{"id":49754,"date":"2016-11-03T01:33:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T01:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49754"},"modified":"2016-11-04T01:03:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T01:03:11","slug":"the-sympathizer-by-viet-thanh-nguyen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49754","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Sympathizer,\u2019 by Viet Thanh Nguyen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Sympathizer,\u2019 by Viet Thanh Nguyen<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Book Review
\nThe New York Times<\/a>
\n2015-04-02<\/p>\n

Philip Caputo<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The more powerful a country is, the more disposed its people will be to see it as the lead actor in the sometimes farcical, often tragic pageant of history. So it is that we, citizens of a superpower, have viewed the Vietnam War<\/a> as a solely American drama in which the febrile<\/a> land of tigers and elephants was mere backdrop and the Vietnamese mere extras.<\/p>\n

That outlook is reflected in the literature \u2014 and Vietnam<\/a> was a very literary war, producing an immense library of fiction and nonfiction. Among all those volumes, you\u2019ll find only a handful (Robert Olen Butler\u2019s<\/a> \u201cA Good Scent From a Strange Mountain<\/a>\u201d comes to mind) with Vietnamese characters speaking in their own voices.<\/p>\n

Hollywood<\/a> has been still more Americentric<\/a>. In films like \u201cApocalypse Now<\/a>\u201d and \u201cPlatoon<\/a>,\u201d the Vietnamese (often other Asians portraying Vietnamese) are never more than walk-ons whose principal roles seem to be to die or wail in the ashes of incinerated villages.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to Viet Thanh Nguyen\u2019s<\/a> remarkable debut novel, \u201cThe Sympathizer<\/a>.\u201d \u00adNguyen, born in Vietnam but raised in the United States, brings a distinct perspective to the war and its aftermath. His book fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light…<\/p>\n

…Duality is literally in the protagonist\u2019s blood, for he is a half-caste<\/a>, the illegitimate son of a teenage Vietnamese mother (whom he loves) and a French Catholic priest (whom he hates). Widening the split in his nature, he was educated in the United States, where he learned to speak English without an accent and developed another love-hate relationship, this one with the country that he feels has coined too many \u201csuper\u201d terms (supermarkets, \u00adsuperhighways, the Super Bowl, and so on) \u201cfrom the federal bank of its \u00adnarcissism.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018The Sympathizer,\u2019 by Viet Thanh Nguyen Book Review The New York Times 2015-04-02 Philip Caputo The more powerful a country is, the more disposed its people will be to see it as the lead actor in the sometimes farcical, often tragic pageant of history. So it is that we, citizens of a superpower, have viewed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,5,8,20],"tags":[2640,25353,2327,25341,1130],"class_list":["post-49754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-new-york-times","tag-philip-caputo","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-viet-thanh-nguyen","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49754"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49774,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49754\/revisions\/49774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}