Weird Era

Episode 108: Weird Era feat. Kevin Nguyen


Listen Later

About Kevin Nguyen:

Kevin Nguyen is the author of the novel New Waves. He is the features editor at The Verge and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He lives in Brooklyn.

About My Documents:

Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family. As young adults, they’re on the precipice of new ventures: Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naïve freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America creates a national panic, prompting a government policy that pushes Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions.

Cut off entirely from the outside world, forced to work jobs they hate, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long, dusty days in camp and acclimate to life without the internet. That is, until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this connection as a chance to tell the world about the horrors of camp—and as an opportunity to bolster her own reporting career in the process.

Informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen’s novel gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to one another, and to ourselves, after tragedy.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Weird EraBy Weird Era

  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4
  • 4.4

4.4

7 ratings


More shows like Weird Era

View all
This American Life by This American Life

This American Life

91,297 Listeners

Ask Penguin by Penguin Books UK

Ask Penguin

143 Listeners

Bookends with Mattea Roach by CBC

Bookends with Mattea Roach

238 Listeners

Otherppl with Brad Listi by Brad Listi

Otherppl with Brad Listi

532 Listeners

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry by David Naimon, Milkweed Editions

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

469 Listeners

On the Media by WNYC Studios

On the Media

9,238 Listeners

The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

10,747 Listeners

Death, Sex & Money by Slate Podcasts

Death, Sex & Money

7,718 Listeners

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker by The New Yorker

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

2,130 Listeners

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso by Higher Ground

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

1,469 Listeners

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel by Esther Perel Global Media

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

14,969 Listeners

City Arts & Lectures by City Arts & Lectures

City Arts & Lectures

395 Listeners

Culture Gabfest by Slate Podcasts

Culture Gabfest

449 Listeners

Critics at Large | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

663 Listeners

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud by Bella Freud

Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

289 Listeners