Viet Thanh Nguyen

But the complexity is in recognizing that the beauty of this country was made possible by the brutality of this country.

That all the privileges that a certain part of the population enjoys, a large portion of people, women and enslaved people, didn't have those freedoms in the late 18th century.

And that dynamic continues with us today.

That complexity is unsettling for a lot of Americans.

But only by confronting that complexity would it be possible for us to even hope to make the United States as democratic of a country as it wants to be.

Well, number one, I mean, I have found a lot of financial freedom I didn't have before.

I found many, many more readers than I didn't have before.

The Pulitzer, as that symbolic prize, is something that even people who don't read books recognize.

And I got a platform.

I hate this language.

The brand, the platform.

I got the platform.

People are like, oh, everywhere I go, I'm introduced as he won the Pulitzer Prize.

It legitimates me.

It gives me an opportunity to speak.

I want to speak at the State Department.

I've spoken at West Point to all the plebs of West Point.

I've gotten so many opportunities to be heard because of the Pulitzer Prize, and I try to say that, you know, wherever I go, I still try to say the same thing.

And that's what, you know, to me, if we recognize that these prizes are illusory and they're simply part of the material world, that's fine, but then I try to make use out of them to try to advance what I think of as the truth.

That's okay.