‘His writings cut through any pretense and hypocrisy’: Viet Thanh Nguyen brings latest book to Spokane Public Library for AAPI Month

Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month celebrations are underway for the month of May, and the Spokane community has something particularly special planned.

The Spokane Public Library and Asians for Collective Liberation Spokane will host a visit from author and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen, a significant and influential voice in the Asian American community.

Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Dayton Literary Peace Prize recipient, will discuss his latest publication, “To Save and Destroy: Writing as an Other.” Compiled from his Norton Lectures given at Harvard University, this memoir explores the overlap of the personal and the political and what that overlap means for the writer.

The book was released on April 8, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War – known in the West as the Fall of Saigon, but known to many in the Vietnamese diaspora as Black April.

Nguyen was 4 years old when he and his family fled their home country following the political collapse of South Vietnam in 1975. This was the second time his parents had relocated, the first time being in the mid-1950s when Vietnam was divided into North and South. Drawing from his experience as a wartime refugee as well as his love for storytelling, his latest work explores what it means for oppressed peoples to use their voice.

He discusses the responsibilities that storytellers in minority groups face: Do you use your medium to give a voice to the voiceless, or do you instead use it to express direct dissent toward oppressors?

Nguyen ruminates on how this tension highlights the way politics can bleed into personal identity, creating a sense of otherness. This politically and socially imposed “otherness” can cause a sense of isolation, of lack of belonging. But when harnessed in creative work, it has the potential to be shaped into a sense of joy.

“I think it is his ‘outsider status’ that makes Viet Thanh Nguyen’s observations of the United States so penetrating and poignant. His writings cut through any pretense and hypocrisy about what the United States stands for as a global power. He challenges the cliché about the ‘voiceless’ others and he brings complexity and nuances in his depictions of the ‘others,’ ” said Pui-Yan Lam, an Eastern Washington University professor of sociology and justice studies.

Nguyen’s meditation on voices and their power to reshape personal and cultural narratives is in close alignment with the area’s Asians for Collective Liberation’s 2025 theme, “Echoes: Letters for New Tomorrows.” As stated on the group’s website, “An echo is never just a sound – it is a conversation with time. It bounces, shifts, and returns in ways we don’t always expect. The voices of our ancestors, the stories of our communities, and the lessons of our past reverberate into the present, asking us to listen, respond, and shape what comes next.”

“As immigrants and refugees, I think Asian Americans and the broader Asians in diaspora may find themselves in this constant state of transience, or being in-between, and these echoes sort of guide us to understand where we came from, allow us to embrace or reimagine who we are, give us agency to challenge what we’ve inherited, and perhaps urge us to rebuild the new tomorrows where we can all thrive and find collective liberation,” said Frances Mortel, Cultural Programs Manager at ACL Spokane.

Nguyen’s memoirs explore these same ideas, grappling with the complex power of storytelling. On one hand, storytelling provided him escape from the harsh realities of living as a minority and as a refugee in the United States. And on the other, storytelling also has an often cruel and persuasive power to shape public perception of marginalized communities. Nguyen recognizes that however applied, stories, and the imaginations that fuel them, can transform the world.

“It is important to tell stories from an ‘outsider’ perspective because the outsiders’ stories are often ignored, or our ‘outsider’ stories were told but distorted by those who are on the inside through their biased lenses,” Lam said. “As an immigrant in the United States … I have become a keen observer of U.S. cultures, politics and racial dynamics by necessity. We, the outsiders, understand the United States in ways that the ‘insiders’ cannot.”

Nguyen closes his reflections with a call for broader solidarity, specifically between communities and individuals whose lives have been altered by the forever wars perpetuated by imperial interests.

This call makes his newest work an especially relevant read for May, as the origins of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month are closely linked to the Asian American movement of the late 1960s, which pushed for Pan-Asianism and solidarity in denouncing racism and imperialism.

“Like Nguyen, we hope that the Spokane community finds joy in otherness and resistance,” Mortel said.

Nguyen is also known for his popular debut novel, “The Sympathizer” which has been adapted into an HBO miniseries created by co-showrunners, South Korean director Park Chan-wook and Canadian actor and writer Don McKellar, and starring Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr.

Nguyen will appear at the Central Library on Thursday. The event is free, although in-person tickets are sold out. The event can also be attended virtually. Visit spokanelibrary.org to register.