Refugees, The by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Epub)

Description

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer was one of the most widely and highly praised novels of 2015, the winner not only of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but also the Center for Fiction Debut Novel Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, the ALA Carnegie Medal for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Nguyen’s next fiction book, The Refugees, is a collection of perfectly formed stories written over a period of 20 years, exploring questions of immigration, identity, love, and family.

With the coruscating gaze that informed The Sympathizer, in The Refugees 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.

The second piece 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.

User’s Reviews

Viet Thanh Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Associate Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Thank You, Viet Thanh Nguyen!Eric SelbyIn “War Years,” the first-person narrator retrospectively takes us back to his early teens when his parents owned a store stocked with items the refugees from Viet Nam liked. So let me give you a taste of just how wonderful—and occasionally humorous—this collection of stories is. My parents did not grant me so much as an allowance. When I had asked for one in the fourth grade, my father had frowned and said, “Let me think it over.” The next night he handed me an itemized list of expenses that included my birth, feeding, education, and clothing, the sum total being $24,376. “This doesn’t include emotional aggravation, compound interest, or future expenses,” my father said. “Now when can you start paying me an allowance?I have read the author’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer, five—yes, five—times. In fact I led a group of senior citizens—I am one too—at our Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Everyone found the novel just amazing. And so is this collection of short stories, all about refugees as the title says, not immigrants. The distinction is important in the fictional world this amazing writer has created. Refugees are desperate. We must remember this: millions of non-communists were left in Vietnam after the United States left to fend for themselves against the communists who had taken control. Yes, so many became boat people, many of whom drowned. So the cast of characters in these eight stories are among those who made it to the United States where life, although easier than in their homeland, was hard as so often is the case for people who come to this country. Today we are being treated to a Trumpian display of fear of “the other” when, in fact, this was once a country that truly believed what Emma Lazarus wrote, “Give me your…” inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. In one story, a late teenage boy arrives in San Francisco, sponsored by a do-gooder with lots of money, where he finds himself desperate for work and some type of good life. “Transplant” is one of my favorites: a Latino in need of a liver transplant is storing in his garage knock-offs of Versace, Chanel and Louis Vuitton pedaled by Louis Vu (which apparently is a very common Vietnamese last name). But you might say the name itself is a knock-off. But enough of that or I’ll be called a spoiler. Some stories are told in first person, others in second. One of the first person narrators in a ghost writer who also sees ghosts (ghosts are big in Pulitzer novel. There is a good reason for all the high star ratings: writing doesn’t get any better than that of Viet Thanh Nguyen.

⭐ “For all refugees, everywhere” – Dedication in The Refugees“In a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except our stories.” Viet Thanh Nguyen, The RefugeesHoly moly! What an incredible, emotional and remarkable book! I am honestly having a hard time coming up with the right words for this review – I feel it deserves so much more than my unsophisticated writing skills. Nguyen is an eloquent, perceptive, brilliant writer and storyteller. The eight stories featured in The Refugees are powerful, compassionate, and moving. Every day, hundreds of individuals are displaced and must flee their homes and countries. Many refugees fear for their lives and must leave without notice, leaving everything they love behind. The Refugees deals with their immigrant experiences, and the risks they endure for a chance of a better future and life. Nguyen brilliantly brings his characters’ triumphs and sorrows to life. One particular story, “The Warriors” is about Nguyen’s own family’s experience, “…the story “Warriors” about the child of refugee shopkeepers and what happens to that family, that is drawn very much from my life and the lives of my parents. And it was a very difficult story to write because I think my parents’ lives are worthy of writing about. I don’t think my life is particularly worthy of writing about.” With the current political climate in the United States, there is an urgent need for books such as The Refugees to be written and read by all. Get yourself a copy of this book from the bookstore or borrow it from the library or friend – just make sure you read it!Side note: I was fortunate to meet and hear Viet at the Central Library in Arlington, Virginia. He is extremely funny, smart and genuine – a great human being!

⭐ Nguyen follows up his instant classic The Sympathizer with an equally impressive collection of short stories in The Refugees. With heartrending and tender emotion, he captures the struggles and hopes of an unforgettable array of immigrant and native characters of Vietnamese heritage. Each finely-crafted piece carries a subtle power and beauty in the dignity and quiet resilience of the characters as they face the hardships of loss, regret, failure, and alienation in either their home country or their adopted America. Through the wounded memories and life-altering experiences of both courageous men and women, Nguyen generates great empathy for their individual plights. The revelations they encounter are touching and poignant, oftentimes packing a force that breaks your heart. The graceful texture of Nguyen’s language and the vividness of his images and details harness the near perfection of this volume. With his two stellar works of fiction, Nguyen has quickly and deservedly earned his claim among the giants of contemporary literature. I can hardly wait for his next project.

⭐ I loved Viêt Thanh Nguyen’s first book, The Sympathizer. So I hastened to buy this one, a series of short stories connected by the theme of what it is like to be an immigrant in this country. As an immigrant from France, coming with a college degree, my personal experience is not reflected by this book about mostly boat people. How fortunate I have been! The stories are compelling and beautifully written and I probably would have rated the book five stars if the preceding one had not been so outstanding. Read it!

⭐ I shed tears reading this, mainly because of how much I can connect to the stories. I have family members who are refugees. I was born in Saigon and raised here. I was old enough to remember the culture shock, the people that I had to leave behind, so as my language and identity, all to fit in and make it in this country. I have family who cling on to their identity, and hurdled inside of their Little Saigon, half proud they’ve made it to America, half shamed that this country doesn’t want them.

⭐ This is such an absorbing collection of short stories! Each story centers on the Vietnamese diaspora, a culture and experience that I didn’t know much about.This author is excellent, Nguyen really draws you into the world of his characters. You’ll meet an elderly couple who now live in California. The husband is a learned man, a retired professor. He is slowly slipping into dementia and call his wife by the name of a long gone former lover. You’ll read about Lien, he is re-settled with a gay couple in San Francisco after his harrowing escape from Saigon. The culture shock is palatable. Each story is so well crafted and absolutely engaging. I didn’t want this book to end. I just purchased The Sympathizer, the Pulitzer Prize winner by this author.

⭐ This collection of short stories highlights the expectations those face when moving to a new country and how things rarely go according to plan. Some stories highlight the clashes in dual identities, romantic relationship troubles, and the question of loyalty to family and home country. I initially chose to read this book because I am a child of immigrants and I wanted to understand the refugee and foreign-born experience in more detail. This book gave me answers to that and so much more. I would highly recommend it.My favorite short stories out of this collection are:1. The Other Man: A refugee experiences culture shock as he moves in to live with two gay men in San Francisco.2. The Transplant: A man helps a stranger hide counterfeit goods because he believes the stranger’s father donated his liver. He finds out he was lied to.3. Fatherland: A long-lost daughter leaves America to visit her father, who had cheated on her mother, in Vietnam. She claims to be a wealthy doctor but is actually unemployed and miserable.Honorable mentions: The Americans and Someone Else Besides You; both highlight familial troubles

⭐ Didn’t grab me as much as “The Sympathizer “, but this series of stories about (mostly) Vietnamese refugees, portrayed a perspective on the war not often depicted. This, combined with excellent prose and sensitive human insight, made the book well worth reading.

⭐ I don’t think that I got my monies worth from this book because of its brevity, and the fact, that I felt left hanging at the end of each of the short stories portrayed. Nevertheless, it was an excellent compilation of very believable, real life stories of the refugees and those that were left behind from split families. I had two tours of duty in Viet Nam as “tee wee” and “Di wee” so in many ways the stories had a very special meaning for me and I felt a great deal of empathy for those persons and families that were portrayed. I think each story could have easily been the subject of a full scale novel and I hope the author will consider this in the future. I enjoyed the Sympathizer by the same author and was hoping for another novel along the same subject lines. Especially poignant was the story of the fashionable woman who attempted to “shake down” the small business owners in the community for cash contributions for continued military actions in Viet Nam. Overall a great story, and I take back my first sentence, it was a lot of bang for the buck !

⭐ Overall not a bad book. I had really high hopes for it, but I was a little let down by it. The length of the stories don’t necessarily allow for the character development that the stories all need. There are some really interesting and ambitious narratives told though, and a few of the stories were really powerful. It’s an ambitious attempt to capture a range of experiences involving those affected by the Vietnam War and one well worth reading if you enjoyed The Sympathizer.

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