{"id":11125,"date":"2025-10-21T11:03:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-roar.net\/?p=11125"},"modified":"2026-03-20T15:13:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T22:13:44","slug":"a-writer-war-refugee-comes-home-viet-thanh-nguyen-returns-to-san-jose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-roar.net\/?p=11125","title":{"rendered":"A Writer, War Refugee, Comes Home: Viet Thanh Nguyen Returns to San Jos\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Friday afternoon, the San Jos\u00e9 City College library hummed with anticipation. Students, faculty, administrators, and classified professionals settled in their seats to politely listen to the heartfelt introductions of the man who stepped to the podium next, Dr. Viet Thanh Nguyen<\/a>\u2014Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood afternoon, San Jos\u00e9 City College,\u201d he began, his voice buoyant with humor and caffeine. \u201cIf I speak a little fast, it\u2019s because I just had a caf\u00e9 s\u1eefa \u0111\u00e1 at T\u00e2y H\u1ed3.\u201d Laughter rippled through the audience. But within minutes, that laughter gave way to reflection as Nguyen began to unspool a story that was as personal as it was historical\u2014a story of displacement, belonging, and the enduring power of truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Refugee\u2019s Beginning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Dr. Viet Thanh Nguyen was at San Jos\u00e9 City College to celebrate the library’s five curated collections that reflect culturally relevant education and community representation, including the Asian Pacific American Curriculum Collection, named in his honor. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nguyen was four years old in 1975 when his family fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Like thousands of others, they were resettled in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania. The family\u2019s first American experience was separation: one sponsor took his parents, another took his brother, and yet another took him. \u201cMy earliest memories are of howling and screaming as I was being taken away,\u201d Nguyen recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those memories, he told the students, were the foundation of his life\u2019s work. They were also the first lesson in how America defines compassion through control. He rejoined his family after two months; his brother waited two years. \u201cHe likes to remind me that\u2019s how we know Mom and Dad loved you more,\u201d Nguyen said, smiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cSuffering is the same everywhere,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cWhat changes is who has power and who gets to forget.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The family eventually landed in San Jos\u00e9, where they opened one of the city\u2019s first Vietnamese grocery stores, Saigon Moi, on East Santa Clara Street. At the time, downtown was a neglected stretch of cracked sidewalks and empty storefronts. \u201cNo one wanted to open businesses there except for Vietnamese refugees,\u201d he said. \u201cFor a while, you could live your whole life on East Santa Clara Street and never speak English.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that fragile prosperity came with peril. Nguyen recounted how his parents were shot in their store on Christmas Eve and how the family was later robbed at gunpoint in their home on South 10th Street. \u201cI grew up an eyewitness to the eyewitnesses,\u201d he said. \u201cMy parents were the ones who lived through forty years of war and colonialism. I inherited the trauma secondhand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Library as Sanctuary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If his parents\u2019 store embodied survival, the San Jos\u00e9 Public Library<\/a> offered escape. \u201cMy father would drop me off every Saturday morning,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cI\u2019d be waiting outside before the doors opened.\u201d Inside that quiet, air-conditioned cube\u2014long before it became part of San Jos\u00e9 State\u2019s Martin Luther King Jr. Library\u2014he discovered Dickens, Austen, and Baldwin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He remembered writing his first story in third grade, Lester the Cat<\/em>, about a bored city feline who finds love in the countryside. The library gave it an award. His parents were too busy to attend the ceremony, so the school librarian took him, buying him a hamburger along the way. \u201cThat librarian changed my life,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cLibraries are where I learned that books could save you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That conviction framed the reason for his return. Nguyen was at San Jos\u00e9 City College to celebrate the library’s five curated collections<\/a> that reflect culturally relevant education and community representation, including the Asian Pacific American Curriculum Collection, now home to materials highlighting the stories of immigrant and diasporic communities\u2014including one named in his honor. As he looked around the library, he admitted feeling overwhelmed. \u201cI rarely get to speak in San Jos\u00e9,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be here, where so much began, is emotional for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(L-R) SJCC Ethnic Studies Professor Cindy Huynh, SJECCD Trustee Clay Hale, SJECCD Trustee Buu Thai, Viet Thanh Nguyen, CCC Deputy Chancellor Rowena M. Tomaneng, SJECCD Chancellor Beatriz Chaidez, SJCC Librarian Lisa Brigandi<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Becoming a Writer, Against the Odds<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Nguyen\u2019s parents, both devout Catholics with minimal formal education, had imagined a different path for their son. \u201cWe didn\u2019t even have a Bible in the house,\u201d he joked. \u201cThe only book I remember was the telephone book.\u201d When he told them he wanted to study English at UC Berkeley, he softened the blow with a lie: \u201cI told them I was pre-med. When that failed after eleven weeks, I said pre-law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Berkeley\u2014the \u201cUniversity of Communists,\u201d as he fondly called it\u2014Nguyen found what he\u2019d been missing in San Jos\u00e9: politics, art, and the fire of activism. \u201cI was radicalized the moment I stepped on campus,\u201d he told the crowd. Reading Asian American history was, for him, an awakening. \u201cI had no idea about Japanese internment camps or the Filipino-American War. I became an activist overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled recalling those years: \u201cI graduated with two majors, three degrees, and four misdemeanors.\u201d His activism was focused on what was then a radical notion\u2014diversity in academia. \u201cIn the 1990s, people thought including Toni Morrison on the syllabus would destroy Western civilization,\u201d he said. \u201cForty years later, some people still think that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Ethics of Offense<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

That same conviction\u2014to tell difficult truths\u2014has shaped his literary career. His debut novel, The Sympathizer<\/em>, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for its biting portrayal of the Vietnam War through the eyes of a communist double agent. But success came with backlash. \u201cI set out to offend everyone,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I succeeded. Americans tell me to go back to Vietnam, the Vietnamese government bans my book, and conservative Vietnamese Americans hate my guts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nguyen insisted that offense is not the opposite of art\u2014it\u2019s evidence of its necessity. \u201cYou cannot tell the truth if you\u2019re not willing to offend,\u201d he said. \u201cOur job as writers, librarians, and educators isn\u2019t to make people feel good\u2014it\u2019s to tell the truth, even when it hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He offered a story that drew both laughter and silence: \u201cA student once told me, \u2018My parents hate you\u2014you\u2019re the second most hated person in our house after Joe Biden.\u2019 \u201d He grinned. \u201cThat\u2019s when I knew I was doing my job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Radical Empathy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As his voice softened, Nguyen reflected on what empathy means in an age of division. \u201cWhen I was four, I was separated from my parents. I told myself it didn\u2019t matter. I had to move forward.\u201d But years later, watching his own son at the same age, he realized how deeply that separation had scarred him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo when I saw children in cages at the U.S. border in 2017, I knew those children,\u201d he said. \u201cThat pain doesn\u2019t go away.\u201d For him, being Vietnamese American means identifying not only with one\u2019s own community but with all who are marked as \u201cother.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cYou cannot tell the truth if you\u2019re not willing to offend,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cOur job as writers, librarians, and educators isn\u2019t to make people feel good\u2014it\u2019s to tell the truth, even when it hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He warned against what he called \u201cthe mythology of the good refugee.\u201d \u201cIn 1975, Americans didn\u2019t want us here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were seen as dangerous. And yet, decades later, some Vietnamese Americans look at new refugees\u2014brown people, Muslims\u2014and say, \u2018We were the good ones; they\u2019re the bad ones.\u2019 \u201d He paused. \u201cThat\u2019s not true. We were never the good refugees. We were just human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Courage to Tell the Whole Truth<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

During the Q&A, a student asked how Nguyen found the courage to tell stories that risk alienating his own community. He credited Catholicism\u2014\u201csuffering and martyrdom are great preparation for being a writer\u201d\u2014but also honesty. \u201cThe truth hurts, not only others but yourself,\u201d he said. He described revisiting an essay he\u2019d written as a 19-year-old about his mother\u2019s stay in a psychiatric facility. \u201cI put it away for 33 years because it terrified me,\u201d he said. \u201cDuring the pandemic, I finally finished it. That\u2019s what writing demands\u2014offending others, and sometimes offending yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another student asked whether his radicalization at Berkeley was fate or chance. \u201cI think I was ready for it,\u201d he replied. \u201cSan Jos\u00e9 in the 1970s felt like a cultural wasteland. I wanted a bigger world, and Berkeley gave me that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His final reflection was global: from Vietnam to El Salvador, from Gaza to the U.S. border. \u201cSuffering is the same everywhere,\u201d Nguyen said. \u201cWhat changes is who has power and who gets to forget.\u201d He urged students to see beyond national boundaries. \u201cGovernments divide us because united people are dangerous. The more we see ourselves in others, the harder it becomes to dehumanize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Return, and a Reckoning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After the program ended, SJCC Librarian Lisa Brigandi and Ethnic Studies Professor Cindy Huynh presented Nguyen with a framed print of his parents\u2019 grocery store\u2014Saigon Moi\u2014reimagined by student artists. Beneath it, a temporary plaque introduced the collection bearing his name. Nguyen looked at it for a long moment. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful,\u201d he said quietly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he left the lectern, students crowded forward for photos and autographs. Many carried copies of The Sympathizer, The Refugees, or Simone<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside, the late-afternoon sun poured through the glass walls of the library, illuminating the faces of students\u2014many children of immigrants themselves\u2014who had just heard their own stories refracted through Nguyen\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SJCC Librarian Lisa Brigandi (left) and Ethnic Studies Professor Cindy Huynh (right) presented Nguyen with a framed print of his parents\u2019 grocery store\u2014Saigon Moi\u2014reimagined by student artists.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m back in the community that raised me,\u201d he had said earlier, \u201cand I know some of my stories hurt. But that\u2019s what it means to tell the truth. You speak it beautifully, and you speak it whole.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that moment, amid laughter and applause, San Jos\u00e9 stopped being a \u201ccultural wasteland.\u201d It became what it always was for Nguyen\u2014the soil from which a writer grew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch Dr. Nguyen’s complete remarks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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