#Viet Nguyen

[neutron669]

Art by Viet Nguyen

[stuff-diary]

The Brothers Sun

TV Shows/Dramas watched in 2024

The Brothers Sun (2024, USA)

Directors: Kevin Tancharoen & Viet Nguyen

Creators: Brad Falchuk & Byron Wu

Mini-review:

This was a very fun and entertaining binge-watch, although it's rather inconsistent in almost every way: the directing, the writing, the fight scenes and the acting of the supporting cast. All these elements have good and even brilliant moments, but they also have mediocre and downright bad moments. Luckily, the three leads always keep the ship afloat with their performances. It's great to see Michelle Yeoh getting the meaty roles she deserves, and both Justin Chien and Sam Song Li are two charismatic newcomers I'll pay attention to in the future. Anyway, despite its many flaws, I enjoyed The Brothers Sun and I ended up growing fond the characters. The ending was pretty satisfactory, but it's clear the writers left doors open for further seasons, and I wouldn't mind getting more.

[vintagewarhol]

[fanzinhapoeta]

Oanh Ly: Have you always been interested in pursuing education as a career choice?

Viet Nguyen: When I went to college, I majored in English because I loved to read literature, but I never thought I was going to be a teacher. I had no idea what it meant to be a teacher and I had vague plans to be a writer. But I never thought of doing English as a career because it seemed relevant only to myself and my own pleasure in the aesthetic, but irrelevant to the world.

Only after I added a second major in Ethnic Studies did I start making connections between literature and the world, between aesthetics and politics. Only then did I begin to think that literature matters because it was through literature that voiceless people could tell urgent, vital stories about histories, communities, and families that America would rather ignore. Without literature and other cultural work, these histories, communities and families—of the poor, the weak, the powerless—would vanish.

I was turned on to this idea that literature matters by my professors at Berkeley, pioneering intellectuals like the late Barbara Christian, who could lecture passionately for hours on the history and literature of African Americans, without a lectern, without notes. And by Elaine Kim, who wrote the first book on Asian American literature and showed that such a thing as Asian American literature existed, and had been written by authors decades before Amy Tan. My professors were my role models because they showed to me that teachers, educators, and scholars played a crucial role in transmitting knowledge, preserving memory and cultivating a tradition that students can build upon.

[clcmentines]

who am i?

miles to go, kait kerrigan and bree lowdermilk / practice and science of drawing, harold speed / tumblr user @/avainblue / the sympathizer, viet thanh nguyen / come on in!, charles bukowski / this night has opened my eyes, the smiths

[quotespile]

Books meant something different when we returned to them later, leavened by life.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Committed

[7h3g3n3r4l]

Hoang Viet Nguyen

[diamantdog]

the captain from the sympathizer, you would have loved 2024 when people talk proudly and openly about fucking the dune 2 sandworm popcorn bucket.

[litsnaps]

[crazyrichxplainr]

Hoa Xuande for Interview (ph: Richie Lee Davis)

[bemybaebaebae]

Nguyen Hoang Viet

[specs-tacularmen]

Well……

I only remove my glasses in bed, if that’s what you’re asking…

લેઓન ન્ગૂવેન॥

hai bốn không năm hai chín

[nine-frames]

"You are twice of everything."

The Sympathizer (Cảm tình viên), 2024.

Dir. Park Chan-wook, Fernando Meirelles & Marc Munden | Showrunners Park Chan-wook & Don McKellar, based on the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen | DOP Kim Ji-yong & Barry Ackroyd

[albertserra]

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

[quotessentially]

From Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer

[quotespile]

You can examine a text closely as a doctor of letters, but you are utterly incapable of examining yourself. You, the zoologist, never the beast. You, the reader, never the text. What if you are both?

Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces