRBEjjaN7yG6YDaf9g2NohGoEbFAwGHTc04DC4hGPmDK9R8mthP11GjIkmU.ChN56ICydbbuDDzkt31H-o2oExRqU7skVtdHJqN_6u0&dib_tag=se&keywords=viet+thanh+nguyen&qid=1716802854&sprefix=viet+than%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-4

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel has been made into an HBO Series, which is now available on streaming. Viet is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Viet was born in Ban Mê Thuột, Viet Nam (now spelled Buôn Mê Thuột after 1975, a year which brought enormous changes to many things, including the Vietnamese language). He came to the United States as a refugee in 1975 with his family and was initially settled in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, one of four such camps for Vietnamese refugees. From there, he moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he lived until 1978. Seeking better economic opportunities, his parents moved to San Jose, California, and opened one of the first Vietnamese grocery stores in the city. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, San Jose had not yet been transformed by the Silicon Valley economy, and was in many ways a rough place to live, at least in the downtown area where Viet’s parents worked. Viet attended St. Patrick School and Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose. After high school, he briefly attended UC Riverside and UCLA before settling on UC Berkeley, where he graduated with degrees in English and ethnic studies. He stayed at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in English, moved to Los Angeles for a teaching position at the University of Southern California, and has been there ever since. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many of you still have the chance to record and preserve the legacies of your own families. I’ve just begun to sit with families now for interview sessions to record the rich histories of parents and explore the lives of the generations that preceded them. Don’t let your family stories go untold! Take a moment to reach out and together we will bring out your family’s story on a recorded journey. - Kenneth Nguyen Visit vietnamstorybank.com today for more information! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

At age 4, following the fall of Saigon, in 1975, Viet Thanh Nguyen and his family fled Vietnam and came to the U.S. as refugees. Throughout the turmoil and its aftermath, neither he nor his family could have imagined that he would go on to not only become an internationally renowned novelist—winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his debut novel, The Sympathizer (2015)—but also to serve as an executive producer of an HBO miniseries adaptation of the book, and become a widely respected voice on matters including anti-Asian hate, refugees and immigrants, war and genocide, and memory and memorials. In addition to The Sympathizer , Nguyen has written, among other books, the new memoir A Man of Two Faces (2023); The Sympathizer ’s sequel, The Committed (2021); and the nonfiction title Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016). On the episode, Nguyen talks about turning The Sympathizer into an HBO miniseries, the polarities between what he calls “narrative plenitude” and “narrative scarcity,” and jokes as a form of truth-telling. Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts . Show notes: Viet Thanh Nguyen [3:43] “An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine” [3:43] Min Jin Lee [5:48] F. Scott Fitzgerald [7:11] The Sympathizer [7:11] The Sympathizer HBO series [7:11] Robert Downey Jr. [7:11] Sandra Oh [8:41] A Man of Two Faces [8:41] Casualties of War [8:41] Apocalypse Now [8:41] Platoon [8:41] The Deer Hunter [11:48] Arundhati Roy [14:18] 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction [21:33] Fall of Saigon [33:34] The Great Gatsby [37:26] Portnoy’s Complaint [40:28] Great America amusement park [47:24] Maxine Hong Kingston [51:06] Chicken of the Sea [51:06] Simone [56:19] Operation Petticoat [56:19] I Was a Male War Bride [56:19] Catch 22 [56:19] <

The Sympathizer , directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Robert Downey Jr and Sandra Oh, is one of the top-watched show on HBO right now. But before it was a television series, it was a novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Both the book and the series tell the story of the Captain, a communist mole in South Vietnam who comes to the US as a refugee as the Vietnam war is ending. On today’s episode, Lilah talks to Viet about the themes of The Sympathizer , and what it was like to help reimagine his book for a TV series. ------- We love hearing from you. Lilah is on Instagram @ lilahrap . We’re on X @ lifeandartpod and on email at lifeandart@ft.com . We are grateful for reviews on Apple and Spotify. And please share this episode with your friends! ------- Links (all FT links get you past the paywall): – The Sympathizer , starring Robert Downey Jr and Sandra Oh is available on HBO –You can find Viet Thanh Nguyen’s book The Sympathizer and its sequel The Committed wherever books are sold – Lilah’s interview with Nguyen about his recent memoir A Man of Two Faces was published as a Lunch with the FT: https://on.ft.com/3UtjDlm ------- Special FT subscription offers for Life and Art podcast listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial, are here: http://ft.com/lifeandart Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.