Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, known for his novel The Sympathizer, brings forth his personal narrative in A Man of Two Faces. His memoir delves into his journey as a Vietnamese refugee, exploring the intricacies of identity, memory, and belonging. Nguyen’s story starts at age four, when he and his family fled Vietnam and sought refuge in the United States.

This book isn’t your typical coming-of-age memoir. Instead, it reads more like a diatribe or a history lesson, packed with intense political commentary that some may find offensive. Nguyen doesn’t hold back in his scathing criticism of the United States and its people.

Nguyen wrote portions of the book in the second-person narrative, an unusual choice that adds to its unique style.

His dark wit shines through with lines such as “The communist school of Berkeley.” But his portrayal of anti-Asian racism, while upsetting and eye-opening, often crosses into what feels like bitterness against Caucasians. His constant grievances about Whites, America, and Western culture became repetitive and tiresome.

There are many moments of interest, such as his references to lesser-known historical events, including a 1989 school shooting. However, his mention of George Floyd seemed out of place, unrelated to his personal story.

On a positive note, Nguyen’s openness about his life as a father and son provides a refreshing contrast to the book’s heavier themes. He has had much success as a professor and author, and it would have been nice to see more of positivity about his life.

Ultimately, A Man of Two Faces left me feeling uncomfortable and wasn’t to my taste. It may appeal to those interested in a deeply political and critical perspective, but it didn’t resonate with me. I give it 2 stars.

** Thanks to the publisher for a complimentary review copy. The opinions are my own.

3.75

I generally struggle to rate and review memoirs, because how can you critique a person's life story, and Viet Thanh Nguyen's A Man of Two Faces is even harder to review because he expands on his personal history to include commentary on "refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America".

What I really walked away from after reading this book is that Nguyen is incredibly intelligent and he writes with such intentionality. His prose is often straightforward but with a twist that could make it come across as pretentious but somehow doesn't and feels profound. I found myself highlighting on almost every page. Much of this memoir is written in second person and throughout the book there are sections that mimic poetry and he utilizes formatting in such a fascinating way.

Throughout the book, he comments on war and reunification and cyles of colonization and the oppressor/oppressed and racism in the United States and identity and immigration and memory and culture and so much more. It's an incredibly ambitious project. I didn't necessarily love this reading experience, but I think aspects of this memoir will stay with me for a long time which makes this especially hard to assign a star rating.

I have owned The Sympathizer for years and have been sort of intimidated by it and I don't know if reading this makes me more or less intimidated but I think this has moved it up my TBR because I love the way Viet Thanh Nguyen's mind works.

Incredible memoir from an unbelievably talented writer. Nguyen lets us into his life and we feel the world that he lives in. It makes you want to read or re-read all of his writing. Truly a master.

Thanks to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me this eARC to read. As I get older, I seem to seek out not the familiar safe reading material but the unfamiliar and challenging ones. 40 years ago I would never have tried to read The Sympathizer. Not interested, thanks but no thanks. The author's refugee story is fascinating to me as I did not share that experience as a white child growing up in Nebraska and Minnesota. This is a terrific insightful memoir and I devoured in several days. Highly recommended.

12 Challenge

Recommended by DaUhn

"This is a war story."

I don't even know where to start. This took me apart, broke me, and put me back together again. I would apologize for being dramatic, but I'm not sorry.

I highlighted 100+ things as I was reading, but I won't subject you to that. Know that I was moved. I laughed. I cried. I empathized.

This is VTN's story, beginning with his parents becoming refugees, twice, in the same way my grandparents were. As North Vietnamese Catholics, they fled communism in 1954. Post-Vietnam War, they fled again.

It's a study in intersectionality. I've always felt as though I was two pieces of a whole, neither one, nor the other. This book helps me see myself a little more easily. Viet and I both have Vietnamese names, and yet struggle with our "native" language. How Vietnamese are you if you don't speak Vietnamese? How Vietnamese are you if you don't grow up in Vietnam?

There is a section that speaks on pre-1975 Vietnamese. This is the Vietnamese my parents, grandparents, and extended family speak. It is the Vietnamese I understand. The words I know for airport and bank aren't used anymore. I don't recognize the "new" ones. And yet, when my siblings and I turn to Duolingo (a terrible resource, 0/10 would not recommend) to pick up bits and pieces of our language, and ask our father about what we don't understand, without explaining, he calls it Communist Vietnamese and refuses to speak further.

Viet talks about being "the whitest" people of French Indochina. There is a sometimes spoken of hierarchy of Asians. Sometimes Vietnamese people are lumped more with East Asians than Southeast Asians. Colorism exists. Our skin is lighter than our neighbors' because China ruled/raped/killed us for 900+ years. And yet we tend to only speak of the French, and sometimes Japanese, when we speak of being colonized. And yet, in being colonized, we also did some colonizing.

"We give colonization another name: the AMERICAN DREAM™."

The model minority myth is demoralizing. In it, Asians are separated from other minorities and shown in a semi-positive light. Nothing about this model is positive. In fact, I would say we are invisible, even as we try to achieve glory under the white gaze.

Viet even talks about the classic genres of American propaganda—the western and the World War II movie. I've never liked these genres. In fact, growing up, I always wondered why white people loved them so much. I see now these genres follow the white savior narrative. It was not until Pachinko was released that I realized it wasn't WW2 I hated, but the very Eurocentric view of it. Was this not a World War? Is Europe the world?

The next time you see an Asian American author's book shelved in Asian literature instead of American literature, ask yourself why. The only truly American literature should be Native literature. If we're shelving things this way, it only makes sense to shelve "American" literature in European literature, and we all know how much of a fuss "actual" Europeans would make.

"They expect us to read their literature, but they won't read ours."

📚 Buddy read with Steph

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press

My favorite author’s memoir! His story truly is a rollercoaster ride for readers, taking us from fleeing Vietnam to growing up in the U.S. – how his family was torn apart not long after they landed in the U.S., how they set foot in San Jose, how his family started a small business selling authentic Vietnamese groceries, and how growing up in California has impacted him. All in his experience, it all makes sense that “The Sympathizer” was written and plotted the way it is. He then further shares his thoughts on current politics and what it means to reclaim your identity as a POC in a country where white nationalism is viewed as the US identity.

Unlike “The Sympathizer,” the writing style is loose, but the dark humor remains. It is entertaining, and you can tell a lot of thought went into the formatting in a way that creates a special atmosphere of censorship. It is one of those memoirs where you get to learn not just about the author’s life but also history from a different perspective. Highly recommended!

Received ARC from Grove Press via NetGalley.

Pulitzer Prize winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen, is one of the most extraordinary, relevant, and important writers of our time. It is a shame that most readers will never crack open A Man Of Two Faces because they don't care for memoirs or historical nonfiction. I encourage you to make an exception. It is a personally contemplative and politically daring and provocative examination of the refugee experience in America.

Now in my sixties, I like to think that I have gained the life experience that allows me to evaluate things more fully. Viet Thanh Nguyen made me question points of history I thought I knew and search my deeply buried assumptions of the world and especially people different from me. This book challenged and changed me and deserves to be read widely.

I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.

I loved this re-membering from Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is so well thought out and so eloquent. I loved hearing about his parents’ store and their history with San Jose. I love that VTN used his memoir as also a critique on AMERICA — love the emphasis on America and the AMERICAN DREAM. The formatting and text layout of the entire book really helped with the emphasis. There is so much to parse through but reading the book in a poetry-like format with line breaks and alternate left/center/right-aligned was perfect for getting the information across without diluting it. I think VTN is sharp and I understand when he says that since becoming a parent, his writing and also self-awareness has changed. It’s beautiful to be able to see his progress between short story collection THE REFUGEES (written first and before THE SYMPATHIZER even thought TS was published first) and this very personal memoir.

"So many of war’s casualties are never counted. Never commemorated, never named on walls, never written about in novels and plays, never featured in movies. The refugees, the suicides, the disabled, the unsheltered, the traumatized, the ones who have departed this reality. The ones never known."⁣
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Summary⁣
With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.⁣
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This book was difficult to summarize, I found this summary online and it really hit the nail on the head about this unique, underrated gem. The format took me a minute to sink into but once I did, I couldn't stop reading. The quote I used is one that made such an impact on me, all of the many immigrant experience stories I've read I've never once thought about the war casualties in this way -- it absolutely broke my heart. How can a book that explores racism in such a way also make such an emotional impact?? ⁣
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I highly recommend A Man of Two Faces. I've owned The Sympathizer for a bit now and after it is mentioned a few times in this book and now that I know I enjoy Nguyen's unique writing style, I am looking forward to it even more. Have you read anything by Nguyen?⁣
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Nguyen is a professional writer and it shows. This book pushes the nonfiction/memoir form and pulls it off. Smart and cutting. There is an underlying rage that reads beautifully. I also love the way he incorporates art, pop culture, literature, and history into the telling of his and his family's story. It runs a tad long at the end, but overall it is really really great.

In "A Man of Two Faces," Viet Thanh Nguyen delivers a masterful exploration of his own life, blending personal memoir with broader narratives of refugeehood and colonization. With a unique blend of insight, humor, and lyricism, Nguyen rewinds the film of his existence, exposing the hidden layers of violence beneath the sunny facade of AMERICATM.

From his forced migration to the USA at the age of four to the painful revelation of his parents' shooting on a Christmas Eve, Nguyen grapples with the complexities of identity and belonging. His teenage existential crisis, triggered by Vietnam War films, leads to profound self-discovery and a poignant visit to an adopted sister in Vietnam.

This memoir is not just a personal narrative but a profound reflection on cultural power, memory, and the promises America makes and breaks. Nguyen's writing is emotionally resonant and intellectually brilliant, showcasing the exceptional storytelling of one of today's most important writers. "A Man of Two Faces" is a deeply moving and thought-provoking journey into the intricate intersections of identity and heritage.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic, Grove Press for the advanced reader copy to review via NetGalley!

Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Press for providing me with an advanced copy of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s incredibly entertaining and stimulating memoir A Man of Two Faces. Much like The Sympathizer and Ellison’s Invisible Man, Thanh uses this kind of duality of identity to explore what it means to be Vietnamese American. I absolutely loved this book. I’m a huge fan of Nguyen’s other books and have attended talks by Nguyen, so when I found our about his memoir, I was doubly excited to not only read a new book of his, but also learn more about his life, how he came to writing, and more in general about one of America’s most important writers and thinkers. Like The Sympathizer and other works, Nguyen plays with styles and genres ultimately adapting them to not so much tell his story as immerse readers in his world. At first, I found his narrative a little strange, but ultimately appreciated how he used first person to engage readers and share his perspective. It further highlights how he is not only concerned with sharing his experiences, but also making them more relevant to his audience. While my family experience was very different from Nguyen’s, I could relate to the video store as our pre-internet source of knowledge and information. Nevertheless, Nguyen’s examination of how Vietnam is remembered (or maybe misremembered) in the 80s in not just films but also books and memoirs enabled me to better examine how popular culture not only shapes our understanding of the current world, but also past events and history. I also realized this from The Sympathizer’s scenes with the auteur and consulting about the war movie. What’s most enjoyable about his writing is not just the engaging use of narrative techniques, but Nguyen’s combination of keen social analysis with irony and humor. Not many writers can incorporate this kind of analysis and entertainment, but Nguyen is one of the most entertaining social critics and writers. In addition to being an insightful critique, A Man of Two Faces is also a great story about family and culture, and how, in particular, Nguyen’s parents provided so much for him. Too often, we don’t always realize what our parents have done for us until we are older and have gained some perspective. While it didn’t seem that Nguyen was ungrateful as an adolescent, he does this memoir to provide some thanks to his parents for their amazing journey to America and the sacrifices they made as shop owners. I really enjoyed this memoir on so many different levels- from Nguyen’s family story, to his care for his mother in her later years, and seeing how these experiences inspired his writing. What was most enjoyable, though, was learning how he became a writer, and how he battled doubt to eventually write The Sympathizer, The Refugees, and The Committed. I loved reading about his experiences in seminars and how challenging it was to gather his experiences and ideas into writing. This memoir provided great insights into the creative process, as well as sharing the experiences of an immigrant family in America. Furthermore, Nguyen retells his story in such a unique and critical voice—one that is not condescending or grating, but rather compassionate and grateful. I have been recommending this book to friends and others and am looking forward to reading this again.

I remember being moved by and learning quite a lot from The Sympathizer, so I was intrigued when I saw that Viet Thanh Nguyen was putting out a memoir. As you can see from this quote, I learned quite a lot from this memoir as well and I strive to keep learning more!

Nguyen’s writing is gorgeous, as always. The details are poignant and you can feel his nostalgia. I was moved by his openness, honesty, and vulnerability as he shared his story.

A terrific memoir that is very similar in tone to Nguyen's novels and other scholarly writing. Really enjoyed how he straddles the line between fiction, nonfiction, and memory here. It was a little odd and confusing at times to read a memoir addressed in the second-person, but once you get used to it, it's a powerful piece of writing.

This book's formatting was difficult for me to grasp as it was fragmented and therefore complicated to follow. I recognize the depth of the content and the poetic flow of the pages which is both intriguing and intimidating. This is one where it was read in multiple sittings and more of a pick-up and read than rush through. I'd recommend enjoying this through audiobook vs physical.

Dynamic, thought-provoking, and as much about personal and geopolitical history as it is about the act of memoir itself. The fraught nature of memoir. I'll be thinking about this for a long time.

I LOVED this memoir, and could relate in so many ways!

Notable lines:

“All our parents should have movies made of their lives. Or at least my parents should. Their epic journey deserves star treatment, even if only in an independent, low-budget film.”

“You do not deal well with emotional difficulty, except in your writing. With actual people, you prefer your emotions like your roads, smooth, straight, and uncrowded.”

“Nostalgia is, literally, homesickness, with those afflicted yearning for their home. But what to call being sick of home?”

“Look at what Má accomplished with just a grade school education, overcoming everything-almost everything-except her mind.”

[Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for am ARC] A 4.5 read for me. Fittingly with its title, it's about dualities and nuances and going beyond fact and just plot (or in this case, "typical" memoirs). As with most of his past witty writing, Viet Thanh Nguyen manages to make the particular feel universal and the somewhat quotidian feel orders of magnitude greater, finding humour in lines that might seem like throwaways but always carry depth (re: moving from Pennsylvania to California: "thank God. Just kidding, Harrisburg. I don't believe in God") or that are followed by earned emotional punches. The patter of the language is always engrossing. The inclusion of family photographs is especially enriching of the read and overall it's very much always worth the price of admission to sit in this author's mind for a while.

This memoir based on a series of interviews packs a lot of punch. I felt !most comfortable when the author writes about his mother and her influence while growing up. The immigrant and refugee displacement in general and from Vietnam is one that is centered on war and strife.treatment as depicted in movies and literature can be violent and stereotypical. I had an uneasy feeling as I read this memoir with its often mocking tone of America. Which can be a good thing for knowledge and change. Literary references added perspective. I liked the second and third parts the best. The first part focuses mainly on history which had me on edge.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

A Man of Two Faces is the reason I read memoirs. It is the perfect blend of insight, wit, humor and personal stories of refugeehood, colonization, Vietnam and America. I learned so much through his story. At only age four, Viet and his family were forced to flee to the U.S. Then five years later on Christmas Eve, his parents were shot while working at their grocery store. As he gets older, he realizes the promises America makes and breaks.

Viet's profound story will stick in readers' minds. It is an inspiring journey written in lyrical fashion. A GoodReads Choice 2023 nominee for a reason! I recommend to Bookhearts interested in an honest, well-written memoir with a dose of history.

A Man of Two Faces is now available.

Disclaimer: An advance copy was received directly from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Opinions are my own and would be the same if I spent my hard-earned coins. ~LiteraryMarie