Viet Thanh Nguyen (ACC 2010) and Min Jin Lee, two of America’s great contemporary storytellers, discuss Nguyen’s stunning new book — “a triumphant memoir that sears through the fog of American amnesia,” writes Cathy Park Hong. “It is a fissured lyric on memory and a clarifying meditation on empire. Every American needs to read this essential book.”

Expanding the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and the relationship between Vietnam and America, A Man of Two Faces is marked by Nguyen’s trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. Hear these two vitally original writers on Nguyen’s moving and brilliant meditation about the relationship between personal narrative and cultural power.