The original author of director Park Chan-wook's drama "The Sympathizer"
Autobiographical essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen

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“There is another name for breaking free from the shackles and breaking the curse.
It is decolonization.” - From “The Man with Two Faces”

The autobiographical essay "The Man with Two Faces" by Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who created a sensation in the American media and literary world by winning the Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "The Sympathizer," is being published by Minumsa.
This book serves as a compass, detailing the origins of Viet Thanh Nguyen's dark and dry sense of humor, his highly satirical spirit, and his keen awareness of reality, representing the Asian immigrant writers who most sharply portray the spirit of contemporary American literature.

Every parent should make a movie of their life.
At least that's what our parents should do.
Their epic journey is worthy of being portrayed by star actors.
Even an independent, low-budget film would be fine.
I would love to see the beautiful Joan Chen in her prime playing my mother, and the young and charming Russell Wong playing my father.

Neither actor is Vietnamese, but so what.
Because here we are all 'Asians'.

--- pp.11-12

It was a red brick house, and the upstairs tenants were a white family, and I played with their daughter on a sofa that the previous owners had left in the yard.
My brother and I share a room.
My brother listens to 1970s hits, including “Hotel California,” that Vietnamese teenagers his age had to memorize by heart.
I make my dad laugh by calling kitchen chicken.
There was a brief period when my father's English skills were better than mine.

--- p.17

Our store on East Santa Clara Street is the heart of the city.
My parents named their store 'SaiGon M?i (New Saigon)'.
It is a compromise between the westernized 'Saigon' and the original spelling 'Sai Gon'.
The use of Vietnamese names instead of English is a declaration that we are here because Americans came there.
Maybe it's even a sign of resistance, but I haven't thought about it that far yet.
We just have to accept that this store is the place for us.
We don't need an interpreter for each other, but when we meet the Americans who surround us, we are people who can only exist through an interpreter. (21-22)

My brother leaves me in the living room watching cartoons and goes to answer the phone.
While I was laughing out loud, my brother came back.

My brother says, "Mom and Dad got shot."

I'm probably now
My nine-year-old son
Like watching a cartoon
He must have been laughing.

Mom and Dad got shot, my brother says again.

What are you doing?

Why aren't you saying anything?

Don't you feel anything?

I am
Laughter
Stop.

To be honest, yes.

Numbness
Could you call it a feeling?
--- pp.30-31

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, it is a horrific experience to join the ranks of 130 million forcibly displaced people worldwide.
Ukrainians who became refugees due to the Russian invasion are welcomed warmly because of their unique white ethnicity.
The shabby but still beautiful story of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Mexico and seeking asylum at the U.S. border could perhaps be made into a Hollywood film starring Angelina Jolie.
But Central American refugees waiting patiently while Ukrainian whites cross the U.S. border, or African refugees facing violence while trying to cross from Ukraine to Poland, will not be featured in Hollywood films.


A country made up of immigrants.
A country larger than New Zealand or Ireland, Norway or Denmark, Singapore or Hong Kong, Switzerland or Austria, Portugal or Greece, Belgium or the Netherlands, Taiwan or Australia, South Korea or the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia or Spain, Italy or France, Cambodia or Thailand, Germany or Iran, appears in the distance.

But why do you insist on comparing yourselves to a country?
People hate you and define you as their enemy,
Not a member of any country
It reminds us of how vulnerable the home and the nation are.
Defined as those who threaten the existence of the nation,
Even if I don't hate you by any chance
It is considered a crisis signal.

You, refugees.

--- pp.36-37

Decades later, I found myself in the suburbs of San Gabriel Valley, California.
I'm at a party hosted by someone I don't know.
The host
He takes out an AK-47 rifle and shoots it at the ground, saying he is celebrating the New Year.

There is a loud noise and my ears start to ring.
The shooter fires the gun until the magazine is empty.
While firing, the vibration of the bullet hitting the ground is transmitted as is.

Multiplying that by 1000 gives you the volume and speed of the flying metal,
And I can imagine the fear my mother must have felt.
people in their twenties
While the host was walking around with an AK-47 and shaking hands with people,
You leave the party as quickly as possible.
When you leave
My friends say the host frowned
It doesn't matter.
Because you are a coward and you intend to continue living that way.
--- p.43

When Ellison was four years old, ■■■ was elected President of the United States.
He pledges to prevent the so-called "American Holocaust," promising:

You will never be ignored again.

In this 'you', under the only God
Of course you, an insignificant being,
Not included, and probably your son too
It will not be included.


In the country of ■■■, you, an Asian, are the other, the one who is nothing to anyone, the one who was once invisible, but now you are seen everywhere and are condemned.
However, he is not yet the number one 'Other' as thought by ■■■ and his followers.
As will soon come the fourth time, the harassment and incitement begins with the most vulnerable, the undocumented immigrants coming north from other continental nations overshadowed by AmericaTM.
These too, once invisible, have now become all too visible.
■■■ separates parents and children and detains them in detention centers to prevent such immigrants.

Some immigrants and refugees, namely
Atrocities against dark-skinned immigrants and refugees
It happens whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican,
■■■ is the cruelty of bureaucracy
Obsessed with turning it into a political and theatrical spectacle.

--- pp.62-63

Baba Ma sent you to the best elite private high school in San Jose.
You repay this by being rejected by all but one of the universities you applied to.
On the first night of college, a time when I really didn't want to go, my classmates gathered around, looked at each other gloomily, and asked, "What did I do wrong to get here?"

In short, you're screwed
'Failed' is a relative term.
Because you got a B+ average!
B+ is also called F for Asians.
F stands for 'fuckup' and A stands for 'Asian'.
--- pp.73-74

You watch the movie until its embarrassing final scene.
Set in Cambodia, Marlon Brando plays Kurtz, a white man who becomes a native and a savage.
Even if he is a savage, he is still a white man.
He is the king of the natives.
Willard stabs him to death with a machete as he rubs his bald head and mutters, “Horror, horror...”
As Kurtz lies dying, the Cambodian natives (played by Igorots from the Philippines, where the film was shot) slaughter a water buffalo.
The poor buffalo was actually slaughtered! The scene where they were chopping up chunks of buffalo flesh with a machete is so fucking real.
Movies like this aren't made anymore.
Blame the progressive animal lovers.

--- p.86

You are a writer, not a film director.
So I wrote that damn thing, The Sympathizer.
The book features a film director who is as self-conscious as he is talented, who subtly resembles Coppola, but who is not Coppola.
Whoever the director is, many Hollywood insiders have read your book and no one disputes his characterization.
Maybe he's another famous film director who made another war hit set in Vietnam.
You reluctantly signed a copy of the Pulitzer Prize-winning limited edition of The Sympathizer at the request of a friend who knew the film director, including a written tribute to him, only to find that autographed copy selling for $499 on eBay.

--- p.91

American soldiers who came to Vietnam called the area outside their launching bases "Indian country."
In the imagination of American colonizers, all native peoples are Indians.
General Philip Sheridan, surrounded by Indians in 1869, said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
You play the role of both the good Indian and the bad Indian who surrounds the white people.


Theodore Roosevelt, who later became president, offered a more generous statement in 1886.
“I don’t believe that only dead Indians are good Indians, but I think nine times out of ten they are.”

--- pp.122-123