“Even poor people in America had refrigerators, not to mention running water, flush toilets, and twenty-four-hour electricity, amenities that even some of the middle class did not have back home. Why, then, did I feel poor?” AmericaPoorPovertyPoor PeopleAmericans Book:The Sympathizer Source: The Sympathizer
“He had complicated our task of being pleasant dinner companions by mentioning famine, something that Americans had never known. The word could only conjure otherworldly landscapes of the skeletal dead, which was not the spectral image we wanted to present, for what one should never do was to require other people to imagine they were just like one of us. Spiritual teleportation unsettled most people, who, if they thought of others at all, preferred to think that others were just like them or could be just like them.” DeathEmpathySympathyFamineAmericans Book:The Sympathizer Source: The Sympathizer
“Our gathering was not as strange a thing as it might have appeared. A xenophobe would see a company of foreigners in camouflage uniforms, carrying out military drills and calisthenics, and might imagine us to be the lead element of some nefarious Asian invasion of the American homeland, a Yellow Peril in the Golden State, a diabolical dream of Ming the Merciless sprung to life. Far from it. The General's men, by preparing themselves to invade our now communist homeland, were in fact turning themselves into new Americans. After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.” FreedomIndependenceGunsXenophobiaAmericansVietnameseAsiansAsian Americans Book:The Sympathizer Source: The Sympathizer
“I believe our clever young man has intuited that while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.” HappinessPursuitUnhappinessAmericans Author:Viet Thanh Nguyen
“The worst thing about living in America is the corruption. At home, we could contain it in the bars and nightclubs and bases. But here, will will not be able to protect our children from the lewdness and the shallowness and the tawdriness Americans love so much. They're too permissive.” CorruptionAmericansShallownessPermissivenessLewdnessTawdriness Book:The Sympathizer Source: The Sympathizer