To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other

This trenchant compendium of lectures by Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Nguyen (A Man of Two Faces) expounds on “what it means to write and read from the position of an other.” The opening selection argues that writers from marginalized backgrounds face “three major temptations”: sentimentalizing characters from one’s group as saints or victims, presenting oneself as different from other people of the same background, and viewing one’s marginalized status as an identity. The path to liberation, according to Nguyen, lies in recognizing that marginalized groups have a shared interest in combating their oppressors. In “On Palestine and Asia,” he suggests that as the American-born descendants of East Asian immigrants fought to be recognized as fully American, they lost sight of the bond—born of oppression—they shared with residents of Middle Eastern countries also once exoticized as part of the “Orient,” resulting in a dispiriting lack of solidarity with Palestine. Nguyen seamlessly weaves together personal reflections and literary analysis, as when he discusses his parents’ journeys from North to South Vietnam, then on to the U.S. to illuminate how Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction depicts “the immigrant as intrepid traveler.” The entries are consistently thought-provoking and cogently argued. This will leave readers with plenty to chew on. (Apr.)