By Justine Trinh
I have met Viet Thanh Nguyen a handful of times now, but I can never forget the first time. It was seven years ago at the Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive. He came in like a movie star with his sunglasses down and an entourage of people behind him. I could have sworn there was a breeze as the wind lifted the bottom of his blazer like how a wind machine might make an actor look windswept; I could have sworn time slowed as all eyes were drawn to him. I had never seen someone walk in with so much confidence, and I was awestruck by how cool he seemed. He talked about wanting to scale buildings in his youth, and he patiently answered my question about the squid scene in The Sympathizer (which later led to my moniker of “Squid Girl” following our second and third encounter). This is the story I would tell my mother when I later recounted my first encounter with Nguyen. But as I look back now, I struggle to remember the more basic details such as how long ago this event was, or what color blazer he wore, and I had to dig up an old photograph to check. I also feel like I exaggerated some of these details.
I start this review with this memory because Nguyen begins his memoir, A Man of Two Faces, with a discussion of movies. He claims that all “parents should have movies made of their lives. Or at least [his] parents should,” but he later wonders who would be cast as his child self. If someone were to make a movie of Nguyen’s life, I would hope he would be cast as himself seven years ago. I would have believed that he was a movie star, even if Hollywood did not cast many Asian American actors.
I also lead with this story to show the fallibility of memory. While Nguyen is known for his Pulitzer Prize winning work, The Sympathizer, he is also a memory scholar, and his memoir, in addition to being a record of his life, is a reflection and exploration of memory. Memory is such a complicated topic as over time people forget things or remember them differently, and Nguyen parses out these complexities with his caustic sense of humor.
In his memoir, A Man of Two Faces, Nguyen recounts his life while concurrently providing a history to contextualize what he is talking about and a critique to show how these events affect not just him, but the wider community. He narrates moments ranging from when he was a refugee child resettling in the United States to his adulthood. As a child, he was unable to completely understand the complexities of his escape and the family left behind, such as his adopted sister, for a better life in America, but as an adult, he is critical of the violence both this forced departure and the AMERICA™ incurred. To make a living, his parents open up a grocery store, SàiGòn Mới, yet this venture puts their lives in danger both metaphorically with racism and physically as his mother is shot and injured while working. Additionally, he brings up his feelings of guilt of not being enough as his parents left everything behind for the American “good” life.
The title, A Man of Two Faces, comes from The Sympathizer’s narrator, who refers to himself as the man of two faces since he is a double agent who understands both the North and South Vietnamese perspective. In his memoir, Nguyen similarly straddles many identities, such as Vietnamese and American, and this intersection of identity allows him to point out the many hypocrisies both sides engage in. For example, he tackles how the AMERICAN DREAM™ promises inclusion premised on erasure while simultaneously excluding those who are Other. At the same time, Nguyen discusses the dichotomy of the good vs the bad refugee model that many Vietnamese subscribe to, even though anyone of any background is capable of crimes.
As much as this story is about remembering, it is also one of forgetting. Social anthropologist Paul Connerton states that there are seven types of forgetting, and Nguyen engages in all of them as he remembers. He invokes repressive erasure (the Romans called this practice, damnatio memoriae) by redacting the former president’s name when discussing the rhetoric of whiteness that appealed to many white Americans during the 2016 election. While his presence is necessary to understand the context of that time, Nguyen refuses to give him space to be remembered and symbolically “kills” him. Additionally, he and his parents experience forgetting that comes with forming a new identity. Nguyen forgets what his life was like in Vietnam and forgets the language that used to be his first language. His parents rename themselves Joseph and Linda to assimilate, but this leads to an erasure of their Vietnamese names. This forgetting is not vindictive or malicious, but a form of survival.
Throughout the memoir, the type of forgetting Nguyen grapples with and combats the most is forgetting as planned obsolescence. This act of forgetting is planned as time goes on. While this term has to do with consumer goods and services, one day we will all be obsolete, no longer on this earth and with no one left to remember us. Following his mother’s death, Nguyen admits that “days go by, weeks even, when [he] does not think of [his] mother,” yet “writing thus becomes a way of re membering, for the act of writing is when [he] most feel(s) Má’s presence.” As much as this is his story, it is also his parents’ story, and this memoir acts as a memorial to them and extends the lifetime of his parents (specifically his mother’s).I was hooked as soon as I read the first page when he brings up Wong Kar-Wai and Joan Chen with his sardonic sense of humor. Nguyen masterfully plays with font size and text placement to highlight the emotional toll and the points he is trying to show to a wider American audience. When he lists out slurs Asian Americans have been called, he centers the text so that it looks like an arrow. I felt the hurt viscerally. Nguyen also provides a thought-provoking discussion of memory and forgetting. We all remember moments of our lives differently than how others remember it, but these memories shape our lives. The next time I see Nguyen, I know he will not remember me, but our first encounter affected my life in ways I cannot forget. Hopefully, A Man of Two Faces will endure the test of time and memory since it is a must read.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.