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I love Viet Thanh Nguyen's non-fiction writing so I am excited to read this.
It won a Pulitzer in 2016 as well.

Here is a review of Da 5 Bloods by Nguyen that was illuminating:


That piqued my interest even more in seeing Vietnam from his point of view.

Here is the link to the book's GR page.

I know Jen K is in, hopefully we can get some other members to join.

Excited to read this one as well! I need to complete a couple of library books and then will get started.

Thanks for setting up the thread!

ETA: Just read the NYT article and even more ready to get into this book. His point of linking war with racism was strongly presented in The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America which I recommend.

I think that one is on my TBR. I will reserve it from the library right now

yay, Sally!

I'm #5 on the list!

It's on hold for me at the library.

AND NancyJ!? So excited!

Reading is very much social for me, I love to talk about what I am reading with others so even better when it's a book club or buddy read 😊

Hopefully both of your holds aren't too long.
Lately my holds are really popular books and I am like 27th and higher in line!
Luckily I already had this one on my tbr though.

This is the first book I read for Fly the Skies. It is a difficult book to read, but very thought provoking. I was forced to consider my own ideas about the Vietnam War. It was worth the energy required to get through it. I gave it 5 stars. It's a great choice for books written by and about the AAPI experience.

Good to hear that feedback, Shelly.

I'm 2nd in line for The Sympathizer

I started this past Saturday and only 40 pages or so in.
Still very much in the set up phase.
I've had to have a dictionary handy as Nguyen uses a lot of words that I am not sure what they mean :P

Started last night. I only managed one chapter but interested so far.

I hope to make more progress this weekend. It's certainly not a quick read. I'm now at the 50 page mark and it's getting interesting.

Definitely not easy reading but I'm really enjoying the clever word play that he uses.

I'm glad that I read the article above. I've been keeping his words in mind to see how he gives agency to his Asian characters and treats the white Americans on the fringe, definitely not treated as white saviors.

I'm at about 200 pages in and our narrator is just back from his consultancy trip. I really don't know how I feel about him. I feel bad for him as he seems a bit lonely and conflicted, trying to do his best but not sure of what it is. He seems to have had a difficult childhood and displaced his love and loyalty to his blood brothers but maybe misbegotten?

Wow, you are already at page 200!?
I feel like my pace is much slower than usual.
We'll see how I do this weekend.
Interesting that our narrator is stuck between 2 worlds and seems able to sympathize with both. I am very interested to see how this comes to a head. I feel like that duality is difficulty to maintain psychologically.

It is dense prose but I'm pushing through because I'm enjoying it and I have a whole bunch of other books pressuring me on. :) I've been reading a chapter here and there as a work break.

I would agree that the narrator does seem to struggle with keeping a foot in each of two worlds. As it he said at one point, he is part of the we for both sides and struggles to keep track.

I can relate very much to that - the other books pressuring you!

I made it to 150ish over the weekend and almost the halfway point.
It is ramping up in intrigue since they got to America.

Nice, the action definitely increases as the book goes on. I finished last weekend but haven't managed my review yet. Will do soon. Hope you are enjoying. Can't wait to discuss the ending.

Oh no! I knew you'd beat me to the end 😁
I'm starting to read at a faster pace now so we'll see what progress I make this weekend.

Still haven’t gotten my copy from the library:( Shpuld I order it from Amazon. Is it a worthwhile purchase

I think it's a great book that could easily be reread later and still get something out of it, but worthy of purchase kinda depends on your criteria for buying. I buy books frivolously so many are worth purchase to me :-P

I'm the same. So I guess I'm buying it!

I am nearing page 300 and shit is coming to a head.
I love this book. It is so complex.

Yay.my copy came in. I can pick it up on Thursday

Sallys wrote: "Yay.my copy came in. I can pick it up on Thursday"

Woohoo!!
I am excited, finally.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I am.

Also, are you in for How Much of These Hills Is Gold?
My mom bought me a copy for my bday so I am pretty stoked to read that in May.

No short stories will work for me for May's tag though 😢

Exciting! I'm in How Much of These Hills Is Gold. I just released my hold suspension.

Jen K wrote: "Exciting! I'm in How Much of These Hills Is Gold. I just released my hold suspension."

Excellent!

I finished and my review is here.

I loved it.
I think Nguyen is a brilliant writer and I hope others get as much out of this story as I did.
Looking forward to The Committed when it comes out in paperback.

Meli, I'm sorry I totally forgot about this last month. Your review reminded me that I wanted to read it. Between work and family health problems, I was AWOL for a while. I should have read this instead of some of the gothic books.

NancyJ wrote: "Meli, I'm sorry I totally forgot about this last month. Your review reminded me that I wanted to read it. Between work and family health problems, I was AWOL for a while. I should have read this in..."

I was wondering where you were!
But it is totally fine, I relate and you gotta put yourself and family first.

This is not an easy read either. Not just the content, but it is dense in parts.

I hope when you get to it you enjoy it as much as I did.

So I finally started and it is slow going. I hope to make progress this weekend!

Sallys wrote: "So I finally started and it is slow going. I hope to make progress this weekend!"

I found some parts to be more dense than others.
Other parts were more thriller-y and burned faster.

I'm about half way through and I'm enjoying it. I like the way he writes, and I'm finding the main character very interesting. His vocabulary is excellent (which is often true of well educated people who learned English as a second language).

I have both the audio and the kindle. If anyone is having a hard time with the writing, I suggest trying the audio. The author includes many overly long sentences with insufficient punctuation. The audio narrator is excellent. He pauses at all the right spots, which makes the long sentences easier to understand.

The lives of the officer refugees in America remind me a little of the MC's father-in-law in Kite Runner. He was so sure that someone would call him home again and give him a powerful position.

There is only one little thing about his writing that I find annoying. He refers to the "crapulent major" 76 times in the book. I cringe a little each time I hear it. I thought he meant corpulent (because the major is fat), or that he was saying that he's crappy. Finally I looked it up. It primarily refers to drunkenness, excessive drinking. or the feeling of being sick (headaches) from overdrinking. It can also mean feeling sick from overindulging in food or drink. He described other people as being drunk, but not the major, so it continues to annoy me.

I had to look that one up too!! It was a bit annoying but also I'm assuming quite intentional. He definitely has a clever way with words which I enjoyed.

He used a lot of words early on that I had to look up.
Crapulent was one of them.
At first I thought it was a play on words then found out what you did.

He used it that many times? I didn't notice.
I saw it as a nickname. There are plenty of majors and other generic titles, but when crapulent major was evoked, you knew exactly who he is talking about, and for me it conjured up very specific imagery as well.
At that point it was less a description and more of defining him as a person.
This may be reading a little bit too much into it but it could also be our narrator's way of tampering some of his own guilt.
By referring to him as a drunk or overindulgent, you see him as selfish and almost useless or bound to fail...

Or perhaps he just like that phrasing, but in a text where every word seems so calculated I feel like there is a reason or purpose for the repetition.

Not that any of that would make it less annoying necessarily, so why am I saying all this!? 🤣

Great points. I think he did need to dehumanize him a little. And that phrase became his name in the book. I thought it was funny that he referred to the woman he slept with as Ms Morey, not Sofia. But it's more memorable in way.

Do you have any idea if the movie they made was similar to any other real life movies? It's 1976, so I'll have to look to see what was made around then.

...
It's not at all like Apocalypse Now or Deer Hunter. Francis Ford Coppola would have been called an auteur. Oliver Stone maybe

Apparently he is parodying Apocalypse Now, I think he mentions this in an interview somewhere.

I believe the American hero actor would be Brando (maybe?) which I think checks. Also, I think the key comparison, and how the reader is tipped off, is the making-of less than the plot of the movie. Perhaps some of these larger-than-life characters (actors) in the fictional movie as well parody Brando and Coppola.

Nguyen doesn't have a lot of love for these movies that we consider masterpieces in their portrayal of Vietnamese people, particularly since they are used as background characters in their own story and represented into a few key stereotypical roles.

I wouldn't be surprised if we delve into the history of making Apocalypse Now if the racism described isn't prevalent. (not worrying about using Vietnamese in the movie, etc) - EDIT: turns out both fictional movie and real movie were both filmed in the Philippines.

A quick skim of the cast and not an Asian name in sight, let alone a Vietnamese actor...

And then I found this:



And this:



But I haven't listened to the former, and am just reading the latter now.

Below is from the transcripted interview in the 2nd link if you aren't up to read it all... This hits on why he parodied it, but also why it may not sound familiar (revenge).
But when I read this part in the book I immediately thought "this must be Apocalypse Now." I am not sure why, maybe the cartoonish actor going to great lengths to get into character I felt like that could definitely be Sheen or Brando.

"...it is a turning point in the film, morally, for Americans and for Francis Ford Coppola. I understood that, but that left me so shaken that even 10 years later, in college, as I was recounting the scene to a film class, my voice would shake with rage and anger. This is testimony to the power of the movie and the power of art and the power of storytelling, that I respect that movie very much as being a great work of art. But, it’s also deeply problematic for someone like me, and it gave me the sense that I had to respond in kind, that this novel would be my revenge."

Sorry, now I am just spamming this freakin thread, but I love this book and I find this topic fascinating.

Here is another:

** CAUTION FOR POTENTIAL SPOILERS TO THE SYMPATHIZER **

Thanks for the eye opening articles. It makes sense that his fictional director was inspired by Francis Ford Coppola. I got thrown off because I couldn't think of any American heroes in Apocalypse Now. Neither of the two stars seemed like heroes to me. For the book, almost any basic war plot could have worked to make his point.

Watching Apocalypse Now was horrifying for me as a teenager, so I can't imagine how traumatic and painful it was for him to watch it as a child. I remember having nightmares as a kid after watching Indians being slaughtered in a western.

Before reading this book, I don't think I was aware of much that happened after the war. After years of anti-war demonstrations we were just happy the war was over.

I feel like history is repeating itself now. What will happen to the girls in Afghanistan if the Taliban gets back in power?

After reading through some of those articles I think Apocalypse Now also works because it is the most influential and well-known (lauded) Vietnam War movie ever made. So you're right, it could've been any other movie.

One thing that is so fascinating about this, but also kinda yikes, is that this is the first I've ever read about the Vietnam War by a Vietnamese person. He explains why that would be in a one of the links I shared, basically no one wants to relive it or talk about it, so I felt a bit better about that. There would just be less of the content available to us (Americans).

The articles add such context and nuance to Nyugen's work making it all the more powerful as a statement beyond the impressive writing. He's point of view is so eye opening and obvious once mentioned. The US has completely rewritten the narrative of the war in Vietnam and many Americans (myself included) would be hard pressed to talk on the full story of the conflict and the consequences for both those Vietnamese who stayed, were "saved" by the US or became the "boat people".

I randomly read A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (noted in the NYT article) shortly before reading The Sympathizer and keep wondering Nyugen's thoughts on that book. The Vietnamese are slightly more centered in the stories but still much revolves around the white American including the author of the stories. I wonder how it would be received today and if it would still have won the Pulitzer not being an #ownvoices account.

I just read the chapter where he finally gets to see the movie (and he's not listed on the credits at all). I wonder if this part of the plot was based on a real Vietnamese person who advised on one of the movies.

@Jen K - yes, I agree about the articles. Glad you feel the same.

@NancyJ - Same! I would like to know more about which parts pull from the actual history of the film.

I haven't read this but I find it interesting that he was parodying Apocalypse Now which copied Conrad's Heart of Darkness and repositioned it to the Vietnam war.

For that matter, I'd be fascinated to learn about his other research for the book. Did he talk to real spies, officers, refugees (from the first set of officers to the boat people), interrogators, people who were interrogated, etc.

I missed a chance to hear him speak (he was in town a few years ago).

I'm still not finished with the book (or my taxes), but at some point I'd like to check this out. I can't open the Times articles, but maybe my husband paid for the access already.

@Booksnblues - yeah, I was going to mention that, but kinda forgot that point as I continued to go deeper into the Nguyen interviews regarding his experience watching Apocalypse Now for the first time and its impact to the trajectory of his life.

NancyJ wrote: "I'm still not finished with the book (or my taxes), but at some point I'd like to check this out. I can't open the Times articles, but maybe my husband paid for the access already."

Oh no, better get on them taxes!
Luckily my husband does ours.

I'm almost done. I did not like this book as much as others in the group. I guess the subject matter was not my usual fare. I do like to read out of my comfort zone on occasion, though I definitely would like to have a full discussion when I'm done.