Scan barcode
booksbecreads's review against another edition
3.0
"Weponised memory becomes part of the war machines arsenal, deployed in the struggle to control reality"
I have read many books on the Vietnam War, grew up surrounded by people that served and worked in the south during the war and also by those who came to Australia as refugees. This book didn't unfortunately cover more than I already knew and understood however it did add a few extra resources (books) to be added to my reading list
"Memory, like war, is often asymmetrical "
I have read many books on the Vietnam War, grew up surrounded by people that served and worked in the south during the war and also by those who came to Australia as refugees. This book didn't unfortunately cover more than I already knew and understood however it did add a few extra resources (books) to be added to my reading list
"Memory, like war, is often asymmetrical "
palliem's review
5.0
This is definitely not a super accessible book—it’s dense and relies at times on deep knowledge of literary criticism, post-modernism, and philosophy. It is also one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and it’s absolutely beautiful. In probing how the world remembers the Vietnam War, Nguyen calls into question how we remember all war—and how we can use our memories to forge a more peaceful future.
procrasreader's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
lizmart88's review against another edition
3.0
Ostensibly, this book is about the Vietnam War and memory. But Viet Thanh Nguyen explores all wars - especially American wars - and how we remember them. How do we construct meaning after a violent war? How do we forget it? And how does it shape both sides?
Many books explore this, but he manages to do it looking at both actors in the war - America and Vietnam. As a Vietnamese refugee, he certainly has a different perspective than the average, non-Vietnamese academic writer, but he uses it to really probe what it means to be Vietnamese and American. He draws on writing from a variety of places - memoirs, refugee stories, articles, and movies - to explore how media represents the narrative well and falsely.
Many parts of this book were just beautiful. I felt like many sentences were tweetable too! It offered sharp critiques of military industrial machines and war propaganda.
Note: this book is quite academic-y. It's pretty dense, and there are lots of citations.
Many books explore this, but he manages to do it looking at both actors in the war - America and Vietnam. As a Vietnamese refugee, he certainly has a different perspective than the average, non-Vietnamese academic writer, but he uses it to really probe what it means to be Vietnamese and American. He draws on writing from a variety of places - memoirs, refugee stories, articles, and movies - to explore how media represents the narrative well and falsely.
Many parts of this book were just beautiful. I felt like many sentences were tweetable too! It offered sharp critiques of military industrial machines and war propaganda.
Note: this book is quite academic-y. It's pretty dense, and there are lots of citations.
kenleyneufeld's review against another edition
5.0
I'm a bit behind in picking up this award-winning book, but it certainly wasn't to late for a reading. This is the kind of book that I'd like read portions again. This is also a book that has a plethora of other author references forcing my "to read" shelf to grow beyond my capacities. A great introduction to a topic that I didn't have much knowledge of, what the author calls the "industry of memory." What's involved in memory-making, what is just memory, and how peace requires the taking over the industry of memory. It's one to share.
pageglue's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
Nothing Ever Dies, the title a quote from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, details Nguyen’s thoughts and beliefs about war and memory in society and culture, specifically through his own experience as a Vietnamese refugee who grew up in America. He draws his ideas from the works of philosophers, artists, authors, poets, and filmmakers, as well as from history, and how that history is preserved officially through museums and war memorials, and shared cultural memories which have been passed down to us over the years through our parents, education, film and books. He refers to this social project as the “memory industry” - an amorphous but coordinated propaganda effort by overly-patriotic politicians, the military-industrial complex, and Hollywood. To say that this is an anti-war manifesto would be a severe understatement. Nguyen is interested in something much deeper, something that can cut through capitalist and nationalist interests, something that refuses to accept binary understandings of war.
This is a very rich topic teeming with life and turmoil, but where another author might be overcome by such choppy and treacherous waters, Nguyen navigates them with the confidence of an old sailor who’s seen it all. We all understand the horrors of war to be a story of the battlefield with soldiers as the protagonists, but Nguyen leads us away from these masculine, pro-military narratives and towards the unseen and underestimated players in war: from the innocent victims of war - the civilians who stay (or die) and refugees - to the unsung villains of war among the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians. This false dichotomy of hero/villain, perpetrator/victim, denies people on all sides the full range of humanity: victims of crimes are just as capable of committing crimes if they haven’t already done so. It might seem uncouth to say that villagers killed by napalm attacks can be dicks too, but Nguyen argues that this ‘us versus them’ mentality, even when acknowledging the ‘them’ as the innocent, has this effect of treating one group as ‘human’ and the other as ‘inhuman’, which is a narrative that is exploited by the military-industrial complex to drum up its neoconservative war agenda.
For anyone who’s put off by all this war talk, a great deal of this book is about the philosophy of memory how injustice and inequality shape shared cultural memories. Nguyen captures this with a camera lucida, drawing perspectives from art, literature and film from America and South East Asia. It was also really interesting to see the comparisons between how rich countries and poor countries memorialise war, and how propagandistic it can be.
This book is very nuanced and philosophical, but I’d recommend it to everyone. It’s opened my eyes to how power maps the landscape of memory, which I can clearly see now when I think of Indigenous history in Australia. The writing is so good. If you don’t read nonfiction, please please please read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Sympathizer, it’s sequel The Committed, and his short story collection The Refugees. Everything he’s ever written I’ve given 5 stars. If you have read his fiction, I’d say this book is a must-read to really get a better understanding of his how he approaches his work.
This is a very rich topic teeming with life and turmoil, but where another author might be overcome by such choppy and treacherous waters, Nguyen navigates them with the confidence of an old sailor who’s seen it all. We all understand the horrors of war to be a story of the battlefield with soldiers as the protagonists, but Nguyen leads us away from these masculine, pro-military narratives and towards the unseen and underestimated players in war: from the innocent victims of war - the civilians who stay (or die) and refugees - to the unsung villains of war among the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians. This false dichotomy of hero/villain, perpetrator/victim, denies people on all sides the full range of humanity: victims of crimes are just as capable of committing crimes if they haven’t already done so. It might seem uncouth to say that villagers killed by napalm attacks can be dicks too, but Nguyen argues that this ‘us versus them’ mentality, even when acknowledging the ‘them’ as the innocent, has this effect of treating one group as ‘human’ and the other as ‘inhuman’, which is a narrative that is exploited by the military-industrial complex to drum up its neoconservative war agenda.
For anyone who’s put off by all this war talk, a great deal of this book is about the philosophy of memory how injustice and inequality shape shared cultural memories. Nguyen captures this with a camera lucida, drawing perspectives from art, literature and film from America and South East Asia. It was also really interesting to see the comparisons between how rich countries and poor countries memorialise war, and how propagandistic it can be.
This book is very nuanced and philosophical, but I’d recommend it to everyone. It’s opened my eyes to how power maps the landscape of memory, which I can clearly see now when I think of Indigenous history in Australia. The writing is so good. If you don’t read nonfiction, please please please read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winning The Sympathizer, it’s sequel The Committed, and his short story collection The Refugees. Everything he’s ever written I’ve given 5 stars. If you have read his fiction, I’d say this book is a must-read to really get a better understanding of his how he approaches his work.
bobbo49's review against another edition
4.0
This non-fiction book by the author of The Sympathizer is a challenging philosophical analysis of war - particularly but not exclusively, the American War in Vietnam and its contemporaneous killings in Laos and Cambodia - and of the artificial and real juxtapositions that war requires and creates, such as humanity/inhumanity, warriors and civilians, actors and victims, memory and reality, "us" and "others", etc. Filled with profound ethical and historical concepts (I had to read many passages twice to understand them) and with the insights of many other writers and filmmakers (e.g., W.G. Sebald: "there is no difference between passive resistance and passive collaboration - it's the same thing"; or, Jacques Derida: "Pure forgiveness arises from the paradox of forgiving the unforgivable. All other forms of forgiveness are conditional - I will forgive, if you give me something"). In its essence, the book seeks to have us recognize the endless war in which America has engaged since the end of WWII (and, arguably, going back to the end of the 19th Century), how it is affected by our memories of war (note that if the 150 foot long Vietnam memorial in Washington had the names of Vietnamese killed on it, the wall would be 3 miles long), and how we need to reflect upon the realities of war and its lingering social and moral consequences in order to create pathways to reconciliation with "the others" and an end to endless war.
mscalls's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide, Death of parent, Grief, Torture, Violence, Sexual violence, Murder, Vomit, War, Death, Sexual assault, and Colonisation
briqhtkit's review against another edition
2.5
nguyen made like 2.5 points and dragged them out for an entire book😭