Book Log 2022 #2: The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Nguyen continues to examine memory, identity, and the feeling of living between worlds in this short story collection. The stories have a kinship with his novels in terms of location and character histories, but are not (as far as I could tell) directly related to them. 

Each of the stories depicts a conflict where the main character must come to terms with a change in circumstances that puts their world view in question, from the newly-arrived Vietnamese refugee who discovers his sponsors are a gay couple to the American father who has to overcome his war experiences when visting his daughter, who now lives in Vietnam. There's also one story that seems autobiographical, about a boy whose parents own a Vietnamese grocery store in San Jose.

I really enjoyed the collection, and found each variaton on the common themes gave me something new to consider. As someone who has lived in more or less the same place surrounded by more or less the same people, the book helped me develop at least a slightly deeper understanding of what it means to live with such a permanent change in ones circumstances.