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Book Cover for: To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other, Viet Thanh Nguyen

To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other

Viet Thanh Nguyen

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83%

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Critic Reviews

Great

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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity.

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? Over the course of six captivating and moving chapters, Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through lenses that are, by turns, literary, historical, political, and familial.

Each piece moves between writers who influenced Nguyen's craft and weaves in the haunting story of his late mother's mental illness. Nguyen unfolds the novels and nonfiction of Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, William Carlos Williams, and Maxine Hong Kingston, until aesthetic theories give way to pressing concerns raised by war and politics. What is a writer's responsibility in a time of violence? Should we celebrate fiction that gives voice to the voiceless--or do we confront the forces that render millions voiceless in the first place? What are the burdens and pleasures of the "minor" writer in any society? Unsatisfied with the modest inclusion accorded to "model minorities" such as Asian Americans, Nguyen sets the agenda for a more radical and disquieting solidarity with those whose lives have been devastated by imperialism and forever wars.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Belknap Press
  • Publish Date: Apr 8th, 2025
  • Pages: 144
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.53in - 5.85in - 0.67in - 0.65lb
  • EAN: 9780674298170
  • Categories: American - Asian American & Pacific IslanderCultural & Ethnic Studies - American - Asian American & PaciSubjects & Themes - Culture, Race & Ethnicity

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About the Author

Nguyen, Viet Thanh: - Viet Thanh Nguyen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, Nothing Ever Dies, and, most recently, To Save and to Destroy. A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

More books by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Book Cover for: The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: Simone, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: Chicken of the Sea, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Book Cover for: Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America, Viet Thanh Nguyen

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

Brilliant, rigorous, and generous, To Save and to Destroy is part autobiography, part criticism, and wholly illuminating. A dazzling feat from one of today's great writers and thinkers.--R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit
A profound exploration of identity, displacement, and the burdens of belonging from one of the most important voices in contemporary literature. Nguyen brilliantly weaves together personal history with literary criticism and political commentary to confront the complexities of race, power, and solidarity in America. This is essential reading.--Reza Aslan, author of Zealot and An American Martyr in Persia
Viet Thanh Nguyen offers insight into how we can form allegiances beyond racial identity to global solidarities built from shared struggles against colonialism. As we now face the precipitous erosion of American democracy, Nguyen's incendiary and generous intellect is more necessary than ever.--Cathy Park Hong, author of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning