"Call Me Refugee" - Critically Reading Viet Thanh Nguyen

In an interview, Vietnamese American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen stated that his” [...] identity is deeply intertwined with being a refugee because that’s the first experience that [I] he remember[s]”. Nguyen’s debut novel The Sympathizer (2015) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was named a New York Times Editor’s Choice. He is also the author of novel The Committed (2021) and the non-fiction book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016). His work is mainly concerned with the role of refugees in the United States and actively promoting the arts and culture of the Vietnamese diaspora. As an author and scholar Ngyuen is interesting as he redefines the image of refugees in the United States and actively, sometimes provocatively urges his readers to reimagine the Vietnam War from a non-Western perspective. This course will critically analyze Ngyuen’s fictional as well as non-fictional work within the framework of Transpacific and Refugee Studies. We will read his novel The Sympathizer and discuss some of his short stories as well as excerpts from his non-fictional work and interviews.

Please make sure to purchase and start reading The Sympathizer.

A reader with additional material will be made available at the beginning of semester.