There were plantations, forced labor, all this kind of stuff going on. The Vietnamese revolutionaries who rebelled against the French called themselves “slaves of the French.” That’s how the anti-French Vietnamese thought of themselves.Īnd that is not romantic or beautiful or anything like that.
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And I felt that this was probably a good indicator of how the French got a lucky break with this history, because what the French did in Vietnam, if you read the historical accounts, was really pretty terrible. They were brutal, about terrible atrocities and all this kind of stuff. And they dealt with various aspects of this history, but they were both sort of beautiful, lush movies about romance, and it was an interesting contrast to the movies that Americans were making about the war in Vietnam, which were not lush and beautiful. NGUYEN: Well, I remember as a college student - this was ‘92 - two movies came out from France - “Indochine” and “The Lover.” These were very popular movies at the time, and they both dealt with the French period of colonization in the 1920’s to the 1950’s. How do you believe France remembers their impact on Vietnam, compared to how America remembers their impact on the country? The Signal spoke with Nguyen in a discussion about French colonialism and “The Committed.” In his follow-up novel, “The Committed,” Nguyen turns his attention to France, with the titular character relocating to 1980s Paris, uncovering a world of bureaucratic authority and left-wing radicalism while confronting the past atrocities of French colonization in Vietnam.
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In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” Nguyen explored American culture and the country’s impact on Vietnam, as well depicting how refugees and immigrants are treated as they adjust to their new lives and new surroundings in the U.S. Viet Thanh Nguyen has certainly not gained a reputation for pulling any punches when it comes to social commentary.