Viet Thanh Nguyen

there are a lot of strong essays in here, and i especially like how the authors are from so many different places in the world. i think hearing these diverse voices shows the universality of the refugee/migrant/immigrant experience. but how vastly different it is from anything a naturalized citizen would ever know. and these are stories we really need to hear. as in all collections, they didn't all resonate, but overall this is a really good collection. i think maybe the biggest takeaway for me is how much of a sacrifice it is to be a refugee, how much you aren't just changing your geography or your chances or your future, but the core of who you are.

this opens with an introduction from viet thanh nguyen, and it's a seriously amazing essay. my favorite in the collection, and it makes me want to read his books, especially his recently released memoir. i also particularly was moved by porochista khakpour's essay. these two writers alone made this collection worth reading, but there are other great ones as well.

really not the point of the essay by fatima bhutto, but wow this blew me away: "Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles is already using VR as a "pharmacy," Sophie Hackford, a London-based futurist, says, transporting patients to relaxing and sooting environments before traumatic surgery. With a headset and a pair of headphones, burn victims in excruciating pain are clicked into cold locations and just the imagination, the virtual imagery of snow and ice, has been found to release them from the physical confines of their pain 60 percent more efficiently than morphine."

from the essay by reyna grande: "Unfortunately for us immigrants, the trauma doesn't end with a successful border crossing. I believe that for the rest of your life, you carry that border inside of you. It becomes a part of your psyche, your being, your identity." and "It is the central irony of my life that my parents emigrated to try to save our family, but by doing so, they destroyed it."

from novuyo rosa tsdhuma's essay: "The suffering of non-white bodies is so naturalized, so overwhelming, and so ordinary that it ceases to be exceptional."… (more)

I’m giving this one 3 stars . I cannot, in good conscience, give it less. Because if nothing else, it is exquisitely written.

That said:

Never mind that any male who ever reads this will have walked away having learned how to masturbate with a live squid, how to gang rape a women as a form of torture – and how to conduct countless other sorts of torture which said male readers probably never considered before reading this book.

I get that it was supposed to be disorienting to me – the educated, female, WESTERN reader. I get that it is a detailed fictional accounting for the Boat People and for an experience that we can never otherwise imagine (why would we want to?). I get that the narrator remains nameless because his story is really the story of all refugees.

But because I was expected to read from the outside perspective – I never managed to like this book the way I should – beautifully written as it is.

Would I recommend you read it? Maybe – if you want a detailed account of what exactly it’s like to masturbate with a live squid – or what it’s like to gang rape someone – or what it’s like to have your face burned off or what it’s like to be invisible.

Sound good? Give it a go. It's a bit difficult to read, but you might learn something.

Sound terrible? Just take my review and run far far away from here...
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