Viet Thanh Nguyen

So, for example, one of the basic privileges as an American is the reality that what Americans think and feel and the kinds of stories that we tell are things that get exported all over the world.

And I thought about that a lot because I'm an American writer writing in English and

I'm not a Vietnamese writer writing in Vietnamese and it's made a huge world of difference, literally a world of difference because my book can be read in 25 or something different languages all over the world.

And most Vietnamese writers don't have that kind of opportunity.

And it's very much a function of American privilege that I earned or got given to me as a refugee from a war.

And so I bring that privilege with me into Vietnam that I'm Vietnamese there, but I'm also an American.

And the Vietnamese there are very clearly aware of all of this.

because I was deeply afraid.

Most of my family never left Vietnam, couldn't leave Vietnam, and they were poor.

My parents were supporting them for decades during times of starvation.

And so I was really, really worried about going to Vietnam and encountering all these kinds of emotional complications, because I'm not good at emotional complications.

I went and I met my adopted sister, who

had been left behind in 1975.

And I met dozens of my relatives who led completely different lives than mine.

Many of us who come from these traumatized countries, when we go back as Americans, we're expected to bring suitcases full of stuff and money.

My father, in preparation, gave me a whole list of relatives with dollar amounts and said, you're going to give this person this much money and that person that much money.

The difficulty that I find for myself is that I don't see the world the way that a Vietnamese person who grew up in Vietnam sees the world.

So when I'm there, I have to constantly think about the fact that I'm both Vietnamese and American, that I share some similarities with people there and a lot of things I don't share with them.

And that I come to Vietnam with my own set of hang-ups.

I don't have the same kind of hang-ups as another kind of American would have, but as an American...