Viet Thanh Nguyen

I think they thought that was good, you know, because, but you know what was actually most, I mean, they recognize obviously that, oh, these prizes meant something to Americans, therefore it's important.

But what really made the big difference, I think, was sales figures.

Like every time I go home, my dad would ask me, how many books have you sold?

And I tell him, they're like, oh, that's, he understood that.

You shipped this number of units, you must be making this much.

Well, okay, so I think because the news of the Pulitzer Prize, for example, was reported in the Vietnamese language press—

that which they did read.

That, as so many of my friends have recognized, Vietnamese friends, you can do anything.

Nothing really matters until you appear in the Vietnamese language media.

And then your Vietnamese language parents are like, oh, okay, now we get it.

And their friends are like, oh, your kid appeared in the newspaper or whatever it was.

You made it, congratulations.

You made it in the community, therefore that matters.

So that's how that information circulated.

So when I won the Pulitzer Prize,

I actually learned when I was on the road, okay?

So I learned on Twitter I won the Pulitzer Prize.

I was on book tour.

And my psychology was, I actually did, it did not occur to me to call my parents.

Literally never crossed my mind.