DNF @66%

I gave this book not one, not two, but five separate attempts and shots for me to really get into the story and start enjoying it.  I think that I went into it with the wrong expectation, because for some reason I thought that this was going to be a full-length novel but immediately when I looked it up I realized that it was a collection of short stories. And I wasn't reading one short story from the beginning to the end at one time, I was kind of just dipping in my toes when I had the time. 

I think that I started this book over a month ago, and it's been a chore to try and continue and keep on reading. I honestly wanted to loved this new book by this highly acclaimed author, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I really can tell you nothing, I know nothing that happened here.

I’ve been reading some really long novels recently so I like to keep a book of short stories to read on the side. I’m very glad I picked up this new collection by Viet Thanh Nguyen despite not having yet read his debut novel “The Sympathizer” which won multiple awards including the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. All of these stories touch upon the Vietnamese immigrant experience in America from different perspectives – frequently with characters forced to leave their native country. Many involve people who were directly affected by the Vietnam War or people who are still affected by it second hand based on the experiences of their parents. Their day to day lives are still weighed down by the recent history and trauma of severing ties with their native land to create a new life for themselves in America. This produces fascinating situations where characters wrestle with finding a cohesive sense of identity based on economic status, nationality, race, sexuality and gender. These exquisite stories are so impressive for being both profound and compulsively readable. 

Generational clashes often play an important factor such as the story ‘The Americans’ where a former air force pilot locks horns with his daughter Claire who settles in an entirely different culture. Or in ‘Someone Else Besides You’ a regimental father who vandalizes the car of his son’s ex-wife demonstrates a different form of emotional repression. But these stories also show a tremendously moving fluid sense of identity where people are caught between their Vietnamese and American selves. Nguyen shows this so artfully in his characters that range from a ghost writer, to a peddler in fake merchandise, to a young woman who was given the same name as her older American half sister to a young refugee who is taken in by a gay couple in 1970s San Francisco. Their dramatic situations play out the tension between paths in life laid out for them and ones which they forge on their own. 

The economic disparity between nations and levels of society greatly influence the lives of these characters as well. Some characters are determined to compensate for what they were forced to leave behind: “His ambition was to own more books than he could ever possibly read, a desire fuelled by having left behind all his books when they had fled Vietnam.” Stories and story telling between the characters also play an important role. In ‘Black-Eyed Women’ it’s observed that “In a country where possessions counted for everything we had no belongings except our stories.” Part-factual/part-embellished tales of life in Vietnam are passed down through generations. There is a definite divide between the narrative of those who escaped persecution in their homeland and those who remained in oppressed circumstances where dissent requires time in “re-education” camps. The reader is prompted to wonder what is “authentic” about national identity or the lives we live particularly in the story ‘The Transplant’ where compulsive gambler Arthur receives a liver transplant from an Asian man and ‘Fatherland’ where a Vietnamese woman returns to her homeland to visit her father’s second family. How much do nations owe to compensate for the wrongs of wartime, what obligation do countries have to take in those that have been forced to flee their native land and how do you assimilate people caught between two wildly different cultures? These queries subtly raised throughout the stories feel highly pertinent to the broader discussions of many nations. 

It’s interesting getting a different perspective of the long lasting effects of the Vietnam War after having read Robert Olen Butler’s novel “Perfume River” last year. This considered the aftermath of the war over generations from a white American perspective. Nguyen shows how some Asian characters living in the United States still feel the war in their day to day lives like in the heartrending story ‘War Years’ where the battle against the Communists is still very personal for an ardent woman struggling with irreconcilable loss. It leads the narrator to note how “while some people are haunted by the dead, others are haunted by the living.” The overall effect of these stories is subtly haunting because the perilous positions and existential dilemmas of the characters feel so emotionally real. Nguyen skilfully plays out the ambiguities of these situations in which no one can ever feel settled or fully at home.

http://www.librarything.com/work/18189665

A beautiful collection of short stories by a talented writer. Every story is full of restraint, quiet tragedy, humanity. The writer leaves so many of his stories open-ended at the end -- in a way that is simultaneously frustrating but also necessary. It speaks to the experience of being a refugee, of not knowing how your story will play out.

The collection of nine stories in The Refugees is exquisite.  They all center around Vietnamese refugees in the unites States and some of the difficulties they encounter here.  The struggle of refugees is timely, meaningful and heart wrenching.  The Refugees is a beautiful and thoughtful collection of stories.

Please read all of my reviews at http://ultraviolentlit.blogspot.ca

A collection of stories with a unique view of the immigrant experience, captured in unexpected ways. I really enjoyed how these stories continually surprised me with their unconventionality. I look forward to reading more by Viet Thanh Nguyen in the future.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book of exquisite short stories is a collection of varied characters and themes.  The stories are moving, sad, haunting, enlightening, and memorable.  The writer's wonderful skill at writing brings the stories to life with detailed descriptions and realistic characters.  

I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a wonderful storyteller, bringing together both the hardships and opportunities faced by the refugee Vietnamese community. The stories are a complex mix of perspectives highlighting the difficulties of trying to balance identities. Only the theme seems to tie the stories together, which makes it slightly disjointed at times. And while I have read more emotive experiences, it still makes for an enjoyable read.

I was very fortunate to win a copy of Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut, Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Sympathizer last year and was quite impressed and so looked forward to reading his second book, a collection of eight short stories, with great anticipation. I was not disappointed. It takes considerable skills to fashion an interesting story with believable characters in just a few succinct pages and this author does it well.

The author dedicates his book 'For all refuges, everywhere.' And what a hot-button topic that is at the moment. But his is the Viet Nam experience of which he wrote so well in his first book. 

"Black-Eyed Women" is something of a ghost story, tales repeated by ancient crones with black-eyes. "Aren't you afraid of ghosts?" "You aren't afraid of the things you believe in."

"The Other Man" In 1975, Liem, age 18, comes to San Francisco from Saigon through a resettlement agency and is taken in by a gay couple. "War wasn't just a tragedy but a farce."

"War Years" Continuing a thread begun in his earlier novel, Vietnamese business owners in America feel pressure to contribute money to raise a new army to defeat the Communists and win back their country. 

"The Transplant" When a man receives a liver transplant, he tracks down the son of the donor--a man who deals in fake high-end goods. 

"I Want You to Want Me" A woman whose husband is developing Alzheimers is upset when he continually calls her by another woman's name--a woman who seems to be the love of his life. My favorite story!

"The Americans" An aging couple take a trip to Vietnam to visit their daughter who is there teaching. The father is a black man who did a tour duty as a pilot during the war; the mother a Japanese woman he met while stationed in Okinawa. The daughter, being part black-part Japanese, tells her father, "I think I've found someplace where I can do some good and make up for some of the things you've done."

"Someone Else Besides You" Thomas, a thirty-three-year-old divorced man, working two jobs, takes in his elderly father. Thomas is still considered a 'boy' because he has never had children of his own. He is asked by his father's mistress to whom he's been rather snide, "Aren't there times you'd rather be someone else besides you?" 

"Fatherland" A Vietnamese man has fathered two sets of children and named each set by the same names. The first set fled to America with their mother when Saigon fell and the father was sentenced to five years of imprisonment. She divorced him but once a year sends updates on how the children are doing--very successful, of course. 
The father is now a guide for 'foreign tourists who only know one thing about this country...the war.'
His oldest daughter writes that she wants to come visit and her father is not surprised: 'I knew you would come back to see the one I named after you.' But can you love family you've never known?' Another excellent story!

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an arc of this new book. I am looking forward to more delightful reading from this talented author.

I am struggling to put my feelings into words. I really liked this collection. It is inarguable that the author is extraordinarily talented; the stories have the pacing and tone of Jhumpa Lahiri's work, and she is one of the finest writers I can think of. Having said that... no one story stood out to me. I read them all, I liked what I read, I felt the feelings of empathy, wonder, sometimes sadness, sometimes amusement, I think I was intended to feel. But I can not think of one particular story, moment or passage that hit me as "the one". I am inelegantly expressing that this collection is so good that, rather than highs and lows, the reader is treated to a continuous stream of beautifully written words. I am midway through "The Sympathizer", enjoying it very much... and yet praise Mr. Nguyen's stories as more finely-tuned even than his award-winning novel.

I would like to thank NetGalley and  Grove Atlantic and Grove Press for an ARC of "The Refugees" by Viet Thanh Nguyen for my honest review.  The genre of this novel is fiction, possibly historical fiction.  This novel is composed of eight short stories written by the author. All the stories reflect Vietnamese life in American or in the homeland. I find that it is difficult to review a book with many stories. Some of the stories had no written conclusion or seemed to be open for interpretation. The author writes of family, love, immigration, homosexuals,mistresses, feelings of identity, and cultural differences. There also seems to be a feeling of pride that seems to be important. I found that the stories were interesting and the descriptions were graphic. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy reading short descriptive cultural stories.

“I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they are outside of time, are the only one with time.” – prologue

What a timely book!  With the public debate about immigration in the forefront of everyone’s mind, with the executive and judicial branches of government battling out the legality of banning people from certain countries, the timing is perfect!   America’s history has been built upon accepting refugees from various countries. Between 1975 and 1995 over 480,000 people had immigrated to the United States.  Of the “boat people,” it is estimated that at least a third died.  This is exquisitely written, profoundly moving compilation of short stories, each one touching on the theme of immigration from Vietnam.

Viet Thanh Nguyen says he is writing these stories for the ghosts.  The first story in this book is most directly to that point.  The narrator is a ghost writer, telling other people’s stories not coming to terms with her own story until the ghost of her brother comes to visit her.   At that moment she confronts the trauma of her past.  Her brother risked his life to try to hide her as a boy when pirates raided their boat.  He was killed for it.  She was gang rapider front of her parents.  Her parents lamented her brother’s death, but never mentioned what had happened to her.  She carried the burden of her own trauma as well as of her brother’s death.  She was made to feel it was her fault.  She finally realizes she died too.  She is a ghost of the past and can write her own story.

The writing is incredible.  The stories themselves are beautiful, emotion-laden, with excellent character development and complexity.  The true nature behind the characters are revealed in unexpected ways.  The tension created by the juxtaposition of vietnamese culture in affluent America (as well as the converse) are explored.  These stories are not simply an exploration of Vietnamese culture and the refugee experience, but transcend that with the stories evoking so much truth about humanity that simply involve refugees as characters.

Rather than detail each short story, I highly recommend reading this brilliantly written grouping of 8 stories.  It is brief book, but packs a powerful punch.  These are stories that will move you and stay with you.  They are simply amazing!

Long-time readers will know I don't love short stories. I like my books long and complicated, the more description and backstory the better (hello, Charles Dickens!). Yet one cannot ignore the stellar short stories collections out this year. I started the year with Roxanne Gay's Difficult Women and moved into Viet Thanh Nguyen's collection of short stories. I am so glad I did.

Each one of Mr. Nguyen's short stories is a microcosm of what I love about reading. The characters are real and surprisingly well-developed in spite of the brevity of their stories. Their everyday lives are memorable in their mundanity. Their stories are equally unremarkable. Yet, they are captivating in their normalcy.

The Refugees is a collection of stories about the people who left behind their lives in a war-torn country to start fresh in a new one, sometimes at great peril, in a country that will provide them more freedoms than they ever could have had should they have stayed. These are the stories of people who represent just one more generation of people seeking refuge on our shores, who remind us all of the original settlers in this country.

Mr. Nguyen's ability to drive to the heart of each of their stories in a few short sentences embodies each word with significance. His prose makes the entire collection immensely readable. You find yourself drawn into each story, compelled to keep reading, and highly disappointed when it ends. Yet you move on to the next story to find yourself fully engaged once again.

The Refugees puts a human face onto the political hot potato that has become immigration and asylum in recent weeks. It is a reminder that refugees are not looking to infiltrate our country but just looking to escape their own. One cannot recommend this collection highly enough not only because of the storytelling but also because of the poignant reminders for empathy each story gives us.

At times intense, melancholy, anxiety inducing and beautiful, Nguyen's short story collection The Refugees is always interesting. It'd be difficult to have a more successful couple of years than he's had as a writer, and one of the continued benefits for readers is the release of earlier works. In these stories, the talent that has led to a Pulitzer is easy to see and to feel. And while I'm sure the timing of the collection's release isn't purely accidental, I'm not sure anyone could have known just how relevant such an offering would be.

This is a strong collection, my personal favorites being "Black Eyed Women" and "I'd Love You to Want Me". Nguyen's expression of humor through characters in bleak circumstances and situations, so darkly realized in The Sympathizers is less evident here and I suppose that I did miss that element to a small extent. This collection however is more haunting, these are tales that will be bouncing around in your brain long after you've read them, and because the stories span 20 years of his writing career, show readers the depth of Nguyen's experience.

While the topic of refugees could not be more relevant, The Refugees is not a collection strung together just to make a political point. This is good fiction featuring characters who, among other things are refugees. It would be well worth reading whether or not it was a hot button issue. Nevertheless, at a time when fear and loathing seem at the forefront of discussion as it concerns refugees, Nguyen's characters and stories are strong reminders that humanity shares the same general longings, desires and angsts and that, in the words of David Foster Wallace, "fiction's about what it is to be a...human being." Nguyen is one of America's finest writers and he knows a little something about what it means to be a refugee. His is a voice worth hearing and The Refugees is a fine place to start.

This is one of the best short story collections I have read. Viet Thanh Nguyen captures the refugee experience with all its hope and pathos. I was impressed with how skillfully he brings his characters to life. Some of us grew up watching nightly news reports about the war in Vietnam and the eventual exodus of thousands of refugees following the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. The “boat people” lucky to survive found their way to America and made new lives for their families. 
Nguyen gives us moments in time in the lives of those who escaped but whose hearts would never leave their homeland. Here are some brief summaries of my favourites in the collection.

Black-Eyed Woman
A ghostwriter visited by the ghost of her dead brother, a brother who saved her life when she was only thirteen. A haunting story.

The Other Man
Experiences of a young man who escaped the communist takeover of Saigon in 1975 and ends up in San Francisco. Sponsored by Parrish Coyne and Marcus Chan. Parrish comments on how “pretty” Liem is. Liem finds a job working in a liquor store and when Parrish is away, he and Marcus explore each other. Liem receives a cryptic letter from his parents indicating how ‘re-educated” the family has become with the Communist takeover. Liem himself has had a re-education of his own.


War Years
Refugees running a grocery store with their son, trying to avoid paying money to a woman (Mrs. Hoa) raising money to fund a military to stop the Communists and return southern Vietnam to a democratic country. Extortion in all its forms..and the effects of the war on some of the refugees.


The Transplant
When a man receives an organ from a Vietnamese refugee, he ends up being taken advantage by an entrepreneur using his garage to stash his designer knock off goods.


I’d Love You to Want Me
An old professor, losing his mind begins to call his wife by another woman’s name, Yen, and describing places he has taken her which his wife has never been. Poignant and bittersweet.

The Americans
An African American Vietnam war veteran and his Japanese wife visit their daughter who is teaching English in Saigon. Claire has done everything in her life to counteract her B-52 bomber dad. A moving look at the ties that bind and how a daughter dedicates her life to making amends for her father.

Fatherland
A man with a mistress who, when the first family and his first wife flee Vietnam during the war, he ends up marrying said mistress and giving his next three children the same names as his first family. When Phuong’s sister comes from America to visit her father’s other family, she calls herself Vivien. Connections made between South Vietnam and the American South. Both fought and lost and paid the price by their conquerors. Phuong finds hope in her half sister as a way to escape her life in Vietnam. Vivien is not all she seems.

ARC received with thanks from Grove Press via NetGalley for review.

THE REFUGEES by Viet Thanh Nguyen is an extremely well-written collection of emotional stories which received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.  Although somewhat sophisticated for many of our high school readers, THE REFUGEES does explore themes of assimilation, family, identity, and loneliness.  Viet Thanh Nguyen provides selections such as "Black-Eyed Women" which is a ghost story about losing a brother during the family's horrifying boat escape or "The Other Man" in which a gay couple invites a Vietnamese refugee into their home and he struggles with language and cultural differences.   

As I prepared the review for this book, I was surprised to see the number of recently published books about refugees, particularly those intended for younger students.  If you are searching for lesson plans about refugees, consider this one for high schoolers which also deals with media bias and was made available last week by the Choices Program at Brown University.   

Viet Thanh Nguyen received numerous awards, including the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for The Sympathizer which some of our students have used as a main text for Junior Theme.  Enjoy THE REFUGEES, since as Nguyen says, "Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more.  We search for them in a word besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts."

Links live in the post: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/learning/lesson-plans/analyzing-trumps-immigration-ban-a-lesson-plan.html
http://choices.edu/resources/twtn/twtn-executive-order.php

I was beyond excited to receive an early copy of this book of short stories. We’ve been reading and writing a lot of short stories in my classes this semester, so reading these stories by a Pulitzer prize-winning writer was a real treat.

I love immigrant stories, and these own voices narratives of Vietnamese immigration were right up my alley. Viet Thanh Nguyen never falls into one voice or one type of story. This collection kept me on my toes the entire time, and every new story was fresh. I’ve never been a huge fan of short story collections because I feel that they can fall into the realm of monotony for me, but The Refugees didn’t even come close to that.

Nguyen’s characters were all different. Some of the stories took place in Vietnam, some in Little Saigon in the United States. As someone who knew next to nothing about Vietnam and its culture before picking up this book, I found myself doing some serious Googling after I was about a story or two in. If you love to learn about new cultures, please read this book. I was never lost; I was just in the sweet spot between understanding and confusion, which I like to call learning.

This collection is a quick and beautiful read, on top of being incredibly timely. I especially think it’s important for Americans to read, since many of us know someone who fought in Vietnam, and many of the stories provide a perspective on that conflict that I know I never had or even looked into.

I cannot wait to pick up Nguyen’s book The Sympathizer, which is supposed to be just amazing, and since I loved these stories so much I can only imagine I will enjoy it immensely. He is an immigrant writer who we should all be listening to.

If you only have time for one or two stories, I would recommend “Black-Eyed Women,” the first story in the collection, and also a ghost story that pulled me in and made me fall in love with the writing style. I highlighted so many pieces in this story. I’d also suggest “I’d Love You to Want Me” which is a beautiful story about a woman’s husband forgetting who she is in his old age.

Overall, I loved this collection, and I think absolutely everyone should pick it up. It has inspired me to learn and write more openly and freely.

While none of these stories matched the immensity of "The Sympathizer" every one did an excellent job capturing a moment or feeling which comes as no surprise with an author who has this kind of talent. A must read for anyone who enjoys short stories.

A solid 3.5 

Wow, these stories are so relevant, especially with the current political climate in the world and specifically America. I love that Nyuyen brings to the forefront the stories of these individuals, yes it is "non-fiction" but in a real way, these stories represents what a lot of people went through and will go through. 
Each story offers new insight into what is it like being an immigrant and the obstacles that they continually face. 
An insightful, moving read. 

Thanks