Honestly wonder how good this will be or if it will have lots of weird “both sides” vibes.
re: the author – probably something of a radlib, based on the NPR interview with him years ago around when the book first came out, though I’ve still never gotten around to reading the book myself so shrug. It seemed to me he was trying to juggle the standard line of thinking among older Vietnamese US immigrants (very anti-communist for obvious reasons) vs. the more left-leaning younger gens. iirc he framed his intention with the book as a conversation with the diaspora at large rather than meant for an audience of white readers/consumers (as a lot of minority-penned lit has been historically), which I sympathize with, but my personal politics have also evolved since then so I’d probably have less sympathy now. Esp because an HBO show is almost certainly gonna be pandering to white consumers of a certain class lol
iirc he framed his intention with the book as a conversation with the diaspora at large
That was my takeaway. To a large extent, the book seemed not to be about capitalism vs communism. Those were thematic devices in an immigrant’s struggle, capitalism being America and communism being Vietnam. The protagonist is half Vietnamese, half white (French?). He’s always reflecting on how he’s able to see opposing points of view with complete clarity. Honestly once I looked up the author and saw that he’s a Vietnamese immigrant it made perfect sense.
The audio book is great, by the way. I’d give it 4/5 stars (less a star for octopus fucking)
