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 […]
Both Sides Now
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer is a confession written by a nameless narrator to a nameless commandant. The narrator suffers from the ability to see both sides of events and of people. Through his confession, he reveals his life story, which is tied up with the history of his country, Vietnam, and foreign intervention there. Given his sympathetic nature, the narrator is able to see at times the good intentions but especially the bad of all those involved in his life […]
Another disappointment out of a promising premise
The Chancellor had pointed Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel The Sympathizer to me on one of our weekly library jaunts, and the premise sounded interesting. I’ve been in the process of reading more contemporary Anglophone fiction, particularly in developing my own reading base and curriculum. I was interested in this novel, because it examined the Vietnam War from a different angle. The novel focuses on a Communist sleeper agent who is fronting as a good Vietnamese captain during the Vietnam War. His mentor, a general […]