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Yến Lê Espiritu, sociologist and professor of Ethnic Studies, speaks with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen about her research and writing on the refugee experience.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Yến Lê Espiritu is an American sociologist. She is the author of Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries. Her research focuses on immigration and refugee studies, Southeast Asian Studies, transnationalism, Asian American Studies, and US Militarism.

Poet and scholar Lan Duong speaks with hosts hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen about her work and involvement in writing "Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies."

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Lan P. Duong is Associate Professor in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is the author of Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism (Temple University Press, 2012). Duong's creative works have appeared in Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose, Bold Words: Asian American Writing to Span the Centuries, Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing, Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, and Crab Orchard Review. She lives in Pasadena, California.

Poet Sophia Terazawa converses with host Viet Thanh Nguyen about her documents of resilience, upcoming projects with Deep Vellum Books, and more.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Sophia Terazawa is a poet and performer of Vietnamese-Japanese descent working with ghosts. A recent graduate of the University of Arizona MFA program, she is the author of two chapbooks, I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press), a winner of the 2015 Essay Press Digital Chapbook Contest, and Correspondent Medley (Factory Hollow Press), winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. Additional honors include the Bill Waller Award for Creative Nonfiction, LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Award, and Monique Wittig Writer's Scholarship. Terazawa's work appears widely in journals and magazines, such as The Offing, New Delta Review, The Iowa Review, and The Rumpus. Her favorite color is purple.

Ethnomusicologist Dr. Alexander Cannon converses with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen about the way traditional Vietnamese music has evolved into its own contemporary sound.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dr Alexander M. Cannon is an ethnomusicologist with research expertise in Vietnamese music and creativity studies. He is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Birmingham, and serves as Co-Editor of the journal Ethnomusicology Forum and on the Executive Committee of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology.

Actors from The Sympathizer television show, Hoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Khan, Duy Nguyen, Kayli Tran, PhanXine, VyVy Nguyen, and Tom Dang, converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer, and Philip Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American Studies scholar. A video recording of the event can be found here.

This episode was sponsored by the Vietnamese American Roundtable (VAR). VAR envisions a strong and unified Vietnamese American community that works towards improving our quality of life. To this end, VAR focuses on our mission to organize, advocate, and educate our community. We accomplish this through mobilization, advocacy, and education – mobilization through events and coalition building, advocacy through empowering and strategy, and education through panels, workshops and cultural events.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GUESTS

Hoa Xuande - Instagram

Duy Nguyen - Instagram

Fred Nguyen Khan - Instagram

Kayli Tran - Instagram

PhanXine - Instagram

Tom Dang - Instagram

VyVy Nguyen - Instagram

French journalist Doan Bui converses with host Viet Thanh Nguyen about her books, upcoming projects, French gastronomy and more.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Doan Bui is a French journalist born in Le Mans. She received the prix Albert-Londres 2013 for her report Les Fantômes du fleuve on migrants trying to penetrate Europe in Greece through Turkey, published by Nouvel Observateur. In 2016, she was awarded the prix Amerigo Vespucci for her work Le Silence de mon père. 

Award-winning musician Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ converses with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen about the evolution of Vietnamese music and her creation of a contemporary sound.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ is one of the finest performers of Vietnamese traditional instruments in the world and a rapidly emerging composer. She dedicates her life to creating music by blending the wonderfully unique sounds of Vietnamese instruments with other music genres, and fusing deeply rooted Vietnamese musical traditions with fresh new structures and compositions.
She has presented her music at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center (2012, 2014, 2016), Lincoln Center, NPR, Houston Grand Opera, Yerba Buena Performing Arts Center, UK WOMAD Festival, and London Olympic Games 2012 Music Festival. She has been invited and participated as a screening judge in the World Music category for both the 2015, 2016 & 2018 Grammy® Awards. Under President Obama's administration, Vân-Ánh became the first Vietnamese artist to perform at the White House and received the Artist Laureate Award for her contribution to communities through the arts. In addition to the zither (đàn Tranh) Vân-Ánh also performs as a soloist on the monochord (đàn Bầu), the bamboo xylophone (đàn T’rung), traditional drums (trống) and many other traditional instruments.

Debut novelist Tracey Lien converses with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen about her book "All That's Left Unsaid."

ABOUT THE GUEST

Tracey Lien was born and raised in southwestern Sydney, Australia. She earned her MFA at the University of Kansas and was previously a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. All That's Left Unsaid is her first novel.

Novelist Carolyn Huynh converses with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen about her book "The Fortunes of Jaded Women."

ABOUT THE GUEST

Carolyn Huynh loves writing about messy Asian women who never learn from their mistakes. After living up and down the west coast, she now resides in Los Angeles with her partner and her chaotic dog. When she's not writing, Carolyn daydreams about having iced coffee on a rooftop in Sài Gòn. The Fortunes of Jaded Women is her debut novel and was a Good Morning America book club pick and selected as one of the best books of 2022 by NPR. She is at work on her next novel, The Breadwinner, out from Atria in 2024.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Host Viet Thanh Nguyen converses with Food Tik Toker Newt Nguyen and Filmmaker Bao Nguyen about the American Dream, finding community, and the way social media has impacted the evolution of art. This episode was made in collaboration with "A Magazine Curated By" featuring fashion designer Peter Do.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Newton Nguyen is a Social Media star whose content speaks directly to newly minted quarantine bakers and cooks. The son of Vietnamese immigrants; as a young boy, he used to make Spam musubi with his mom and sell up to 100 per day at school. Newt decided to teach himself to cook as a way to take his mind off of daily life. He learned the basics watching cooking tutorials on YouTube, where a video might last half an hour — and that’s where he got the idea that he wanted to make his own cooking videos, with unvarnished demos edited to appeal to a short-attention-span generation of watchers like himself. His videos are easy to follow — and short. Since his start on social media, Newt has amassed a following of over 10 million on Tik Tok, 1.2 Million on both Instagram and Twitter, and 375 thousand on YouTube. Newt is also an entrepreneur with his own line of merch, and is slated to release a cookbook by the end of 2023. He has worked with brand such as Instacart, Coca-Cola, Chipotle and Ninja.
Bao Nguyen is an award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker whose past work has been seen in the New York Times, HBO, NBC, Vice, ARTE, and PBS. He has directed, produced, and shot a number of short films, which have played internationally in numerous festivals and museums including MoMA and the Smithsonian.