Hosted by Paul Holdengräber, The Quarantine Tapes chronicles shifting paradigms in the age of social distancing. Each day, Paul calls a guest for a brief discussion about how they are experiencing the global pandemic.
Today on episode 52 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by author Viet Thanh Nguyen. They discuss the history of colonization in the United States and how it still informs the institutional and structural fabric of American society today. Viet and Paul also touch upon the responsibility that we all have to engage in educational, anti-racist work within our own families and friend groups.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other books are The Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He is a University Professor, the Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and a Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. His most recent publication is Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his six-year-old son, Ellison.