Showing results by narrator "Viet Thanh Nguyen" in All Categories

Evie Lang's life is in shambles. On the heels of losing her beloved aunt, she's unceremoniously fired from her poetry professorship. Lacking income and inspiration, she has no idea how to move forward - until hope arrives in the form of a surprising letter. Auntie Hảo has left her house in San Francisco to Evie. The catch? To inherit, she must go on a pre-arranged matchmaking tour in Việt Nam.

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?