I'm a fan of Viet Thanh Nguyen; I've read and enjoyed "The Sympathizer," "The Committed," and "The Refugees." Be aware, however, that this memoir is a very different book--still written with the same skill but much more difficult to read. As Nguyen describes it himself, "A Man of Two Faces" is his "cri de coeur," which very often reads like a shout of rage. AMERICA and AMERICAN DREAM are written in capitals with TM superscript each time they appear in the book, a clear indication of the conflicted lens through which Nguyen views his adopted country. He recounts the fallout from his famous (some might say infamous) piece for The New York Times, in which he calls Thanksgiving "both heartwarming family ritual AND celebration of genocide." He refers to California as "the largest state of the fifty United States if one does not count the invisible fifty-first: the state of Denial." And it's hard not to succumb to this state of denial while reading this book--there were several times when I wanted to put it down and be done with it, but the fact that Nguyen had predicted this response made me perversely determined to finish, just to prove him wrong. (I see what you did there, Viet. Well played.) And I'm happy I did, because "A Man of Two Faces"--and particularly its second half--gave me new insights into what it means to be other in America, into the duality of the refugee identity, and into the emotional costs of war, even decades after it is over. I thought it was particularly effective that Nguyen wrote the first two sections of the book in the second person, especially since he says at the end, "How do you translate the word 'you' into Vietnamese when 'you' does not exist in the language?" I also was particularly moved by the life story of Nguyen's parents, who he refers to jointly throughout as Ba Ma--"A Man of Two Faces" is ultimately a love story, of sorts, to them. Toward the end of the book, Nguyen writes that "Forgetting the painful things is necessary for some of us. As long as we eventually simmer that bone that we cannot cut through. Have I simmered that bone enough? Can I taste that marrow of memory?" The emotions in this book felt like they were still on the boil, but it was all the more impactful for that.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Grove Press for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review. If you can be comfortable with being made uncomfortable, this is rewarding reading.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the Advanced Readers Copy of A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen!

Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about his raw feelings and experiences as a refugee growing up in America (TM). Memories of his mother’s experience with mental illness are re membered and dis membered. Then more are re membered. The syncopation of the story takes some getting used to but wow! The powerful thought provocation kicks in and makes me want to do all I possibly can to be sure all refugees are warmly welcomed here. We are, after all, based on “give me your tired, your poor…”. Most likely this book will win another Pulitzer. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

“How do you translate the word “you” into Vietnamese when “you” does not exist in the language?” - Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces*
I can’t stop thinking about the narrative voice. The memoir begins in 1st person POV, as expected, and subtly shifts into the intimacy of 2nd person narration, which I didn’t expect. I felt submerged in the very best way. There are even times when the memoir breaks the 4th wall, speaking directly to “Dear reader” (part two, the ronald reagan room and part three, the end of me )

“Can you cut to the bone?”- Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces**
This memoir is told in questions. By a very rough estimate, I’d say 40% of the sentences are questions. A beautiful reveal for why is in a letter Viet Thanh Nguyen shares with us in part two, your education.

If you read the text out loud or listen closely to your inner reading voice, the questions have a poetic effect. They form part of a wave in tone and pacing. The sentences with question marks are a crest, the ones with periods a trough. The effect for me? I felt like I was riding the “ocean of amnesia”*** with Viet Thanh Nguyen, rising on the questions, falling through the answers. I loved getting splashed with the rogue waves of unique, beautiful syntax: big bold letters, extra spacing, sudden moments of stanza-like formatting.

Other reflections:
This memoir theorizes. This memoir is a literature survey. This memoir is a reader’s companion to The Sympathizer that made me want to reread the novel, which I certainly will.

This memoir fathoms the layers of colonialism in American life, dredging up all the 
“open secrets” that the individual, the mythology, and the collective tries to bury in the ocean floor. Those plumb lines run deep, but by going there, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s words chart a way to safer, decolonized waters. I love this quote: “Using words to force us to see anew is critical, if discomfiting (for some).”****

Things I’ve been thinking about for days:
- His concept of representation as a euphemism (part three, open secrets).
- The long threads of wordplay, like what he does with remember, dismember, re member, disremember, member.
- Hidden connections to other works of fiction by Viet Thanh Nguyen. At the end of part three, memorial, for example, he writes, “...my tales [are] nothing more than garments shed by her ghost.” This sentence pulls from the last line of “Black-Eyed Women,” my favorite story in The Refugees.

Quotes citations:
*part two, the inventory of yourself
**part one, hello, hollywood? + part two, your education
***part one, do you know the way to san josé? + part one, hello, hollywood?
**** part two, good, bad, and ugly

THANK YOU Grove Atlantic Press for the advanced copy of this memoir through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I cannot wait for the copy I preordered to arrive.

"Are you a witness to history because you were there? Can you be a witness to history if you do not remember it?"

"You are not forgotten or remembered, you are both at the same time, you are seen and misunderstood, seen and distorted, seen and instantly forgotten, seen and unseen, you are remembered and disremembered"

"So-called minorities must always know the minds of the so-called majority. But they assume they need know nothing about you. Their ignorance is a privilege, a luxury you cannot afford."

"So many of war's casualties are never counted. Never commemorated, never named on walls, never written about in novels and plays, never featured in movies. The refugees, the suicides, the disabled, the unsheltered, the traumatized, the ones who have departed this reality. The ones never known. "

"To be creative without being critical risks being apolitical. A lack of politics is the politics of the dominant American Literary world, leading many American writers to avoid certain open secrets."


Thank you for sharing your story. It was so profound and powerful. The prose format made this book even more readable. It is so important that the white reader, like myself, read and value works such as yours. The story of the refugee and the immigrant is what has made America what it is, but so few people read stories beyond that of the "Great White American Male Novelist." I wish I could write this review as eloquently as this novel was written, but instead I just say pick this up and you won't regret it.

A Man of Two Faces is a stinging criticism of the colonial style of functioning in the USA. Its deep analysis of racial hierarchy, its moving depiction of being a refugee, its sharp wit and sarcasm, and its high literary value make it a must-read.

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a masterful storyteller through his fiction like The Sympathizer but A Man of Two Faces allows Nguyen to show readers himself and his life in an expertly written story about Family, Immigration and what makes people who they are!

A masterful rendition of the author’s life and his ruminations about decolonization, refugee vs immigrant, racism, war, genocide, and the voice of the other whose power is diminished by the Great White Man. Told in almost a stream of consciousness, we follow his life from his escape from Vietnam at age 4, his settlement in San Jose, California, where his parents owned a grocery store , his college adventures, his education and eventual job as an academic professor, to marriage with children and the love he felt for his parents, particularly his mother. This is a difficult book to review as it flowed from topic to topic including reflections on books, movies, and authors. Told with a biting wit and a sense of humor, this is a book to savor and mull over from a brilliant reflective mind.

Viet Thanh Nguyen's <i>The Sympathizer</i> is one of my favorite reads of the last decade, and I've read everything he has published since. This short memoir does not disappoint, giving good insight into Nguyen's family background and upbringing, as well as reiterating the political themes that occur throughout his writing. It's a very self-aware account of his life that points out both the hypocrisies behind the myth of the American Dream and the racism behind the idea of a Model Minority, even though his own life (at least on the surface) often embodies both of these concepts (although an ideal specimen of the Model Minority would never be so ungrateful as to criticize his country to the extent that he does, and would certainly be better at math).

One thing that amazes me about many memoirs is their vividness. Do writers really have such a knack for memory, or do they simply have the imagination to fill in the gaps? I've often suspected the latter. Nguyen is very forthright in admitting the haziness of his memory, and episodes (particularly traumatic ones) that he has just forgotten. But he certainly remembers enough to create an engaging account.

Thanks to net galley for providing an egalley for early review. I hope to one day see a finished copy. The text is fairly poetic, and the formatting did not really come through on the egalley. The publisher says this will be 400 pages, and by my estimate there was only about 200 pages worth of traditionally formatted text.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. As Nguyen’s prose reads almost like free-form poetry, he not only speaks of his own upbringing and his parents, but he uses his and their lives as the springboard to reflect upon numerous topics, including what it means to be a minority in America, to be Asian in America, a refugee, colonialism, racism, imperialism, and the so-called American Dream™. This ended up taking longer than expected, because I found myself pausing over and over to either chew upon one of his many ferociously sharp observations, or just to mull over Nguyen's powerful wording as a phrase leapt out at me as if spring-loaded by its clever construction.

Genuinely not like any biography that I’ve read yet, and I say that in the best way possible. I’ll definitely be recommending this left and right to both those who have and haven’t read his Pulitzer prize-winning “The Sympathizer” alike. I also hope to get this right into the t-purchase list of my library as soon as possible.

Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2015 debut novel The Sympathizer begins with the unforgettable lines: "I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds." When I read it, I was absolutely blown away by both the story itself and how Nguyen lays bare the insidiousness of the America-centric lens that has long informed our perception of the Vietnam War and reduced the people and land of Vietnam to being merely an exotic backdrop for an American tragedy. I had never read a book quite like it before, so when I learned that Nguyen had written a new memoir, I dropped everything else I was reading to devour it over two days.

A Man of Two Faces, a title which alludes to the opening lines of The Sympathizer, is part memoir of Nguyen's experiences as a refugee and eventually an academic and Pulitzer-winning writer, part history and blistering critique of the legacies of colonialism and imperialism that still pervade our modern culture, and part loving tribute to his parents and their journeys of trauma and dispossession — journeys that the second-generation immigrant children raised in a foreign land can never fully comprehend and rarely have the means or opportunity to probe.

This book covers a lot of ground. Nguyen calls out the pervasive racism of Hollywood and mass media in clear, evocative, and soberingly impassioned prose. He discusses the othering and erasure that people of color in America experience in a wide spectrum of ways, what it means to reclaim your identity in a country that sees Asians as model minorities or yellow perils, the internal colonization that happens subconsciously and the painstaking process of decolonizing, and the heavy mental and psychological toll that all of these things can take. This book is as powerful as it is moving. It's still early in the year yet, but this is for sure one of the best books of 2023.

If I, an Asian not living in America, can empathize and be deeply moved by Nguyen’s ‘A Man of Two Faces,’ I cannot imagine how much this will resonate with an Asian living in America.

This book is so many different things all at once—a memoir, political critique, a poem, and a love letter. Nguyen entangles the roots of racism across all fronts, drawing from both his childhood and adulthood experiences. I have never read a memoir written like this. Nguyen’s thoughts and criticisms just flow, melting together in a cohesive pool teeming with open secrets, unspoken truths, and guilty silences.

Perhaps this will offend some of its readers—but the experience of being a minority has a tendency to do so. It is difficult to reconcile a country as a place of your refuge when all it has done is reiterate its refusal. Refusal to revisit the past; to admit that glory came with guns; to acknowledge that with bounty came blood. This refusal is the plight of the colonized, conquered, and censored, as Nguyen reiterates in his memoir—but it is also one that demands to be fought.

More than a critique, this is also a love letter to Nguyen’s parents. Filled with anecdotes about grief, growing up Asian (A B+ being an Asian F), and struggling with his two-faced identity, this book is the epitome of a shared struggle that has plagued minorities for decades.

It is difficult to talk about this book without giving everything away—but one only has to look around to see what it is about. Everything that has been happening around us, whether in real time or decades ago, is encapsulated in this book. This will haunt me for a very long time.

As soon as I saw the title of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s new book
“A Man of Two Faces” …..A Memoir, A History, A Memorial ….
“The highly original blistering unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer prize winning author of ‘The Sympathizer’, which has now sold over one million copies worldwide”……
I only hesitated one minute: wishing to listen to Viet read it—
but not wanting to wait - I requested an early copy from Grove Atlantic …(thank you for this treat, Grove!) - I started reading each morning while spinning my legs on our spinnaker stationary bike.

Note: I read ‘The Sympathizer’ a year before it won the Pulitzer Prize…gave it a strong 5 star rating. I was telling about how great it was, but it took Viet winning the Pulitzer Prize until most people believed me…and finally read it themselves only to be blown away, too.
I couldn’t have been happier for anyone when Viet won the Pulitzer Prize!!!

“A Memoir A History A Memorial” > was EXACTLY the type of book I wanted ‘from Viet’. My excitement was real….
turning out to be - gratefully- tremendously engrossing.
For one thing,
it’s personal and moving.

Every topic and theme covered …
no matter how heavy-loaded ….be it war,
colonization,
racism,
nationalism,
violence,
fear,
heartbreak,
loss…..
etc.
is written with inviting - readable personal intimacy.

I just love this guy. Viet is smart! Wise! Observant! Insightful!
He demonstrates a profound understanding of immigration struggles…..and is keenly politically and socially aware. He is also funny…..(personally wonderfully-open) in sharing his soul ….and he’s very likable.

This book reads pretty fast - awesome prose styling - with sweet family photos.

I’m going to dive right in and share some excerpts. …..but most……
I highly recommend this book to everyone!!!
It’s one of the best ‘personal, informative & powerful’ books by any Vietnamese American I have ever read. ….
……it has everything important:
LIFE….LOVE….FAMILY….
HISTORY….and an emotional MEMORIAL….a tribute to Viet’s Ma.

Excerpts I loved….(for a variety of reasons)….
there are plenty more where these came from…

“Do you know the way to San Jose?”
[Viet once lived less than 5 miles from me ….he ‘knows’ the way to San Jose]

“A handful of bad memories can be more indelible than a lifetime of good memories or mediocre ones. We noticed the scar, not the skin. Being taken away from your parents is burned in between your shoulder blades, a brand you do not usually see until you examine yourself with the mirrors of your own writing”.

“You never think of what your parents experience when they are forced to give you up. But when your son turns four, you finally see Ba Ma as they were then, younger than you when you at last became a father, their bodies vital, their future, old age and abstraction, they’re missing children in reality.
“Your separation from your parents eventually ends. No photo exists of your reunion with your parents. Your family photos record only the good times afterward. In one Pennsylvania photo, you pose cheerfully in shorts and sandals, somewhere woodsy” .
(loved the photo of little Viet).

“You begin to remember yourself when your son turns four in 2017. You have named your son Ellison in homage to the novelist Ralph, whose ‘Invisible Man’ impressed you deeply when you read it in college.
“You want your son to understand that the language of these writers and thinkers is his home, too, as much as America is.
You want Ellison to understand, eventually, that to be an American—
and he is an American, born and bread, eligible to be president!”
“Meanwhile, your poor son just wants to play Minecraft”.

“Seeing your son, at four makes you think of yourself at that age, when your brief separation from your parents seemed eternal. What you tried not to think about for decades resurges. A force more powerful than when your parents took you away to give your father and mother time to become self-sufficient. But a child only understands the powerlessness, the abandonment, the sound of his screaming”.

“Visiting Berkeley with your high school girlfriend, J, you fall in love with the University at first sight. From telegraph Avenue to campus, and Sproul Plaza, where the Free Speech Movement of the 1960’s had gathered in enormous numbers, you feel that this is where you have always wanted to be. Something is in the air, and it is not just marijuana”.
Viet went to UC Berkeley…. (my Alma Mater too).

“Ba Ma comfort themselves with a microwave, a stereo console with built-in speakers, a cassette deck, and an 8-track player; a wooden-paneled television with an enormous twenty-five-inch screen that serves as your personal Americanization device”.
“You rent these movies from a dark, narrow Vietnamese, video store near the SaiGon Moi, passed the Vietnamese beauty salon, the Vietnamese, café, the Vietnamese sandwich, shop, Vietnamese restaurant, their
alienness to non-Vietnamese people occasionally softened by French names: the Paris Beauty Salon, Les Amis Cafe”.
“You have taken over downtown San Jose. And made it better.”
[It’s true!!!!]

“You do not suffer from an identity crisis, because American individualism and Vietnamese collectivism war within you”.

“Hard life in the old world— poverty, war, patriarchy, homophobia, religious persecution, dictatorial regime, etc.”

“Daunting challenges in the New World— language barriers, cultural, misunderstandings, racism, and condescension, as well as starting, at or near the economic bottom, above many Black people and native people”.

“Generational conflict—parents don’t understand their Americanized children;
American born or American raised children don’t get their old world parents”.

“Your heroes are anti-colonial, revolutionaries, public intellectuals, committed writers, galvanizing teachers”.

“No longer a faceless part of an Asian invasion. You are an Asian American”.

Viet’s Ma was born in 1937.
“A poor girl in a poor northern Vietnamese village. She died in 2018”.

At age 17……
Viet almost did not graduate from high school because he nearly failed pre-calculus. (Too funny!)
I love our Pulitzer Prize Guy…..
Love this book. I hope to read more books that Viet writes about his son Ellison….and maybe a book by Ellison, himself one day.

5 strong stars….Highly recommend!!!

A Man of Two Faces, a memoir by Viet Thanh Nguyen, is one of the top books I have read in 2023. It will remain with me for many years.

It is profound, powerful, thought provoking and it holds up a mirror to how America treats immigrants and refugees.

Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016 for The Sympathizer even though fourteen publishers passed on the opportunity to publish his book. In A Man of Two Faces, Nguyen shares how writers of color must read and be very familiar with White authors' works. White ignorance of the works of writers of color is a privilege---and there is often a lack of interest in expanding knowledge and reading books by people of color.

Nguyen's memoir is formatted like poetry and the storytelling is masterful. The topics include colonization, nationalism, genocide, war, refugees, immigrants, racism, and voicelessness and how that impacts the American Dream.

There are many visceral, memorable passages including:

* Refugees are seen as zombies of the world
* Fear and terror shape refugees
* B+ average is an Asian F
* As a model minority, sometimes you rock the boat but most of the time you row, diligently
* Stories are there to shake you, unnerve you, and make you see a new version of yourself
* Under colonization, none of us can breathe. When we recognize that, we can all struggle for breath together.
* Thanksgiving is both a reunion and a story of genocide
* Refugees often feel betrayed because they are taken to the country that was the aggressor in their home
country and then they are expected to be grateful
* White nationalism is the US identity
* White nationalism requires demonizing racial others and subordinating women
* Anti-Asian violence increased once Trump called the pandemic the Chinese virus and Kung Flu
* What does it mean to be illegal when the law is unjust?
* MLK: Riots are the language of the unheard
* Being racist is easier than blaming capitalism
* Countries gush refugees because the country is broken or they are breaking their people
* An aerosol of racism permeates America
* There is no such thing as voicelessness. Voices are deliberately silenced or preferably unheard.
* Writing can be an act of justice
* Writer's ultimate task: find what shouldn't be written and write it

Highly, highly recommend!