An Evening with Viet Thanh Nguyen
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Join the Coronado Public Library as we welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen. He'll discusses his newest title "To Save and To Destroy," a moving, personal meditation on otherness and a call for political solidarity, with Lily Hoang. Originally given as a series of Norton lectures, these captivating essays earned a starred review from Library Journal as '[a]n essential addition for collections about the process and theory of writing, authors of diverse backgrounds, and particularly the experiences of Asian Americans, immigrants, and refugees in the United States."
A book-signing will follow. This event is free and open to the public. Seating is first-come, first-served, subject to availability. Limited preferred seating is available with purchase of "To Save and To Destroy" through Warwick's bookstore. Please visit https://www.warwicks.com/nguyen-2025-reserved-seat or call the store at 858-454-0347 for more information.
About Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Sympathizer," "Nothing Ever Dies," and, most recently, "To Save and to Destroy." A recipient of the MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim fellowships and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
About "To Save and To Destroy"
Born in war-ravaged Vietnam, Viet Nguyen arrived in the United States as a child refugee in 1975. The Nguyen family would soon move to San Jose, California, where the author grew up, attending UC Berkeley in the aftermath of the shocking murder of Vincent Chin, which shaped the political sensibilities of a new generation of Asian Americans.
The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary question: What does the outsider mean to literary writing? Over the course of six captivating and moving chapters, Nguyen explores the idea of being an outsider through lenses that are, by turns, literary, historical, political, and familial.
Each piece moves between writers who influenced Nguyen's craft and weaves in the haunting story of his late mother's mental illness. Nguyen unfolds the novels and nonfiction of Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, William Carlos Williams, and Maxine Hong Kingston, until aesthetic theories give way to pressing concerns raised by war and politics. What is a writer's responsibility in a time of violence? Should we celebrate fiction that gives voice to the voiceless--or do we confront the forces that render millions voiceless in the first place? What are the burdens and pleasures of the "minor" writer in any society? Unsatisfied with the modest inclusion accorded to "model minorities" such as Asian Americans, Nguyen sets the agenda for a more radical and disquieting solidarity with those whose lives have been devastated by imperialism and forever wars.
About Lily Hoang
Lily Hoang is the author of eight books, including most recently "A Knock at the Door" (Texas Review Press’s Innovative Prose Series), "Underneath" (winner of the Red Hen Press Fiction Award), "A Bestiary"(PEN/USA Non-Fiction Award finalist), and "Changing" (recipient of a PEN/Open Books Award). She is a Professor of Literature at UC San Diego, where she teaches in their MFA in Writing.
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