Vietnamese-American Viet Thanh Nguyen will speak to the complexities of war, refugees, and exile and his own personal journey.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese American author Viet Thanh Nguyen will speak at Salt Lake Community College’s Big Questions Forum on September 25 at The Grand Theater on the College’s South City Campus. The forum’s theme this year is “Contested Spaces: Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century.” The public is invited to the event and to engage in a Q&A that will follow the lecture.
Viet Thanh Nguyen writing reflects what it means to be displaced, what home means, and his own experiences as a refugee. “He is deeply familiar with the idea of contested spaces, he moved to the U.S. during the Vietnam War and lived in a refugee camp while separated from his parents for a while before he was able to reunite with them,” said Sahar Al-Shoubaki, Assistant Professor, Humanities and instrumental in bringing the author to SLC.
A contested space involves a source of conflict—it could be political, racial, religious conflict—in which people struggle to live without certain rights. “Most people likely know someone who has come from a contested space—whether it is a student in your child’s classes, a neighbor, someone at your church, someone working at your local grocery store, or a professor at your community college,” added Al-Shoubaki.
Nguyen is the acclaimed author of The Sympathizer (his first novel), its sequel The Committed, the bestselling short story collection The Refugees as well as his nonfiction book, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America.
The Sympathizer won numerous prestigious awards, including the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and was adapted into an HBO limited series that premiered in April 2024. Nguyen is also the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.
His fiction and nonfiction works critically examine the Vietnam War and its aftermath, revealing the complexities of identity, immigration, refugees, politics, culture, conflict, displacement, and the fuller picture of humanity and inhumanity. He will release his next book in 2025, To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other.
Nguyen currently teaches at the University of Southern California, where he serves as the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and is a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature.
DETAILS:
Event: SLCC Speaker Series, The Big Question Forum: “Contested Spaces: Surviving & Thriving in the 21st Century Space”
When: Wed. Sept. 25, 2024, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Where: SLCC, The Grand Theatre, South City Campus (1575 South State St.).
Tickets; Free but must reserve tickets. Go to SLCC website or the Grand Theatre.
Image: Attached (credit: Hopper Stone).
Media Contact, Salt Lake Community College:
Peta Owens-Liston, peta.liston@slcc.edu, 801-957-5099
The Big Questions Forum:
The Big Questions Forum is part of SLCC’s Speakers Series and is spearheaded by the College’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The forum addresses the big questions inherent in the study of humanities that involve exploring the human experience, against the backdrop of some of the most pressing social issues of our time.
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