The Norton Lectures with Viet Thanh Nguyen | Lecture Three

The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University Presents
The Norton Lectures with Viet Thanh Nguyen | To Save and To Destroy: On Writing as an Other

Lecture Three: On the Death of Asian Americans

Asian Americans exist at the juncture of exclusion and inclusion. Asian American culture and politics is more unified in the face of exclusion and less unified in the face of inclusion. This lecture looks at this dynamic as it is dealt with in literature, which has also been one of the most successful ways for Asian Americans to achieve inclusion through narrative plenitude.

"On the Death of Asian Americans" is the third of six Norton Lectures with Viet Thanh Nguyen. For all Lecture dates and information, click here.

Norton Lectures are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of the lecture online through the Harvard Box Office (handling fees apply) or in person at Sanders Theatre. Limit of four tickets per person. Tickets valid until 5:45pm.

About the Speakers
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and numerous other awards. His most recent publication is A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial. His other books are the sequel to The Sympathizer, The Committed; a short story collection, The Refugees; Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction); and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. He has also published Chicken of the Sea, a children’s book written in collaboration with his son, Ellison. He is a University Professor at the University of Southern California. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, he is also the editor of The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.

Introduction By:
Bruno Carvalho, Interim Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center.

Catherine Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Asian Diasporic Literatures at Emerson College.

About the Norton Lectures
The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry was endowed in 1925. Harvard’s preeminent lecture series in the arts and humanities, the Norton Lectures recognize individuals of extraordinary talent who, in addition to their particular expertise, have the gift of wide dissemination and wise expression. The term “poetry” is interpreted in the broadest sense to encompass all poetic expression in language, music, or the fine arts.