Dear Festival Friends,

Viet Thanh Nguyen was four years old when he fled Vietnam with his parents and brother during the fall of Saigon in 1975. They eventually landed in San Jose, California, where Nguyen grew up largely oblivious to the war that had shaped his family’s trajectory. Then came the day when he was home alone and popped a movie he’d never seen into the VCR: Apocalypse Now. Wildly inappropriate viewing for a child, but Nguyen enjoyed it and was rooting for the U.S. soldiers—until the scene in which one of them kills an unarmed Vietnamese woman at point-blank range. Until this moment, Nguyen had considered himself an assimilated American and had given little thought to the circumstances that had made him and his family refugees. Now he was flooded with confusion. As he writes in his brilliant, National Book Award–nominated memoir A Man of Two Faces, “Willard takes out his pistol, fires a bullet into the woman’s chest and splits you in two. Are you the Americans killing? Or the Vietnamese being killed? Until this point, stories saved you. Now you encounter the power of stories to dismember you.”

Apocalypse Now did a number on young Viet’s head, but it also planted the seeds for the stories and essays he would go on to write. His first novel, The Sympathizer, tells the story of a man who is, quite literally, split in two: Half French and half Vietnamese, he fights for the South yet spies for the North and both loves and hates the America to which he’s fled after the war. Described by The New York Times as “an absurdist tour de force,” the book is an exhilarating mash-up of spy caper, war novel, immigrant tale, political treatise, and Hollywood satire (an ego-bloated director bears a strong resemblance to Francis Ford Coppola) that broke ground as one of the few books to depict the Vietnam War from the perspective of the Vietnamese. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted last year into an Emmy-nominated limited series from HBO that captures the book’s tragicomic energy.

All of Nguyen’s work, which includes a short story collection, three essay collections, and a bestselling sequel to The Sympathizer called The Committed, focuses on themes that have absorbed him his whole life: racism, displacement, trauma, identity, memory, and forgetting. It’s a heavy mix, and Nguyen has admitted that rage and anger fuel his writing. Personal rage over what a senseless war did to his family and his birth country, and a more general rage against a society that devalues so many of its people, in particular immigrants, refugees, and anyone considered “other.”

“Few people like anger and rage in general,” he has written, “but in American society, if you’re white, you’ll get more leeway to be angry than if you’re a minority.” Which is perhaps why Nguyen serves up his rage with a hearty side dish of humor. Humor lets you slyly highlight the unfairness and absurdity of a situation, and it’s a great way to disarm a bully. We imagine that Nguyen is relying on humor a lot these days. He certainly does so in his latest book, To Save and to Destroy, which will be published April 8. A collection of essays that combine elements of memoir with observations on what it means to be a social and political outsider, the book is threaded with dark comedy. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?

We look forward to laughing—and raging—with Nguyen at the Festival, May 16–18. In addition, we have a spectacular lineup of authors, including Colum McCann, Miranda July, Jonathan Eig, Cristina Rivera Garza, Gabrielle Zevin, and Marie Arana. As you can see from the countdown clock at the top of our home page, the Festival is less than two months away, so get your tickets now!

IN OTHER NEWS

We are very sorry to announce that Michael Cunningham is unable to join us in May. All ticket holders who are affected by this change will receive an email with details on how to proceed.

In response to high demand, Gabrielle Zevin’s session with Hakim Bellamy will be moved to the Main Stage at 9:15 a.m. on Sunday, May 18. This also allows us to reopen ticket sales and release additional complimentary teacher and student tickets for Zevin’s talk. Please share this news with family and friends who may be interested in attending.

Board of Directors
Edward Gale, Chair

Janet Bailey | Mark Bryant | Clare Hertel

Jenny Kimball | James McGrath Morris

Carmella Padilla | Jenna Scanlan

Mary Sloane | Maria Gale, Ex Officio

Founders
Clare Hertel | Carmella Padilla | Mark Bryant