Thanks to NetGalley & Random House for the ARC!

Is speculative fiction still worthwhile when it imagines the wrong future?

If it were released in 2024, Kevin Nguyen’s bright and bleak "Mỹ Documents" would have been called a biting, prescient satire.

In 2025, it feels almost twee.

The premise sounds almost too timely, as Vietnamese-Americans are relegated to detention camps as a result of racist fear-mongering. Within the first few pages of the novel, we learn that this is a story about competing narratives. Nguyen excels at sharp-toothed prose, and he uses it to dig into the reader at unexpected moments.

One character repeatedly writes about her grandmother’s tragic history as a refugee before learning that key elements were fabricated. Elsewhere, the reality of Camp Tacoma—the detention center—is violently divorced from how the American government talks about it. Likewise, there’s a profane mundanity to a character being “freed” because Google intervenes to keep him on retainer.

There are some truly fascinating moments throughout the book, such as when Cuba’s “El Paquete” method of disseminating media becomes a vital part of camp life, or when a character is drafted by a sports recruiter while interned. Nguyen’s work is nothing short of excellent..

And yet, "Mỹ Documents" feels almost hopelessly naïve.

In Nguyen’s world, evil cares about brand management. His U.S. government is preoccupied with softening discourse and rendering Camp Tacoma innocuous. He imagines an administration that is afraid of being seen as dehumanizing. In reality, we have a president that calls immigrants “animals.” To be fair, there was no way to predict an administration that delights in cruelty with the depraved simplicity of a child, but Nguyen’s book highlights how ill-equipped many of us are for our present reality.

Late in the book, a character reflects on DHS and says, “Did shining a light on the oppressor really do anything for the oppressed?”

It’s a question that resonates long after "Mỹ Documents" is finished, but it also leads me to wonder—Is this is a book that would have been better served by wallowing in the darkness? Does the artificial warmth of Nguyen’s light further harm the oppressed?

It’s a dangerous privilege to be unsure.

I jumped on the NetGalley request button when I read the description. I way delayed in starting this title, but it may have been kismet as the timing of reading what should be dystopian, is really just satire in our current political climate.
I found the characters to be highly developed and easy to distinguish.. Courage, belief in truth and desire for justice themes through out really resonated with me.

My Documents is a powerfully (and terrifyingly) realistic look at how xenophobia and racism can lead to absolutely horrendous situations.

The novel focuses on different members of the Nguyen as they live in the aftermath of the creation of internment camps for Vietnamese people living in America following a terrorist attacking. It is jarring, forcing readers to walk alongside characters living in a world that does not feel super different from our own. It is an eerie book to read because it is so easy to make comparisons to things from history, while also acknowledging the potential for something like this to happen again.

Kevin Nguyen makes a really masterful choice by having some of his main characters prisoners within the camps, and others still living their regular lives due to exceptions (mainly work related.) By doing this, he is able to unpack the different layers of pain and trauma that exist when massive injustice happens to a family. Each character is fully developed and facing their own struggles, both internal and external, and Nguyen is able to really dig into the widespread effects of internment.

I think there are some things that could have been explored with a little more depth, particularly with the characters who were not forced into the camps. I think I wanted to see more external conflict with those characters; I also sort of wanted to know more about the terrorist attack that led to the camps, but could also see how leaving or vague may be its own kind of commentary.

Overall, what an absolutely banger of a book. I highly recommend it, especially in the political climate we currently live in. The more I think on it, the more impressed I am with it.

Thank you to the published for a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gah I wish this wasn't so prescient but wow is it. This deserves more buzz and Nguyen's writing is absolutely exquisite.

This is a chilling and all too possible novel, very timely with everything going on in the US now. There is so much to unpack in this novel, and it would be an excellent book club pick, with lots to discuss. I will not be surprised if this book also lands on several longlists.

This novel explores identity, ambition, and complicity through the story of four Vietnamese American siblings. Ursula built her early success on her grandmother’s account of life in Vietnam and her eventual need to flee after the fall of Saigon. But now, stuck writing for an internet site more focused on memes than meaningful journalism, she’s desperate for ignite her career. Her younger half-sister, Jen, enrolls in college in New York City hoping to grow closer to Ursula, but their relationship remains distant. Then a string of terrorist attacks rocks the country, and the U.S. government responds by reviving internment, this time targeting people of Vietnamese descent. Jen, her brother Duncan, and their mother are sent to Camp Tacoma. Ursula, however, has a white mother and can "pass," while her brother Alvin gets an exemption through his employer. When Jen begins leaking information from inside the camp, Ursula sees an opportunity to finally do real reporting, but at what cost?

The character development, particularly of the two sisters, is excellent. The story is compelling, though it occasionally gets a bit heavy-handed. Still, the satire is sharp, by turns absurd and deeply disturbing. I highly recommend it.

This book is just terrifying on so many levels.
A deep and horrific look at what could come.
Vital reading for present day.

My Documents follows four Vietnamese‑American siblings whose interconnected lives unravel when a series of terrorist attacks leads the U.S. government to create internment camps for Vietnamese Americans. Ursula (a mixed‑race journalist), Alvin (an engineer at Google), Jen (an NYU freshman), and Duncan (a high‑school football star) each experience the unfolding crisis from different social position. While Ursula and Alvin are able to avoid internment owing to their jobs, Jen, Duncan and their mother are sent to Camp Tacoma. Due to a clandestine network at the camp, Jen is able to smuggle out information to Ursula. This is a thought provoking, dystopian novel of a fearsome future reality. I loved the premise and plot on which it is based. However, I found the writing felt more like a documentary and lacked emotion somewhat. That coupled with the fact that I did not grow to like any of the characters meant that I found it did not grip me as much as it should have. Read this if you are a fan of dystopian fiction speculating on alternate forms of governance.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group for the ARC.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

My Documents by Kevin Nguyen is a third person multi-POV speculative novel exploring the idea of ‘what if Vietnamese-Americans were held in internment camps after a terrorist attack and a senator used his time as a POW under the Viet Cong to justify those camps?’ Siblings Ursula and Alvin and their half-siblings Jen and Duncan have been referred to as ‘cousins’ almost their entire lives and barely know their father who walked out on both their families. The four are emotionally distant from each other, but when Vietnamese-Americans are rounded up, their lives will become threaded together in ways none of them ever would have expected.

The American Advanced Protections Initiative having the acronym AAPI, which also stands for Asian-American Pacific Islanders, is deeply uncomfortable but that was the point. It shows how something that was initially good can be corrupted or people can take anything and interpret it in a malicious way. The entire initiative is all about forcing Vietnamese-Americans into camps, dehumanizing them, and taking their rights away whereas actual AAPI groups in the real world are about strengthening the rights of the peoples those groups represent. There’s something both brilliant and horrific about this detail as it forces the reader to sit in their discomfort with seeing that acronym weaponized in such a way.

Ursula and Alvin, a sister and brother who are also the half-siblings of Jen and Duncan, are half-Vietnamese and due to several circumstances, they are never sent to the internment camps. We never learn exactly why Ursula wasn’t sent to the camps but we can piece together that the most likely reason is that she is white-passing and took her mother’s European maiden name instead of her father’s Vietnamese family name and it appears that way on all her paperwork. For Alvin, his employment at Google helped keep him from being sent. Through them, we get the view of what was happening outside of the Tacoma Camp and the efforts they made to make sure the general public never forgot what was happening, but also the conflicting feelings the two of them have towards being able to live freely and how it connects to their proximity to whiteness.

Jen and Duncan are sent to the Tacoma Camp fairly on and lead fairly different lives there. Jen was in college when the AAPI was enacted and she is still in her early twenties when she’s interred. By keeping contact with Ursula, Jen is able to get information out of Tacoma about what is happening and into the news, which helps Jen’s goal but also furthers Ursula’s career while Jen doesn’t benefit much even though she was sticking her neck out. Duncan continues playing football even in the Tacoma Camp and even improves by taking notes on NFL games that are given to him by a man named Dennis, but Dennis has ulterior motives.

Content warning for attempted sexual assault and racism

I would recommend this to fans of speculative books exploring possible futures and readers of dystopia

“My Documents” – Kevin Nguyen
“In the end, how do you reason with someone whose beliefs outweigh their common sense? What do you do with a person whose principles are so immovable that it leaves them incapable of caring about anyone else? You do what you have to do, of course.”
My thanks to @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Ursula, Alvin, Devin and Jen are all members of the Nguyen family, young cousins who have spread out over the country for work and studies. Their shared Vietnamese heritage, however, swiftly becomes a problem when a terrorist attack prompts a national panic and a US government policy to force all Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. This (blatantly) calls back to the treatment of Japanese-Americans in WWII
Already the family becomes divided - Jen and Devin are sent to internment, whilst Ursula and Alvin manage to receive exemptions, causing a fissure between the cousins. When aspiring journalist Jen looks to get messages from the camp to the outside world, she turns to Ursula and her connections to tell the world, although Ursula also sees an opportunity for personal advancement. Alvin, with an important job at Google, manages to escape detention but not judgement, and Duncan’s athletic prowess gives him a purpose in the competitive world of the camp.
To be honest, I read this a few months ago and didn’t think much of it, hence the late review. It seems to be marketed for adults but screams YA, with a cacophony of young characters and a lot of hand-holding through aspects of culture and history that I suspect a lot of readers are aware of. Like a YA novel, the plot is pretty pacy and full of drama, but I felt a lot of the big issues were only dealt with at a surface level.
I still feel like this, but recent events in the US have made this book more prescient, and this book has become more on the nose in a number of areas. For that reason, this could be a worthwhile read, a drama on a topic that is becoming more and more serious with an interesting slant. Just don’t go in expecting significant profundity or a reinvention of the wheel.

Kevin Nguyen's MY DOCUMENTS is a thoughtful exploration of Asian racial identity, and the historical and current discrimination Asian Americans face in the United States. The events of the novel take place in a parallel universe, and feels all too possible. On a minor note, there is also thoughtful questioning of John McCain's legacy, especially with regards to his controversial comments and views on the Vietnamese. Finally, while some of the left-wing and right-wing political views sometimes lack in nuance, this novel is, overall, an extremely interesting read that I will be thinking about for days.

I really liked this. There was one perspective that I didn't care as much about as the others and it could have been a chapter or two shorter. But other than that it was good. This is considered to be a satire, but I thought it was less funny and more anger inducing. It's very relevant to today's political climate. Though I also think it's relevant to a lot of points in history.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

Kevin Nguyen’s dystopian novel presents 4 cousins, all on seperate yet seemingly promising journeys in their young lives as Vietnamese Americans living in the US. Everything changes for Alvin, Jen, Duncan and Ursula after a number of violent attacks across the country.

Government policies change overnight and Vietnamese Americans find themselves take into Prisoner Camps.

My documents unravels how each cousin's fate fares as a result of this policy. Drawn from previous historical events Nguyen has created an eeringly believable novel that drew me in and had me holding my breath throughout.

I really enjoyed the writing style and premise of this novel.

My Documents is a dystopian novel where Vietnamese people are put into internment camps after terror attacks take place. Feels like it could be true in this environment.

I thought the characters were well developed and I like how the story was written, but it felt like it was a YA novel.

A powerful and unsettling what-if that feels uncomfortably close to reality, My Documents delivers a moving, often sharp portrayal of identity, resilience, and family. The Nguyen cousins are vividly drawn, each grappling with ambition, fear, and the unexpected rupture of their American lives. While the pacing drags at times and some emotional arcs could have gone deeper, Kevin Nguyen crafts a chillingly plausible alternate history that blends the personal with the political. Thought-provoking, at times darkly funny, and quietly devastating.

My Documents was a super interesting read. I loved the character study and the writing felt propulsive. I'd read more from the author.

I adored this book. So good. Creative and serious but also funny. Would recommend to everyone, so appropriate unfortunately.

This book had a slow start but ended up being an interesting commentary on the plight of the AAPI person in America. It seemed meant to be satire or an alternate reality but felt very close to current day. I wonder when Nguyen actually wrote the bulk of the content of this. I enjoyed the multiple POV's and when they came together. The ending was not very satisfying.

This novel is an excellent combination of modern family exploration and speculative fiction that's just close enough to the current day that it doesn't feel farfetched.

The story follows members of a Vietnamese-American family in contemporary times. The characters are dimensional and interesting and I'd read about their lives and perspectives even without the events that unveil in this book. However, in this book a terrorist attack is perpetuated by a group of Vietnamese people and the country responds by locking up almost everyone of Vietnamese descent in concentration camps in a way reminiscent of our shameful internment of Japanese-American people in WWII.

What follows is a story about a family divided by class, income, appearance and privilege. It's a story about sports and journalism and how people respond when they are robbed of resources and autonomy. And it's a story about how powerful government is and how little actual is there to hold our leaders accountable.

Get into it. It's good and it will make you think.

Thank you to Random House for an advance review copy for unbiased review!

A somewhat satirical take on an alternative-history 2010s where Vietnamese-Americans are deported and interned in concentration camps-- a variation on the Japanese-American internment of WWII-- after being blamed for a mass-death terrorist attack. We follow two sets of half-siblings who share an absconded Vietnamese father: one pair (with a Vietnamese mother) is sent to a camp, and another (with a white mother) who maintain their normal lives as an online journalist and a Google intern.

But despite the high-concept premise, this novel demonstrates a real failure of imagination. The characters are extremely flat and shallow, and I can't tell if this is Nguyen's failure to write fully-human characters, or if he's satirizing the blandness and superficial of extremely-online millennials. The satire of right-wing American racism and left-wing identity politics is extremely broad and clumsy, and the descriptions of internment are oddly bloodless and lacking in real-world detail.