A Man of Two Faces

A Memoir, a History, a Memorial

By: Viet Thanh Nguyen

Narrated by: Viet Thanh Nguyen

The highly original, blistering, and unconventional memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer, which has now sold over more than million copies worldwide.

With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.

At the age of four, Nguyen and his family are forced to flee his hometown of Ban Mê Thuột and come to the USA as refugees. After being removed from his brother and parents and homed with a family on his own, Nguyen is later allowed to resettle into his own family in suburban San José. But there is violence hidden behind the sunny façade of what he calls AMERICATM. One Christmas Eve, when Nguyen is nine, while watching cartoons at home, he learns that his parents have been shot while working at their grocery store, the SàiGòn Mới, a place where he sometimes helps price tins of fruit with a sticker gun. Years later, as a teenager, the blood-stirring drama of the films of the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now throw Nguyen into an existential crisis: How can he be both American and Vietnamese, both the killer and the person being killed? When he learns about an adopted sister who has stayed back in Vietnam and ultimately visits her, he grows to understand just how much his parents have left behind. And as his parents age, he worries increasingly about their comfort and care and realizes that some of their older wounds are reopening.

Profound in its emotions and brilliant in its thinking about cultural power, A Man of Two Faces explores the necessity of both forgetting and of memory, the promises America so readily makes and breaks, and the exceptional life story of one of the most original and important writers working today.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Viet Thanh Nguyen. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2023 Audible, Inc.

Great Book

So thoughtful, well-written and insightful. I’ve read his prior books and eagerly awaited this. I wasn’t disappointed.

Brilliant

It is a beautiful, insightful and moving memoir. At the same time, as a refugee myself, I wonder if it is a story fully understood only by us.

Interesting stream of consciousness

As feelings require no reason, I feel the first part of the book was sycophant, and chaotic. But I enjoyed the narration of the author’s love and life, and his “Americanized” voice.

A Story that must be told !

Everything you didn’t know or didn’t want to know about the Vietnam refugee experience. The author is an American treasure.

I love reading someone else’s point of view

How else can one ever understand the shoes someone else has had to walk in without reading memoirs. Whether or not you agree with the author’s thoughts doesn’t matter, you got to hear them. For the boldness of his writing, I praise this author’s book.

Courageous memoir

This book is a masterpiece of re-membering, to use a term the author returns to again and again. In recalling his and his family's life as Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen writes a parable for America. Our history is so tied to war and conquest, we tend take for granted without much critical thinking. Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of work likely to banned in such places as Florida and Texas. It doesn't take our historical narrative as a given but as a work in progress.
It is also a deeply personal work of family history. And that family history has elements of old historic wrongs as well as deep courage.
While I enjoyed listening to the author narrate his work, I'm very particular about audio narrators (most leave something to be desired in intonation and emphasis) and I have mixed feelings about the narration. Listen and make your own judgment.
I'm recommending this book to a club I belong to online (Facebook) called Reading: White Fragility. It will fit right in.

Acerbic and tender

Viet Thanh Nguyen shares unflinchingly from his lived experience, daring us to bear witness and critically reconsider our places in the world. (P.S. I didn’t know the author was also the reader until I listened to the credits. Made for a bracing and emotional listen.)

Incisive, brilliant, raw and powerful

I love authors reading their own work and this potent memoir in the author's own reading is the very best of this precious genre. Nguyen pulls no punches and exposes himself over and over again, like only a true writer can. I share no identities with him other than American of the 1970s generation and yet I learned so much from him. This is a true gem, not to be missed.

My only regret/irritance is that Audible bleeped out the name he gave Donald Trump, and that annoys me. Why not have the option of un-edited or PG version, Audible?

The author bares his soul and brain in the most beautiful and honest way.

The historical interweaving of story and events/politics is masterful. Some hold my breath moments - as well as the uncanny ability to be deeply funny in the midst of difficulty.

Emotions revealed

The author revealed many emotions despite his claim to not have been an emotional man:) it was an excellent reminder of what white American continues to do to anyone who doesn't fit that category.