In Conversation: Kevin Nguyen on "My Documents"
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The Prince George's County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George's County Memorial Library System are excited to welcome Kevin Nguyen for a conversation about his newest darkly satirical novel, MỸ DOCUMENTS.
About MỸ DOCUMENTS
A moving speculative novel about a Vietnamese American family confronting ambition and assimilation during exceptionally troubled times, MỸ DOCUMENTS gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own. Nguyen, whose work grew from extensive research on the incarceration of Japanese citizens in the U.S. during the 1940s, imagines what a mass detention program might look like in the age of the internet.
When the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans amid a wave of national panic, half-siblings Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan find themselves coming of age during a harsh new reality. While Ursula fosters a nascent career in journalism and Alvin interns at Google, Jen and Duncan are forced into the unforgiving confines of Camp Tacoma, a chilling echo of America’s internment camps. When Ursula begins to use her detained siblings as a rare source of insider information about the camps, her career skyrockets and she is forced to contend with what it means that her success has come at the cost of her own family. As all four siblings have their lives upended, they must adapt to their strained realities and search for a way back to each other.
About the Author
Kevin Nguyen is features editor of The Verge, and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He has edited stories that have been finalists for the National Magazine Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His debut novel, New Waves (2020, One World), was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year in 2020, and was widely celebrated for its mordant humor, fierce intelligence, and stylish prose. Bryan Washington called it “a delight and a gamble and a treasure and a miracle.”
Now, Nguyen delivers another spellbinding treasure with MỸ DOCUMENTS. We hope you’re as captivated by this novel as we are, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!