To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other - Viet Thanh Nguyen

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer (now an HBO series) comes a moving and unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness and a bold call for expansive political solidarity.\n 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.\n The essays here, delivered originally as the prestigious Norton Lectures, proffer a new answer to a classic literary What does the outsider mean to literary writing? Over the course of six captivating and moving chapters, Nguyen expl