Viet Thanh Nguyen
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So I got that education for free.
I educated myself.
And I fell in love with literature, and I believe that literature really, really mattered.
And literature saved my life, and literature could save the world.
And I believe we all should find that passion, whatever it is, for each of us.
But I had to understand something, which is that if stories have the power to save us,
They have the power to destroy us as well.
If you give something that much power, that's simply the recognition that you're granting it.
How did I know that?
One day when I was 11 or 12 years old, I put this movie into the VCR.
It was called Apocalypse Now.
I'd never seen any Vietnam War story before.
I was a war fanatic.
I loved American war movies.
I was an American.
Started watching this movie.
And I realized the Vietnamese are the bad guys in here.
Or if we're not the bad guys, we're the unimportant people.
The Americans are the good guys.
Or the Americans are the good guys even if they're the bad guys.