Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and moderator Vu Tran discuss the idea “Narrative Plenitude”, around Asian representation in popular culture.
Originally cited in Nguyen’s book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, “Narrative Plenitude” is a scenario where stories featuring Asian characters appear in abundance. In this talk, Nguyen cites the film Crazy Rich Asians as a good first step toward achieving Asian American “Narrative Plenitude,” where positive, genuine characterizations of Asians and Asian-Americans become more prevalent in popular culture.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015. His other books are Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America.
His current book is the bestselling short story collection, The Refugees. Most recently, he has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and le Prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book in France), for The Sympathizer. He’s a critic-at-large for the Los Angeles Times and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.
Viet was born in Ban Me Thuot, Viet Nam (now spelled Buon Me Thuot 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. He commemorates this time in his short story “The War Years” (TriQuarterly 135/136, 2009).
Viet where he graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in English and ethnic studies, and stayed at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in English. He currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches at the University of Southern California.
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10 сен 2024