The refugees

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The refugees

Title:

The refugees

Added Title:

Black-eyed women.

The other man.

War years.

The transplant.

I'd love you to want me.

The Americans.

Someone else besides you.

Fatherland.

Author:

Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 1971- author.

Summary:

" The Refugees is a collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of twenty years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family. Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to lives led between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration."-- Provided by publisher.

Edition:

Large print edition.

Contents:

Black-eyed women -- The other man -- War years -- The transplant -- I'd love you to want me -- The Americans -- Someone else besides you -- Fatherland.

Physical Description:

271 pages (large print) ; 23 cm.

Genre:

Short stories.

Large type books.

Subject Term:

Vietnamese -- United States -- Fiction.

Refugees -- Fiction.

Immigrants -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning,

Publication Date:

2017

ISBN:

9781432839024

Publication Information:

Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning, 2017.

Call Number:

LP NGUYEN

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003418483	Large Print Fiction	NGUYEN	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and became one of the most acclaimed novels of recent years, its author recognized as an important contemporary writer and thinker. His beautiful and deeply moving new book, The Refugees , is a collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of twenty years. In these powerful stories set in both Vietnam and America, Nguyen paints a vivid portrait of the experience of people leading lives between two worlds, the adopted homeland and the country of birth.
With the same incisiveness as in The Sympathizer , in The Refugees Viet Thanh Nguyen gives voice to the hopes and expectations of people making life-changing decisions to leave one country for another, and the rifts in identity, loyalties, romantic relationships, and family that accompany relocation. From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of migration.
The second work of fiction by a major new voice in American letters, The Refugees is a beautifully written and sharply observed book about the aspirations of those who leave one country for another, and the relationships and desires for self-fulfillment that define our lives.

Author Notes

Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Ban Me Thuot, Viet Nam. In 1975, he came to the United States as a refugee with his family. He received degrees in English and ethnic studies from the University of California Berkeley. After receiving a Ph.D. in English from Berkeley, he began teaching at the University of Southern California and has been there ever since. He is an associate professor of English and American studies and ethnicity.

He is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. The novel The Sympathizer won the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction, and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His latsest novel is The Refugees. He co-edited Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field with Janet Hoskins.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Each searing tale in Nguyen's follow-up to the Pulitzer-winning The Sympathizer is a pressure cooker of unease, simmering with unresolved issues of memory and identity for the Vietnamese whose lives were disrupted by the "American War." In "Black-Eyed Woman," a writer is visited by the ghost of her teenage brother, who was murdered trying to save her from Thai pirates while fleeing the Vietcong. "War Years" is about a family of Vietnamese grocers in San Jose, Calif., challenged by another refugee to donate money to rebels still fighting the Communists back home. When an armed intruder invades the family's home, the piercing irony is that their youngest son thinks it's safe to open the door because the man is white. In "The Transplant," Arthur Arellano is the recipient of a new liver from Men Vu, a Vietnamese man killed in a hit-and-run, whose son befriends him, then makes him complicit in his shady business selling fake designer goods. The most disturbing story is "Fatherland," in which a man names his second set of children in Vietnam after his first set, who have fled to America with his first wife. When the American Phuong (now Vivien) visits her sister Phuong in Vietnam, Vivien reveals she is not the doctor her mother boasted she was. It is clear that author Nguyen believes the Vietnamese Phuong, more self-aware and resolute, is better off than her American doppelganger. Nguyen is not here to sympathize-"always resent, never relent," as the anti-Communist exiles proclaimed in The Sympathizer-but to challenge the experience of white America as the invisible norm. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

Although publishing ten months after Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for The Sympathizer, this collection precedes his novel by decades (the earliest entry dates from 1997). In a pre-Pulitzer interview [ow.ly/qXus3057v1g], Nguyen credits a 15-year experience "characterized by drudgery and despair, laced with a few bright moments when the stories were published or won awards" as the labor necessary to produce his stupendous Sympathizer. These eight stories encompass migration, loss, and disconnect as characters navigate and stumble through memories, experiences, and perceived realities. Two siblings reconnect in "Black-Eyed Women" decades after their deadly boat escape from Vietnam. The children of refugees serve as both witnesses and enablers to their dislocated parents in "War Years," "Someone Else Besides You," and "Fatherland." Unlikely connections haunt two of the most resonating stories: an aging man with dementia begins to call his wife by someone else's name in "I'd Love You To Want Me," while an organ recipient meets the donor's family in "The Transplant." VERDICT For Nguyen groupies desperate for future titles, Refugees is a highly gratifying interlude. For short fiction fans of other extraordinary, between-culture collections such as -Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders and Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth, Nguyen won't disappoint. Either way, highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 8/8/16.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

Ever since my father died a few years ago, my mother and I had lived together politely. We shared a passion for words, but I preferred writing in silence while she loved to talk. She constantly fed me gossip and stories, the only kind I enjoyed concerning my father when he was a man I did not know, young and happy. Then came stories of terror like the one about the reporter, the moral being that life, like the police, enjoys beating people now and again. Finally there was her favorite kind, the ghost story, of which she knew many, some even first-hand. Aunt Six died of a heart attack at seventy-six, she told me once, twice, or perhaps three times, repetition being her habit. I never took her stories seriously. She lived in Vung Tau and we were in Nha Trang, she said. I was bringing dinner to the table when I saw Aunt Six sitting there in her nightgown. Her long gray hair, which she usually wore in a chignon, was loose and fell over her shoulders and in her face. I almost dropped the dishes. When I asked her what she was doing here, she just smiled. She stood up, kissed me, and turned me towards the kitchen. When I turned around again to see her, she was gone. It was her ghost. Uncle confirmed it when I called. She had passed away that morning, in her own bed. Excerpted from The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.