Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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immediately engrossing and rage inducing in the best way

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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CW: oh boy, galore. Two key ones will be racism of all sorts and violent, on-page sexual assault. I wonder sometimes who these people are, who’ve blithely existed on the planet wielding the fruits of American citizenship without anything more than an eighth grade hormone-filled trip to D.C.’s worth of awareness of the sins of their forefathers. Your visit to Maya Lin’s monument should be a step along the journey, not the end of it. Which is humbly to say, from my priviledged seat, Nguyen’s […]

We’re all the same to them

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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“Yours is a lucky generation.” “I wouldn’t say we were so lucky,” Phuong said. “You’ve never appreciated what you have.” Her father waved his hand over the meal and Phuong squeezed her glass, bracing to hear the stories of her parents one more time. ……. “Phuong was bemused at how these tourists would want to spend their money and their day here, instead of at the beach, or at a fancy restaurant, or in a hammock at a rustic riverside café. The reason for such […]

Shorts

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Great Glorious Goddamn of it All by Josh Ritter

Summerwater by Sarah Moss

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The Refugees – 4/5 Stars This short fiction collection from Viet Thanh Nguyen follows up his debut novel The Sympathizer but is not that much like that novel. Both books are good, but like a lot of follow up fiction collections after a successful first novel, these represent a longer writing period as a newish writer is working to become establish. Among other reasons why this collection might be different and why it’s also successful is that Nguyen is a newly published writer, but is in […]

The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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I read and reread the first page of this book several times before I finally powered through a little. The opening page is dense and intriguing, but it also clearly portends an immersive, intense, and bleak novel. It’s also clearly a complex novel (not very much like we tend to get these days). Our narrator is a double (or triple?) agent writing a kind of confession. An adherent to Ho Chi Minh Communism and the North Vietnamese war efforts, but also a mole in the […]

“As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape.”

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

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Starting during the last days of the Vietnam War, the novel follows a mole working for a high-ranking South Vietnamese general who is evacuated from Saigon only to continue spying for the Viet Cong on American soil. This is a darkly humorous book, one that is equally hilarious and disturbing, amusing and sickening. There are grotesquely comical episodes, and scenes that will make you heave. The effect of events is increased by the claustrophobic atmosphere caused by the first person narration and the distance created […]

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” ― Audre Lorde: I can’t quit political writing.

Tell Me How It Ends; Stranger; The Line Becomes a River; Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media; The Displaced; Eloquent Rage by Valeria Luiselli; Jorge Ramos; Francisco Cantu; Ishmael Reed; Viet Thanh Nguyen; Brittney Cooper

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 4/5 Stars Valeria Luiselli is a Mexican novelist who spent the years of 2013ish-2017ish working and writing in the United States with her husband, fellow novelist Alvaro Enrigue, and their children. As she applied and waited for a work visa and Green Card, she spent her time working as a translator for nonprofit immigrant legal services organizations. Her job was to translate for and conduct interviews with recent immigrant children from Spanish speaking countries who found themselves in a legal nightmarish limbo. She explains that […]



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