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A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial cover

A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial

Viet Thanh Nguyen

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A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, a History, a Memorial

At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Me Thuật and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San Jose. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICA. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the Saigon Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: how can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam, and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care, and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.

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Publisher
Corsair
Year
2023
ISBN-13
9781472158826
Genre
Biography & Memoir
Topics
Vietnamese refugee experienceImmigration and identityFamily and trauma

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