My Documents
A Novel
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
The paths of four family members diverge drastically when the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans, in this “rich, gripping novel that lands squarely as a mirror of our contemporary moral squalor” (Los Angeles Times).
“Comically macabre . . . Nguyen [is] a stellar satirist who takes bold imaginative risks.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE NEW YORKER, ESQUIRE
Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family. As young adults, they’re on the precipice of new ventures: Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naïve freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America creates a national panic, prompting a government policy that pushes Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions.
Cut off entirely from the outside world, forced to work jobs they hate, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long, dusty days in camp and acclimate to life without the internet. That is, until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this connection as a chance to tell the world about the horrors of camp—and as an opportunity to bolster her own reporting career in the process.
Informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen’s novel gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to one another, and to ourselves, after tragedy.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Families are torn apart by discrimination in this frightening near-future tale. Half-siblings Jen, Duncan, Ursula, and Alvin are just making their marks on the world when acts of domestic terrorism result in drastic laws targeting Vietnamese Americans. With half of their family locked in camps, the Nguyens must adapt to—or fight—their new, terrifying reality. Author Kevin Nguyen references American tragedies like the internment of U.S. citizens of Japanese heritage during World War II to craft a harrowing novel about culture and hope. He tells his tale from four perspectives: the more fortunate siblings who avoid incarceration, and the two who are locked in a prison camp. Nguyen builds a disturbing alternative-future tale, but his story hits hardest on a personal level. As the siblings navigate life on both sides of their horrific new reality, they confront truths about themselves, their family, and the complicated nature of citizenship and assimilation in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nguyen (New Waves) draws on the legacy of the U.S. government's internment of Japanese Americans during WWII for this intelligent and chilling novel. After a series of explosions kills scores of people at six major airports in a coordinated terror attack, the perpetrators are revealed to have Vietnamese names. The government launches an internment program for Vietnamese people in the U.S., and the story follows the Nguyen family as they reckon with the upheaval to their lives. Ursula, an up-and-coming reporter, and Alvin, an intern at Google, receive work exemptions that save them from being sent to the camps. Their younger half-sister, Jen, declines her student exemption and joins her mother and her 15-year-old brother, Duncan, at Camp Tacoma (the four half-siblings' Vietnamese father abandoned them years earlier). While at the camp, Jen compiles a pamphlet about abuses there, which she smuggles to the outside via an underground network. The pamphlet reaches Ursula, whose star rises after she writes articles based on it. Nguyen delivers deep character work, especially with Jen, who grapples with the relief she feels after letting go of the pressure she'd internalized to succeed at school; and Ursula, whose Faustian bargain has tragic repercussions. This poignant narrative is an emotional roller coaster.
