Spy novel “The Sympathizer” explores politics of Vietnamese American experience
After taking a sip of water to regain his voice, Viet Thanh Nguyen continued to read to the transfixed audience sitting in the grey folding chairs, clustered together, surrounded by bookshelves.
“I was on my first assignment as a lieutenant, and could not figure out a way to save the man from my captain, wrapping the strand of rusted barbed wire around his throat; tight enough so that each time he swallowed, the wire tickled his Adams apple.”
Nguyen’s reading of an excerpt from his debut novel “The Sympathizer” (Grove, 2015) was followed by audience questions Wednesday at D.C. bookstore Politics & Prose.
The reading was the eighth stop on his tour to promote the book, which launched April 10.
Nguyen, a Vietnamese American author and associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, is also the author of “Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America,” as well as appeared in numerous scholarly journals.
“The Sympathizer” follows a fictional South Vietnamese captain living as a spy in Los Angeles.
In a rave review in The New York Times, author Philip Caputo wrote that Nguyen’s book has given a voice to the previously voiceless — a declaration Nguyen said he does not agree with.
“There is actually a very substantial body of Vietnamese literature about this war,” Nguyen explained. “So I try to say as often as I can that I am not the first. There were many before me and I do not speak for the Vietnamese people…I am not the spokesperson. Please do not treat me as such.”
Mike Snow, a D.C.-based journalist who attended the reading, said he was surprised by the lack of animosity towards Americans he experienced when visiting Vietnam himself, and hopes reading Nguyen’s book give him a better sense of understanding.
“I went to Vietnam about three or five years ago…for about three weeks,” Snow said. “I would like to read his book and get some more insight. And I also grew up in Los Angeles.”
Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, an adjunct professor in the Asian American Studies Program, knows Nguyen personally and is familiar with his scholarly works.
“I published him before and besides being an author,” Davis said. “He has been a longtime prominent figure in Asian American studies, and Vietnamese American studies in particular.”
Davis said he thinks that the book tour and media attention on the book will be helpful to promote more attention to books about the Vietnamese culture.
“He has been touring all across the country for the past month at least,” said Davis. “That means that people are going to read something by someone who is not only Vietnamese American, but someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the legacies of the war.”
Davis was one of two faculty members who helped run recent event dedicated to the remembrance of the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, hosted at the University of Maryland by the Vietnamese Student Union and the Asian American Student Union, and a major theme explored in the book.
Davis said he wonders how Vietnamese Americans will receive this book, as well what as the educational applications of Nguyen’s book are.
“That’s another question,” Davis said. “For how many Vietnamese Americans will this be a space of discovery or a space to see their stories reflected?”
