Nguyen Viet Thang quotes:

Immigrants, as troubling as they are to some people, are an integral part of what the American Dream is supposed to be. They're understandable to a considerable number of Americans.

In the United States, we want to believe we will never become a country of refugees.

Refugees have been displaced by war or natural disaster or political catastrophes, and they are much more threatening because they are reminders to people that all the comforts that we take for granted can be taken away in just a moment.

Hollywood in many ways serves as the unofficial ministry of propaganda for the United States.

40, 50 years ago, Americans - the majority of Americans did not want to accept these Vietnamese refugees who they saw as completely foreign. Now there are new foreigners - Syrians and other people from the Middle East, people of Muslim backgrounds. And the sense among many Americans is, well, these people are completely different from us, and they're not like the Vietnamese who are much more assimilable. And I think that's very, very doubtful. I think that the majority of these new foreigners, if given the opportunity, will be able to assimilate and deal with American culture.

By college, I had a really grand, preposterous vision of myself as becoming a writer, but I don't think I had the discipline or the patience - or the ability or the humility. It took 20 years to acquire those things.

Every new refugee to a society, whether it's the United States or some other place, is subjected to fear. They are the new outsider population, the new other.

I never called myself a writer because it seemed so pretentious - a writer was what somebody else called you, a title bestowed.

I think my parents' lives are worthy of writing about. I don't think my life is particularly worthy of writing about.

If you're a so-called minority writer, the temptation is to write for the majority... I refuse to do that.

I've never stopped being a refugee.

No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

People might like to think a war is done when a cease fire is signed, but for most people who lived through a war it goes on for decades.

Writers from the majority can assume their audiences know what they're talking about - they don't have to explain things, whereas minority writers are expected to.

You have to wear a different face when you're interacting with the larger culture. And you can be more of yourself at home or in the local market or in the local church speaking your own language. That was my sense growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in San Jose.