Meet Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Viet Thanh Nguyen

Over 20 million people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent live in the United States totaling about 6 percent of the U.S. population, representing a wealth and diversity of cultures and experiences within the United States. 

Viet: So to claim being an Asian American gestures at this history of exclusion and of being racially targeted at different times in American history. It’s a way for Asian Americans to turn a negative stigma into something positive - something they can organize themselves around, as the politics or as a culture. 

Viet: Now that being said, I think identities can sometimes trap us, not just racial minorities, but for other kinds of people as well. And that it’s important to have multiple identities because most of us do experience ourselves as different people in different kinds of circumstances. 

Viet: So I’m happy to be called an Asian American, but sometimes I’m a Vietnamese American. Sometimes, I’m an American. An Asian American identity is necessary, but it's not our only option. 

Viet: I think that Asian Americans will forever be wavering between a unity of identity, calling ourselves Asian American, and an incoherence of identity, acknowledging that Asian Americans encompass literally dozens of ethnicities and languages, for example. 

Viet: That’s the wonderful thing about the United States, that all these people can be considered American, to rather than simply try to eliminate all those differences and sand over all the rough edges, we should be embracing that. Asian Americans, then, because of their drive, both, to call themselves one thing , but their embrace of all of their differences, is our, in fact, embodiment of what American culture is supposed to be about.  

Viet: I’ve said that I was born In Vietnam but made in America because I think it’s a good description both of myself but also of many other immigrants and refugees who’ve come to this country - born elsewhere, but made here. Made here by American culture, by American politics, by American history. 

Viet: They have made themselves into Asian Americans, a term and a population that didn’t exist before Asian Americans came up with it on their own. 

Viet: The making part is so crucial, because it allows us to think about how we don’t have to settle for what we’ve been given or who we are at any given stage either as individuals or as part of communities. 

Viet: We make new communities, and we can make this country into both a better place and a country that lives up to its ideal.