A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial by Viet Thanh Nguyen
With insight, humor, formal invention, & lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces, Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, & ideas about Vietnam & America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit & incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father & a son.
At the age of four, Nguyen & his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thut & come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother & parents & homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José.
But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA™. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Mi, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American & Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed?
When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, & ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort & care, & realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening,
Profound in its emotions & brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting & of memory, the promises America so readily makes & breaks, & the exceptional life story of one of the most original & important writers working today.
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