#unfortunately this book has a lot of racism both overt and subtle

[drac-kool-aid]

Ok, so more on the doubling aspect of gothic fiction, as I feel it important to bring up what Bram's intentions were with the act of impersonation he has Dracula commit.

Spoiler alert: It's Racism.

Ok, so the loss of identity is frightening, right? Even in the modern day and age, your identity being stolen and used to nefarious ends is a great concern. It is, of course, heavily tied with financial concerns nowadays, though, as it usually involves a loss of significant income and a long arduous legal battle to regain some of your losses, if any.

But in Dracula, well, on the surface, it's still about a loss of identity and the loss of control that comes with it. The one-two punch of Dracula using Jonathan's identity to post the letters and to steal the child, thus cutting him off from aid of the villagers, is, of course, a horrifying exploration of Dracula's continued abuse. We know that, at least for Dracula, his intent with these actions is to further trap Jonathan (mentally and physically) with him in the castle, cutting off any avenues of escape.

But that isn't exactly Bram's intent. See, the horror of Dracula's impersonation of Jonathan isn't just Jonathan's personal loss of identity, the horror (to your average Victorian) would also be that a non-British person, a foreigner, is able to seamlessly masquerade as a British man.

And, it's not just the supernatural doubling occurring in this one scene. Let us not forget that Dracula has a library of books on Britain, that he first engaged Jonathan in their nightly long conversations, so to practice his English. English, that he wishes to practice until his accent disappears.

Nowadays, our reading of those scenes in the beginning focuses on the xenophobia from a different direction, that of the transplanted person, sympathizing with Dracula in a way (based on the posts I saw circulating when those days were released). Now, our concerns center around how it is unfairly expected for those who become expatriates to perfectly don the guise of their new home, sanding off anything that might denote them as "other". This isn't the wrong read, and that is a very important thing to consider because it is a very real and valid concern. Also, cause it's a hell of a lot less racist than what the concern was for the Victorians.

The Victorians saw someone who wasn't British (and I am using British here deliberately, as this fear extended towards anyone not British, like the Irish) learning to become British, to seamlessly join their society, and therefore work whatever "evils" they may upon them from the inside. Their fear, simply, is that they might not be able to tell the non-British from the British anymore, thus erasing any sort of idea of being inherently extraordinary.

For context, London has developed into the melting pot of different cultures it is today (fuelled, of course, by the rapid expansion of the British Empire), and the Victorians were getting a little nervous with the idea that the "British Identity" was expanding. Y'know, classic racism.

(That is not to say that Britain wasn't home to people from all races and cultures before Victorian era, just that the average Victorian was starting to notice.)

Americans were sort of the exception, in that by this point, British aristocrats were marrying American heiresses in order to fill empty ancestral coffers. By exception, I should say, accepted to an extent and expected to drop some of their more American traits, and thus nominally become British, with the caveat that they were (of course) not truly British.

Notice how the Victorians assumed everyone wanted to be them?

(Not quite counting Quincy here as no one would ever mistake him as anything but Texan, and in fact, he plays up his non-Britishness and thus is not a threat)

Anyway, tl;dr, Dracula's symbolic doubling of Jonathn is actually steeped in racism and xenophobia, and the Victorians were kind of assholes about anyone who wasn't both white and born in Britain claiming to be British.

[musicchoe]

What Does It Mean Being Black In The American Educational System

Many still believe that racism in America isn't a problem. John McWhorter, an academic has argued that racism is gone from America after President Obama's election. Thomas Sowell, a prominent conservative scholar and African American economist, believed that racism isn't dead but is still on life the support. Roland Fryer and William Julius Wilson Both Harvard professors, also argued against the declining significance of discrimination and race.

As Obama's presidency winds down but it is apparent that the waning significance of the race and discrimination stories is completely contrary to the realities of African-Americans. Obama has been the subject of discrimination based on race, including the birther controversy, and an official who said "you are lying." Each of these incidents has revealed the sad reality that blacks are more likely to be killed by the police than any other group. You can obtain more information on travel by visiting Worldnews site.

Many black Americans are victims of discrimination and racism. As an African-American scholar who studies the experiences of college students from black backgrounds I am particularly concerned about this issue. Studies have shown that students of color suffer more stress due to racial discrimination then other ethnic or racial groups. Unfortunately, black Americans are subject to subtle and overt discrimination beginning in the early years of childhood and continuing into college.

Here's what research shows

The findings of a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center underscore this fact. According to the study it was found that people of color Americans who have some college experience are more likely to report that they were targeted by discrimination than those with no having a college education.

The results of the survey revealed a number of differentiators between blacks who have college degrees versus those who have no college education. For instance, during the last 12 months, 55 percent of those with at least some college experience said that people had acted suspicious of them, compared to 38 percent of those with no college experience.

Similar results were seen by 52 percent of those who attended college, compared 37% of people with zero college experience.

What are the challenges that students of African descent face in relation to race when they attend school?

Story of Tyrone

Let's take a look at the story of Tyrone. Tyrone, a four year-old black boy was raised in a home that had two parents. Tyrone, like most four-year-olds, is smartly interested and has an enthralling imagination. He is a huge fan of books, loves to color and paint and enjoys physical activities like running, jumping and playing games with his friends.

In terms of behavior, Tyrone is also similar to a lot of four-year-olds, in that the majority of his time, he talks more than listen. He is sometimes unstable. He may engage in kicking, hitting and spitting out when he is angry.

Tyrone was unable to win a game in which he played with a friend. Tyrone became angry and threw the ball towards his opponent. Tyrone's actions were immediately discovered by an instructor who was able to confront him.

Tyrone was furious at being confronted and began to walk away. The teacher grabbed his arm. Tyrone was furious and pulled the teacher away. The teacher escorted Tyrone to the office of the principal. Tyrone was determined to pose a threat to students and staff after consultation with the principal.

The schooling process in the first years of life

On the surface, this appears like a simple case of meting out the appropriate punishment to punish serious student misconduct. The incident does not appear to be motivated by race.

It is important to note that students of white race have engaged in similar conduct to other students, yet none of these incidents ended in being suspended. This is the reality that black students in American schools face every day.

Black boys are three times more likely to be suspended than white boys and girls of color are four times more likely than white girls to be suspended. Black students (mis)behavior is more often criminalized compared to other students.

[airoasis]

The Real Motivation Behind Civil War Monoliths-- CATHOLICS 4 TRUMP

' 'data-image-title =reunion data-image-description data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/www.catholics4trump.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/reunion.jpg?fit=300%2C233&ssl=1"data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/www.catholics4trump.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/reunion.jpg?fit=629%2C488&ssl=1"src ="https://i1.wp.com/www.catholics4trump.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/reunion.jpg?resize=629%2C489&ssl=1"alt width= 629 height=489 data-recalc-dims= 1 > A veteran of the Union Army shakes hands with a Confederate veteran at the Gettysburg celebration, in Pennsylvania.If you have actually been on social networks recently, you have seen the left's organized propaganda project concerning the apparently nefarious factors behind the erection of Confederate monoliths in the past. In the bizarre mind of the left, who see all of American history just through the prisms of racism, sexism, bigotry, and homophobia, the only factor Southerners of the past set up statues honoring Confederate generals was to send out a secret and

subtle hidden racist message of white supremacy that would last into the future. We are really surprised they aren't declaring that Richard Spencer got in a time maker and put up the monuments himself, as there is as much proof of that as there is of their existing theory.First Claim Quickly Debunked After Charlottesville, righteously upset leftists right away took to the airwaves and the internet stating that the huge bulk of confederate statues were put up in the 50's and 60's as a demonstration of the Civil Rights motion. For instance, on August 15th, Joy Reid, the host of MSNBC's The Reid Report mentioned, "The idea of putting up (Confederate) monuments in fact didn't take place right after the Civil War. It took place throughout the 1960s." It didn't take long for this claim to be unmasked, as even a study from the severe leftist Southern Hardship Law Center showed that the huge bulk of Confederate monuments were set up in between 1900 and 1918.

Second Claim Invented

Undeterred, the left then really opened some books and determined exactly what was going on in between 1900-1918 in the South to find a pretext for their already ill-formed conclusion. Well, lo and behold, bigotry was going on in the early 1900's! Never ever mind that racism was also alive and well in the entire United States from before the country's starting in 1776, through the 1960's and, if you ask the left, raves on today possibly even worse than ever before.But, the left announces that the South had Jim Crow laws and segregation during the duration of 1900-1918. This is true. Jim Crow partition laws had been passed by states and municipalities in the South because the 1880's and these laws lasted sheer through to the 1960's. Therefore, ANY period the statues were developed from 1880-1965 might be thought about the "Jim Crow Age. "You may then ask a leftist when any Southern town could have put up a

Confederate statue or monolith in history and not have had an automatic racist intent. As we know, the real answer is never ever. In order to not appear unreasonable, the leftist will tell you," Well, right after the war and before Jim Crow!"Ah yes. From the war's end in 1865 up until the 1880's, the South was a smoldering, devastated, defeated, destitute and damageded former nation, in lots of places still under the control of the Union army. One can only picture that after such an eliminating defeat and while suffering anarchical and hardship stricken conditions in lots of places, the first thing Southerners would do, rather of working to reconstruct their houses, societies and lives, would be to raise millions of dollars and take years to develop statues in honor of the generals that had just lost the war. Yes, only in the minds of liberal history majors in 2017 does this make sense.In addition, if one actions back from following the Social Justice Warriors into the fever swamps of historic revisionism, one would start to recognize that their reasoning in fact makes no sense. For they make the primary logical error of Post hoc ergo propter hoc. This is a rational fallacy that specifies"Because occasion Y followed event X, occasion Y need to have been triggered by event X."Therefore, just since the boom in Confederate memorials occurred from 1900-1918 does not prove it was a result of or in any method motivated by Jim Crow laws which began in the 1880's

and ended in the 1960's. Instead, the leftists would have to reveal us difficult causation proof connecting the two events. They can't. Considering that leftists think every Southerner in the United States from 1776 to 2017 was and is a frothing at the mouth racist, you 'd believe they would easily be able to show a racist motive from historic files commissioning these statues and memorials, or possibly racist speeches given at the dedication events in front of these memorials.After all, if even one Southerner who handled the task of building monolith to a Confederate general had actually revealed racist intentions you 'd expect the left to be plastering this file all over cyberspace. Yet, they have produced not one tip of this evidence.Leftists Put On the Tin Foil Hat Given that they cannot prove an overt intention, they have actually now created a paranoid conspiracy theory that tells us the Southerners who developed these monoliths had just one ominous intention in their heart and that was to secretly serve as a means to oppress African-Americans then and into the future. Nevermind the fact that, for the most part, African-American Southerners of this age were unfortunately extremely bad, ignorant, greatly outnumbered, in many locations disenfranchised, and held practically no power politically or otherwise.Yet, inning accordance with the leftists, we are expected to believe Southerners invested millions of tough to come by dollars and commissioned pricey carvers to spend 20 years working to develop hundreds of statues to Confederate generals to oppress African Americans throughout a period where they were already oppressed. Does this make sense?Remember, no leftist has produced a single file or

speech showing this intention in any file or speech associated to the statues although, according to leftists, such racist speeches would have been welcome in the South of that era and not looked down on. In addition, how building pricey and labor extensive inanimate objects would be an efficient way of oppressing individuals who were already oppressed is anyone's guess.As you

can see, this is rather the conspiracy theory. All this time these clever Southerners were smarter than we gave them credit for. All these Confederate statues are really concealed messages of hate concealed for over 100 years just to be deciphered and brought out into the open by 2017 SJW's whose extremely tuned ears had the ability to hear their faint racist canine whistles echoing through the centuries.The Real Reason the Statues Increased Luckily, for those of us with working brains and a sense of history, we

know something else was occurring around the time of the spike in Confederate monoliths that is disregarded by the 500 Soros moneyed short articles on your Facebook news feed. To their credit, even left wing PolitiFact was forced to confess briefly prior to veering back into the fever swamps of conspiracy theory: This was an age of generational modification during which Civil War veterans, dying of old age, were venerated

by their kids and grandchildren, experts informed us."Organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans entered being," said Charles S. Bullock, III, a professor of public and global affairs at the University of Georgia."Civil War veterans were honored in parades. There is a Confederate Memorial Day which pre-dates the National Memorial Day." But as a victorious North fixed its gaze on a prosperous

future, the American South was mired in hardship that would persist for generations. The monuments were a way to look back to an idealized past."Homages to the Confederacy-- placing statues, calling streets and other public facilities-- were part of the Lost Cause ideology that concentrated on an idyllic period of magnificent estates, stunning women and gallant Confederate officers," Bullock said.As Mashable.com stated: For the South, the United Confederate Veterans (U.C.V.)was inaugurated in 1889. Regional Confederate veteran associations proliferated after the war. At the movement's peak, more than 1,500 such groups were amalgamated in the U.C.V. The U.C.V.'s specified purpose was to promote

"social, literary, historical and humane"aims.During the 1890s, around 30,000 veterans and 50,000 more guests were present at the annual U.C.V. reunion.Of unique note is the year 1913, right near the start of the Confederate monolith spike. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Fight of Gettysburg where veterans of both sides of the war came together in a reunion of grand fashion. There was recovery and forgiveness on both sides. Former Union and Confederate soldiers who previously faced each other in the bloodiest war in American history stood side by side in reconciliation.It is easy to forget that veterans who battled in that war were still alive at the time. Both sides saw its scaries. To a vast majority of Southern soldiers the inspiration to eliminate was to safeguard their homeland from intrusion and destruction.

98%of Southerners did not own servants throughout the war, although plantation owners in the Union states of Kentucky

, Delaware, and Maryland did.Defending the 2 %abundant plantation owners'"right "to have slaves was not the motivation for Southern guys to take bullets at Shiloh, be maimed at Antietam, or leave their wives widowed and children fatherless at Gettysburg. If you read this and are so brainwashed by your last Berkley history class that you do not believe it, pay attention to a Confederate veteran himself discuss it to you at minute 13. The genuine reason the majority of the statues increased during this age was basic.

The statues went up in honor of those veterans on both sides who were coming together to recover old wounds and unite the country.It is extremely easy in 2017 to sit in judgment of these Southern males and females, a number of whom are our own ancestors. In reality, it seems some are delighted to make the most cynical judgments possible about what was in these individuals's hearts when they raised countless dollars over the years to build these monuments to keep in mind the

generals who lead a lot of their enjoyed ones in fight to defend their homeland which was in the process of being wrecked and destroyed by war.Southern Generals such as Robert E. Lee were extensively appreciated in both the North and South. PGT Beauregard invested his post-war life helping former slaves. But this didn't matter at all to those who took down their statues recently in New Orleans.President McKinley's Speech The motion to put up the monuments

developed as a means to unite the country and move on in forgiveness. President McKinley, a Republican politician, provided a speech in Atlanta in 1898 which spurred this sentiment and resulted in the erection

of the Confederate Monument in section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery: Sectional feeling no longer keeps back the love we bear each other. The Union is once more the common atlas of our love, our commitment and sacrifice. The old flag once again waves over us in peace, with brand-new splendors, which YOUR boys and ours this year have actually included to its folds.What cause we have for rejoicing, saddened only by the fact that a lot of our brave guys fell on the field or sickened and died from the challenge, the direct exposure, and others, returning,

bringing wounds and disease. The memory of the dead will be a precious tradition, and the handicapped, the country's care. A country which looks after its disabled soldiers as we have always done will never lack defenders.The nationwide cemeteries for those who fell in fight are proof that the dead as well as the living have our love. What an army of quiet sentinels, and with what loving care their graves are kept. EVERY soldier's tomb made throughout our regrettable Civil War is a homage to American valor, and while, when these graves were made, we differed widely about the future of this Federal government, these differences were long back settled by the arbitrament of arms, and the time has now come in the

development of belief and sensation under the providence of God when, in the spirit of fraternity, we should share with you in the care of the tombs of the Confederate soldiers.The cordial sensation now happily existing in between the North and South prompts this thoughtful act, and if it needed even more validation it is discovered in the gallantry to the Union and the flag so conspicuously displayed in the year just gone by the children and grand sons of these heroic dead.President McKinley was assassinated by an"anarchist "(noise familiar?), but the monument at Arlington would be erected 10 years later. This is it.The inscription reads: NOT FOR POPULARITY OR REWARD NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK NOT TEMPTED BY ASPIRATION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO TASK AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL COMPROMISED ALL DARED ALL-- AND PASSED AWAY What you've read in this short article may be incomprehensible to some today in the heat of the existing political argument. However your typical Southerners in the early 1900's, who didn't have much money to start with, were not sitting around thinking about really pricey and time consuming methods to send out hidden racist signals to future generations.We urge you to please take an appearance at the photos, mainly from the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg, particularly President Harding welcoming Confederate veterans at the White House. President Warren Harding Greets Confederate Veterans This was the climate going on in the United States at the time the majority of the statues were being set up. A coming together, recovery of old injuries, and honoring those veterans who were reuniting after the bloodiest war this nation has actually ever known. Union soldiers as well as a number of Presidents honored the guts and valor of the Confederate veterans and did not begrudge them their statutes which stood as memorials to their fallen heroes and the lives lost in that war.We can discover an important lesson from these men in 1913. If they might forgive each other and move forward after attempting to eliminate each other on all of the Civil War battlegrounds we see around us, we too can come together, surpass our differences and move forward as Americans. At the 50th anniversary of the fight of Gettysburg, Union (left)and Confederate (best)veterans shake hands at a reunion, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

Viet Thanh Nguyen Is The Pro-Refugee Voice America Needs To Hear

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/arts-culture/viet-thanh-nguyen-is-the-pro-refugee-voice-america-needs-to-hear/

Viet Thanh Nguyen Is The Pro-Refugee Voice America Needs To Hear

When it comes to the Vietnam War, Vietnamese refugees in America and the Vietnamese diaspora, Viet Thanh Nguyen has written the book ― a few of them, actually. It’s little wonder the MacArthur Foundation chose to honor him among its 2017 class of Fellows, commonly referred to as “MacArthur Geniuses.”

An academic and a novelist, a critic and a short story virtuoso, Nguyen has written about the experiences of Vietnamese-American people and their roots in Vietnam from seemingly every angle. His debut novel, a darkly comic spy novel set amidst the Vietnam War, garnered him a Pulitzer Prize. He followed up with a collection of haunting short stories, which move away from the conflict itself to the experiences of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants. 

Nguyen, a professor of English and American studies at the University of Southern California, has also published works of acclaimed nonfiction. His most recent nonfiction work, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, critically examined the cultural memory and artistic memorialization of Vietnam throughout the world ― particularly calling attention to the dominance of American narratives of conflict, and the diminishing effect this has on our collective memory of other cultures, populations and their suffering. 

His work has acted as a blazing ray of light illuminating a whole world of human experiences in a publishing industry often dominated completely by white American voices and perspectives ― and his breakout has arrived at a particularly vital time, when a wave of anti-refugee and nativistic rhetoric has gripped American politics.

We reached out to Nguyen ahead of the MacArthur announcement to talk more about his impressive body of work, the current political moment and what he hopes to do with his hefty grant from the MacArthur Foundation: 

How did it feel to be a Genius Grant recipient?

It felt like a shock, a big surprise. I had to sit down for a little bit ― actually, through the entire length of the conversation.

Just a huge honor, but also a moment where I had to think very much about how lucky I was to get this, given how many other important, good, great, fantastic writers are out there who could have gotten this award, and all the others in previous generations who did not get this, but who were doing incredibly important work that made it possible for me to publish my own book.

Are there any writers that you look back on ― that you’ve read or that you’ve built on ― and think you really couldn’t have done it without them?

If you think about the people who’ve won the MacArthur, there’ve been so many writers who I’ve enjoyed reading and who’ve inspired me. People like Junot Diaz and, I think, Edwidge Danticat. 

And then I think of myself, obviously, as an American writer, but also very specifically sometimes as a Vietnamese-American or Asian-American writer. I think back to the fact that Asian-American writers have been writing in this country, in English, since the late 1800s. Those early writers must have been very lonely people, because [there were] only one or two or a handful of them.  But the work of writers like that, like the Eaton sisters from the late 1800s, established a tradition that made it possible for someone like me, more than a hundred years later, to publish a book that people at least would recognize as something they understood. 

What do you have planned next? What are you going to do with the grant?

I haven’t really thought about it that much, but I have a blog that I do, that I edit, called Diacritics.org, and it’s devoted to the politics, art and culture of the Vietnamese and their diaspora. I’ve built it up over several years and unfortunately, in the last couple of years, because of the Pulitzer, it’s just been sort of moribund, because I don’t have the time. I want to use some of the money to hire an editor to take over that site because what it does is to create a space for writers like me to talk about these things that are important to us.

You’ve written about the Vietnamese diaspora and refugees and the Vietnam-American War both in fiction and nonfiction. Why do you keep writing in both? What draws you to each form?

I think my first attraction was always to fiction, ever since I wrote my first book when I was in the second grade. I became a scholar because when I was in college, I was just better at that, and I was realistic about what I could do. So I became an academic and a critic.

Both of these things, nonfiction and fiction, have remained important to me, because I think they can accomplish different kinds of things. In my case I wanted to try to understand the Vietnam War and the refugee experiences and the United States from both of these kinds of perspectives ― nonfiction and fiction, scholarship and art.

But I think the last thing is simply that I’m just someone who’s easily bored, so as soon as I’m done with something, I like to do something different. That’s one of the things that working with nonfiction and fiction enables me, which is this sense of constantly experimenting, and being an amateur, and also setting myself up for potential humiliation because I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s how I learn, by trying to keep on being a student and moving between these different disciplines. 

I recently heard Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie say that she’s found American literature is resistant to overt discussions of race and politics, that there’s an expectation that art should be separate or if it discusses politics it’ll be really subtle. What do you think the role of literature, and fiction particularly, should be in political life?

Well, I think generally she’s right, about speaking about American literature as a whole. There are certainly American writers who are political, they just either tend to be in the minority or they are actual minorities, racial minorities for example, or sexual minorities and so on.

I think that’s important to point out, that the political traditions of American literature have often fallen to African-American writers, for example, or Asian-American writers. I think because for us, we see that it’s hard to separate politics from everything else in your life, including art. Separating politics is not a luxury that many of us have. That’s one of the things that I think the MacArthur has been really good at doing, at least when it comes to writers, is recognizing writers who don’t see a separation between politics and literature, or see that you can use literature to be both something that’s artistic but also political.

I’ve always been a person interested in the possibilities of art and politics intersecting, and been frustrated that so much of American literature, especially by people from majority populations, however you choose to define that, have been very quiet on that issue. It is definitely something I find exciting to do, but also sometimes you feel very lonely because other American writers and American audiences sometimes just don’t want to hear it.

Your book The Refugees arrived at this time when a lot of people were talking about refugees and whether they would be and should be made welcome in America. It’s a very visible issue right now, but it’s also not a new issue. What do you think are the long-term, historical misunderstandings that Americans have had about refugees and immigrants and their place in our country, and do you think that’s changing?

I think on this issue, as on so many others in American society today, the United States of America is contradictory, and these contradictions go to the very origins of American society. The earliest settlers in this country from Europe and so on were classified as either immigrants or refugees, and yet at the same time American history has a long tradition of nativism and exclusion and racism directed against newcomers of various backgrounds. So we’ve, for a long time, been a country that’s embraced the mythology of the immigrant as being crucial to who we are, and yet periodically we have spasms of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee feeling.

Of course, I think that is obviously what’s happening today. We’re in one of those xenophobic moments. But at the same time, it’s not a complete victory for those forces who are opposed to migrants and refugees. There’s a substantial number of Americans saying that refugees and immigrants should be welcome here and do make us better, and so on.

There are misunderstandings that arise in American society around this idea that refugees and immigrants only come to take things from other Americans, when, in fact, I think most economic studies indicate that they actually contribute more. We should look at other countries that are completely restrictive on issues of immigration and accepting refugees, and see that they suffer from a lack of cultural diversity and tolerance.

We’re just in a moment of conflict and it’s unclear what the resolution is going to be, but it’s obviously critical for refugees and immigrants like me to speak up about it. Again, going back to the question of politics and the role that politics plays in the lives of writers ― we have to. Those of us who are refugees and immigrants or who support them, we have to use every tool at our disposal, including our writing, to speak up about this.

I’m the most stressed out about politics I’ve been since I’ve been born, I think.

There’s been this big push to say we’re a nation of immigrants, but then there are Native Americans who would say, “We weren’t immigrants. We were invaded, we were colonized.” How do we grapple with the fact that this country is both made up of immigrants and refugees, but also people who were colonized?

That’s absolutely right. That, I think, is part of that ― when I say America is a contradictory place. These are part of the root contradictions. That’s why it’s crucial for those of us who are immigrants and refugees to not only privilege the language of coming here and settling down, as if these were only positives. If we have any success, it’s made possible by participating in this original history of settler colonization.

The smartest writers I know, people who are recognized by the MacArthur but others as well, they make these connections. They don’t settle simply on one narrative, where the immigrant comes here to make it good, but they also talk about the immigrant in relation to other populations in this country, including Native peoples and African Americans.

Your work really deals with these historical contradictions and injustices of America. There’s a strong urge among many on the left right now to say that this is worse than it’s ever been, and “now more than ever” we have to protect people. Is this an ahistorical framing? What’s your reaction to this vision of the Trump era of the absolute nadir of American life?

I think it may be the nadir within, at least, recent memory. I’m the most stressed out about politics I’ve been since I’ve been born, I think. But I think that, going back to this notion of contradictions and root contradictions, that they’ve shaped American society from the beginning. Then you have a sense that American history has moved cyclically and that there have been moments in American history when things have been worse ― slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction ―  and the fact that those issues are actually not over, as we see with Charlottesville. It means that these historical things we might want to think are over and done with are actually not.

The election of Donald Trump right after the election of Barack Obama, to me, speaks exactly to the fact that we in the United States are still dealing with a history that goes back hundreds of years, to issues that are still unresolved today. It feels pretty bad to those of us on the left, but that’s only because those contemporary issues are revealing that the U.S. has always been driven around race and class and gender and sexuality, and we are now being forced to look directly at that contradiction, whereas at certain more luxurious moments in American history, they’ve been submerged, at least to the eyes of the mainstream.

Speaking of the submersion of history, one thing I loved about The Refugees was this fascination throughout with the idea of haunting, and the past returning in this ghostly form ― by memories, guilt, even literal ghosts. Why do you think you return to this conceptualization of the past as a haunting?

We came here as refugees, and one of the things that happened to my family was that not all of us made it. I have an adopted sister, my oldest sister, and she was left behind to take care of the family property. I was 4 years old, so I actually have no memory of her. When I was growing up, we had one family picture of her ― a black-and-white, wallet-sized picture ― that my dad managed to carry with with him.

I grew up with this sense that we have a missing person in our family. Don’t know why she’s not here; not really something I could talk about with my parents. I did feel haunted by that. It felt like there was an absence in our family. I thought often about who she was, what her life was like, why’s she not here. To me that felt ghostly. I knew that that experience was actually very common, and that we were at least fortunate that she was alive. There were so many families I knew that had literally lost people, not just left them behind but that had died through one experience or another.

To me, ghostly hauntings were very real in the lives of these refugees that I knew. It didn’t take very much empathy to think that this was also true for some of the other people who were refugees and had fled from dire circumstances as well, who’ve all left behind things or people or identities.

Is that a framework you think we should be looking at America through ― this American history where so much has been ignored and submerged for so long?

As the sociologist Avery Gordon has said, ghosts are a figure of injustice ― that some injustice has happened in the past and a ghost returned to demand that justice be done. To achieve a genuine reconciliation with the past, to put those to rest, you really have to address directly what that injustice was. I think so much of American history has been the refusal to do justice to the injustices. We haven’t substantively corrected these problems.

There have been certain attempts to deal with the legacy of slavery, for example. Half the country, apparently, or at least a third of the country, doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal what happened, now, and that’s simply not true. I look at the example of Germany, the Holocaust ― horrific thing ― but the Germans are actually much better at confronting their past in both literal and symbolic ways than Americans have been about their own past. So as long as we’re not able to deal with it as a society, our past will keep coming back.

In American culture, we tend to assume a default white audience, and there can be this pressure for writers of color to explain things to white people, or educate white people, or make their narratives accessible. Is that a pressure you feel? Do you think about your audience when you’re writing?

As I was learning how to be a writer, it was a big issue for me. It’s a big issue for many writers ― who the audience is. It’s an issue for writers of color, minority writers, but all writers agonize, I think, or at least are aware, that their fate is in the hands of others. Who’s going to read this, who’s going to buy this, who’s going to publish this.

But it is a problem that’s exacerbated for writers of color, or anyone who’s not defined as mainstream or part of a majority, because we’re not the ones in power. So we can’t necessarily assume there will be something in common between us and the people who make these decisions to publish.

As a younger writer, I did write some of those stories in The Refugees in a state of anxiety, thinking about this issue. And it was very liberating after finishing The Refugees, when I started to write The Sympathizer, to think, I’m done with that. I wrote the book that I thought, in The Refugees, that was a little more oriented ― not just towards Vietnamese people but to whoever I thought was in charge of publishing. To give all that up, to give up all that anxiety with The Sympathizer because I simply didn’t care anymore, and to write for myself and for an implied Vietnamese audience, thinking then that everyone else who read this book would be in the position of an eavesdropper, was really liberating.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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