ALAN PRICE: My
name is Alan Price,
and I'm honored to serve as
director here at the John F.
Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum.
Together with my colleague,
Steven Rothstein,
who is director of the
Kennedy Library Foundation,
and both of our
teams, we welcome you
to the PEN/Hemingway
Award Ceremony.
I would like to
acknowledge all those
who make this event
possible, including
the many sponsors listed in your
program, whose representatives
and leaders are
present with us today,
and who also join in welcoming
all of you, both here
and online, for today's
celebration of writers,
writing, and the power
of a writer's voice.
PEN America and the
Hemingway Foundation partner
with the Hemingway
Family Award to make
this extraordinary
award possible.
We are thrilled to have
members of the Hemingway family
joining us, here in Boston
and watching online.
Our greetings go out
over the livestream
to Ernest Hemingway's son,
Patrick, and his wife, Carol,
who are watching from
their home in Montana.
Patrick and Carol
are the vanguard
of support for the
PEN/Hemingway Award
and for the Ernest Hemingway
Collection that resides here
in the John F. Kennedy Library.
We are honored to be
the world's largest
repository for the
writer's personal papers,
photographs, and mementos.
Patrick's annual readings
from his father's works
at the PEN/Hemingway
Ceremony had for decades
been an important moment
for us here at the library.
And now, stepping into his
uncle's role this year,
is the writer's grandson,
Dr. Séan Hemingway.
He and his wife, Dr.
Colette Hemingway,
co-chair the Hemingway
Council, which raises funds for
and awareness of the collection.
And we are delighted to welcome
Séan and Colette's daughter,
Anouk Hemingway, the
writer's great granddaughter.
One of the reasons I was
drawn to the Kennedy Library
and excited by the opportunity
to lead this great institution
is the fact that we
preserve and provide access
to the Ernest
Hemingway Collection.
With over 90% of his
manuscripts and papers
and over 10,000
photographs and artifacts,
we hold this jewel of a
collection in the public trust.
As Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis expressed it
so well in a letter to
Mary Hemingway, quote,
"I would be so proud
to have Jack's papers
in Ernest Hemingway's library."
Ernest Hemingway's writings
captured my attention
and imagination and inspired me
throughout my formative years.
I particularly
enjoyed those moments
when I felt like I
was eavesdropping
on dangerous situations and
important conversations.
I encountered a romanticism
and heroism that
ennobled me to dream bigger.
There was tragedy that made me
a more compassionate person.
President Kennedy admired
courage, particularly courage
in the public sector, as
an all too rare virtue
worthy of our study,
admiration, and recognition.
How do we best develop
courage in people?
Reading Ernest
Hemingway couldn't hurt.
Ernest Hemingway contributed
greatly to my development
as a human being.
In keeping with the ideals
of the liberal arts,
Hemingway harness
the power of language
to develop in me the powers
of observation, appreciation,
and healthy skepticism.
This informal education on life
also carried a secret lesson--
how to write.
Hemingway shaped my conscious
and intuitive appreciation
of great writing and the
beauty of the English language
that emerges when one strips
away ornamentation and allows
the reader's imagination to
fill in the details of a story.
Now that I am here at
the Kennedy Library
and have the
occasional privilege
of holding in my hands
some of his handwriting,
and typing, and drafting,
and redrafting, and editing,
and corresponding, and
cutting, and the craftsmanship
and hard work that go into the
creation of a sentence that
tries to say something
true, my life
has come full circle
to better understand
my own life as a creation
of Hemingway's genius.
I would like to now
share and contrast
to fragments of writing.
One comes from Ernest Hemingway.
It is the first sentence
of a short story titled
"The Capital of the World."
You may know it.
"Madrid is full of
boys named Paco,
which is the diminutive
of the name Francisco,
and there is a Madrid joke about
a father who came to Madrid
and inserted an advertisement
in the personal columns of El
Liberal which said, 'Paco,
meet me at Hotel Montana noon
Tuesday, all is forgiven, Papa,'
and how a squadron of Guardia
Civil had to be called out
to disperse the 800 men who
answered the advertisement."
I do love that sentence.
Within it is a whole
story, a whole world.
It was published in 1936.
I first read the
story in 1979, which
happened to be the year that
this Kennedy Library was
dedicated.
And some of you, I
have reminded today,
were here for that dedication.
Welcome back.
This past January, in an attempt
to create something positive
during the time of a
government shutdown,
I put pen to paper in
my own humble attempt
to write a true sentence.
The following sentence emerged.
"Having planned and
attained the perfect weight
at the anticipated
Saturday, Hector
ate a carefully measured pound
of cheese smothered nachos
and announced from his back
porch to family and neighbors
that his body was now
precisely 1% nacho
before blowing out the candles
and making his only birthday
wish that would
actually come true."
As I sit here it,
our challenge now,
faced by so many writers
who look to papa's writings
like a beacon, is to do the work
necessary to prove ourselves
more than lesser
copies of the original.
And now it is my pleasure to
introduce Dr. Séan Hemingway.
Dr. Hemingway is the John
A. and Carol O. Moran
Curator in Charge of New York's
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He is a renowned
archaeologist with a specialty
in Greek and Roman
bronzes and has
excavated prehistoric,
classical, and Roman
sites in Greece and Spain.
He received his doctorate
from Bryn Mawr College,
studied as a Fulbright
Scholar at the American School
of Classical Studies in Athens,
and has been a visiting curator
at the American Academy in Rome.
He is the author of numerous
scholarly publications,
including The Horse and
Jockey from Artemision--
A Bronze Equestrian Monument
of the Hellenistic Period
and of the novel The
Tomb of Alexander.
He is also editor of the
Hemingway Library Editions
of Ernest Hemingway's works.
Please join me in welcoming to
our stage Dr. Séan Hemingway.
[APPLAUSE]
SEAN HEMINGWAY: Thank you, Alan.
Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen.
It is a privilege for me to be
here with you this afternoon
and represent the
Hemingway family.
For many years, as Alan
said, my uncle Patrick,
Ernest Hemingway's second
son, would read something
from his father's
work at this event,
and I would like to
continue that tradition.
Patrick and Carol Hemingway
are watching the livestream
of this today in
their home in Montana,
and so I send them
warm greetings
and a big thank you
for all that they
have done to support great
literature and the Hemingway
Collection here at the
John F. Kennedy Library.
The passage I'm going to read
to you as an unpublished account
of the Spanish Civil War from
my grandfather's paper here
at the Kennedy.
It was written by Ernest
Hemingway in the summer of 1936
and will be included in the
forthcoming Hemingway Library
Edition of his novel For
Whom the Bell Tolls, which
will be published in July.
Here it is.
"During the last 15 months,
I saw murder done in Spain
by the fascist invaders.
Murder is different from war.
Men can hate war and
be opposed to it,
yet become accustomed
to it as a way of life
when it is fought to defend
your country against an invader
and for your right to live
and work as a free man.
In such a case no
man who is a man
gives any importance to his life
because so much more important
things are at stake.
A man observing this same
war and writing of it
cares nothing for
his life either
if he believes in the
necessity of what he is doing.
He cares only to
write the truth.
So when the German Messerschmitt
plane dives on your car
with all four machine
guns chattering,
you swerve to the side of the
road and jump out of the car.
You lie flat under a tree if
there is a tree, or in a ditch
if there's a ditch.
Or sometimes you lie
in the open field.
And when the plane comes
back to try to kill you again
and as bullets throw dust
spouts over your back,
you lie with your mouth dry,
but you laugh at the plane
because you're alive.
You have no hatred.
It is war.
He thinks your
car is a staff car
and he has a right to kill you.
He does not kill
you, so you laugh.
The Messerschmitt is too fast
for good ground strafing.
When he pulls up
from the dive, he
drops some little bombs
like hand grenades
tied in bunches out of a chute.
They make a big
flash and a roar,
and there is a
roll of gray smoke.
You're still alive,
and the Messerschmitt
is gone, his motor in a whine
like a circular saw hitting
a log in a lumber mill.
You try to spit because you know
from experiment that you cannot
spit if you are really scared.
You find your mouth is too dry
to spit, and you laugh again,
and that is all.
There is no bitterness
when the fascists
try to kill you because
they have a right to, even
by mistake.
But you have anger and hatred
when you see them do murder,
and you see them do
it almost every day."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
CLARISSE ROSAZ SHARIYF:
Thank you, Séan.
I don't think it's fair for me
to follow his beautiful words.
Good afternoon.
My name is Clarisse
Rosaz Shariyf,
and I'm the director
of public programs
and literary awards
at PEN America.
I bring greetings from
our CEO, Suzanne Nossel,
and PEN America
President, Jennifer Egan,
who wished they could
be here today with us.
I also would like to
start by congratulating
our winner, Tommy Orange, for
his extraordinary achievement.
He's the reason
why we gather today
on this beautiful afternoon.
I'm honored to be here to
celebrate the PEN/Hemingway
Award, and in an
annual award built
on the vision and
commitment of the Hemingway
family, the Hemingway
Foundation, the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and
Museum, the Ucross Foundation,
and the dedicated group
of writers, volunteers,
and leaders who for many
years brought to life
a PEN community in
Boston and New England.
And on that note, I'd like
to say a special thank you
to Helene Atwan,
who is here today,
for many years of leadership
for this special award.
I would like also to thank our
finalists, who are here today
with us.
Thank you, Viet Thanh
Nguyen, for agreeing
to be our keynote speaker.
And thank you to you, our
audience, for joining us.
For those who may not know PEN
America, I'll say a few words.
We stand at the intersection
of literature and human rights
to protect free expression
here and abroad.
Founded in 1922,
PEN America's work
is built on the fundamental
principles and beliefs
articulated in the
PEN International
Charter, which reminds us that
literature knows no frontiers.
Members of PEN pledge
themselves to do their utmost
to dispel race, class,
and national hatreds
and to champion the ideal
of one humanity living
in peace in the world.
And I always go back
to this charter time
and time again to
remember in my daily work
why we do the work that we do.
Our strength is our membership
though, a nationwide community
of more than 7,000 novelists,
journalists, nonfiction
writers, editors, poets,
essayists, playwrights,
publishers, translators,
agents, and of other writing
professionals, as well as
devoted readers and supporters
who join with these
writers to carry out
PEN America's mission.
Please consider to join
us in this beautiful fight
and struggle.
You can join us as a member,
but also as a supporter.
And if you are in New
York in a few weeks,
we will hold our annual World
Voices Festival from May 16
through may 12.
I encourage you to look
at the schedule online,
and if you are up for
a day trip or more,
please join us in New York
for a wonderful celebration
of literature, international
literature also.
Today we are also
celebrating a long tradition
and a longstanding program.
Since 1963, the PEN
America Literary Awards
have honored many of the
most outstanding voices
of literature across
diverse genres including
fiction, poetry, science
writing, essays, biography,
et cetera.
With the help of our
partners, PEN America
confers over 20 distinct
awards, fellowships, and grants
in prizes every year,
awarding nearly $370,000
to writers and translators.
And this is a special way to
close out our 2019 PEN American
Literary Awards cycle, honoring
today our PEN/Hemingway winner.
So today my role is to
introduce and present the awards
to the winner and finalists.
The PEN/Hemingway Award
honors a debut novel
of exceptional merit
by an American author,
and we are glad to have a chance
to recognize some of the most
exciting new additions to
the American literary canon
with this award.
Before we begin our
presentation though,
this would not happen without
the work of our judges.
I want to extend
our deepest thanks
to our award judges, Cristina
Garcia, Dinaw Mengestu,
and Scott Simon, who generously
dedicated their time and energy
to the task of reading
the incredible, diverse,
and exciting debut novels
that were published in 2018.
And this year we had an
incredible selection of work
from different backgrounds,
different places in the US,
but all vital stories.
I'm going to announce the
honorable mentions first.
So Megan Kenny for
her novel, The Driest
Season, a coming-of-age story
set during World War II.
Congratulations, Megan.
Please help me with
a round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
Our second honorable
mention is unfortunately
unable to be with
us this afternoon
because he is
currently incarcerated.
But please join me in
congratulating Nico Walker
for his debut
novel, Cherry, which
has been described as
the first great novel
of the opioid epidemic.
Tim O'Connell, his editor,
is here in his stead.
Congratulations, Niko, and
thank you Tim for being here.
[APPLAUSE]
And now to our finalists.
Our first finalist,
Akwaeke Emezi,
is the author of the
novel Freshwater.
Our judges said, Akwaeke
Emezi's Freshwater
is an inventive and
impressive debut novel,
mixing genres and traditions
to explode and explore
identity and trauma.
A coming-of-age
story, Freshwater
follows Ada from Nigeria to
an American college campus,
drawing on Igbo cosmology
and contemporary culture
to explore the
plural individual.
Akwaeke is unable to
be here this afternoon,
but to read from the novel,
Lily Philpott from PEN America
will come to the stage now.
[APPLAUSE]
LILY PHILPOTT: Thank you.
It's an honor to be here, and
I hope to do Akwaeke justice.
This is from the
beginning of Freshwater.
"So there she was--
a fat baby with
thick, wet black hair.
And there we were,
infants in this world,
blind and hungry, partly
clinging to her flesh
and the rest of us
trailing behind in streams,
through the open gates.
We've always wanted
to think that it
was a careless
thing the gods did,
rather than a
deliberate neglect.
But what we think
barely matters, even
being who we are to them--
their child.
They are unknowable-- anyone
with a sense realizes that--
and they are about as gentle
with their own children
as they are with yours.
Perhaps even less so, because
your children are just weak
bags of flesh with a timed soul.
We, on the other hand--
their children, the
hatchlings, godlings, ogbanje--
can endure so much more horror.
Not that this mattered--
it was clear that she--
the baby-- was going to go mad.
We stayed asleep, but
with our eyes open,
still latched onto her body
and her voice as she grew,
in those first slow years when
nothing and everything happens.
She was moody,
bright, a heaving sun.
Violent.
She screamed a lot.
She was chubby and
beautiful and insane
if anyone had known
enough to see it.
They said she followed her
father's side, the grandmother
who was dead, for her dark
skin and her thick hair.
Saul did not name
her after his mother,
though, as perhaps
another man would have.
People were known to
return in renovated bodies;
it happens all the time.
But when he looked into the
wet blackness of her eyes, he--
surprisingly for a blind
man, a modern man--
did not make that mistake.
Somehow, Saul knew that
whatever looked back out
of his child was not his mother,
but someone, something else.
Everyone pressed into the air
around her, pinching her cheeks
and the fatty tissue
layered underneath,
pulled in by what they thought
was her, when it was really us.
Even asleep, there are
things we cannot help,
like pulling humans to us.
Saachi watched
the visitors flock
around the baby,
concern sprouting
in her like a green shoot.
This was all new.
Chima had been so
quiet, so peaceful, cool
to Saachi's heat.
Disturbed, she looked for
a pottu and found one,
a dark circle of velvet
black, a portable third eye,
and she affixed it to
the baby's forehead,
on that smooth expanse
of brand-new skin.
A sun to repel the
evil eye and thwart
the intentions of
wicked people who
could coo at a child and then
curse it under their breath.
She was always a
practical woman, Saachi.
The odds were good that
the child would live.
At least the gods had
chosen responsible humans,
humans who loved her fiercely,
since those first few years are
when you are most
likely to lose them.
Still, it does not make up for
what happened with the gates.
The human father, Saul,
had missed the birth.
We never paid him much
attention when we were free--
he was not interesting to us;
he held no vessels or universes
in his body.
He was off buying crates of
soft drinks for the guests
while his wife fought us
for different liberations.
Saul was always
that type of man,
invested in status and
image and social capital.
Human things.
But he allowed her
name and it was later,
when we were awake, that
we knew that and understood
at last why he'd been chosen.
Many things start with a name.
After the boy Chima was born,
Saul had asked for a daughter,
so once our body arrived, he
gave it a second name that
meant 'God answered.'
He meant gods answered.
He meant that he called
us and we answered.
He didn't know what he meant.
Humans often pray and forget
what their mouths can do,
forget that every
ear is listening,
that when you direct
your longing to the gods,
they can take that personally."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
CLARISSE ROSAZ SHARIYF:
Our second finalist
is Ling Ma, author of
the novel Severance.
Our judges said,
"Ling Ma's Severance
is a dark and hilarious satire
drawing on the Occupy Wall
Street movement, the
millennial workplace,
and our current obsession
with plagues and zombies.
Candace Chen, the
20-year-old daughter
of recently deceased
Chinese immigrants,
survives a fever
epidemic, outlasting
most of her fellow New
Yorkers with deadpan humor.
But Severance is more than
your average dystopian novel."
Please join me in welcoming
Ling Ma to read from her work.
[APPLAUSE]
LING MA: Well, great.
So I'd like to thank PEN
America and the JFK Library
for administering the
PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut
Novel and just for recognizing
writers who are just
starting out in their careers.
So much of writing or
any creative process,
it's a process of uncertainty.
And I think for new writers to
be given some acknowledgment,
that's really helpful.
I'd just like to read very
briefly from the beginning
of this novel.
I wanted to read
from the beginning
just because this is when my
process was the most uncertain,
and I really had no
idea what I was doing.
So enjoy.
Can you guys hear me?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
LING MA: Oh, OK.
"After the end
came the beginning,
and in the beginning, there
were eight of us-- then nine,
that was me--
a number which
would only decrease.
We found one another after
fleeing New York for the safer
pastures of the countryside.
We'd seen it done in the
movies, though no one could say
which one exactly, which movie.
A lot of things didn't
play out as they'd
been depicted on screen.
We were brand strategists
and property lawyers
and human resource specialists
and personal finance
consultants.
We didn't know how
to do anything,
so we googled everything.
[LAUGHTER]
We googled 'how to survive in
wild,' which yielded images
of poison ivy, venomous
insects, and bear tracks.
That was OK, but
we wanted to know
how to go on the offensive--
against everything.
We googled 'how to build fire'
and watched YouTube videos
of fires being lit with
flint against steel,
with flint against flint,
with magnifying glass and sun.
We couldn't find
the requisite flint,
didn't know how to
identify it even.
And before we tried
using Bob's bifocals,
someone found a Bic
in a jean jacket.
The fire brought us
through the night
and delivered us
into a morning that
took us to a deserted Walmart.
We stockpiled bottled
water and exfoliating body
wash and iPods and beers
and tinted moisturizer
in our stolen jeeps.
In the back of the store,
we found guns and ammo, camo
outfits, scopes, and grips.
We googled 'how to shoot
gun,' and when we tried,
we were spooked by the recoil,
by the salty smell and smoke,
by the liturgical drama of
the whole thing in the woods.
But actually we loved
to shoot them, the guns.
We like to shoot
them wrong even,
with a loose hand, the pitch
forward and the pitch back.
Under our judicious
trigger fingers,
beer bottles died, vogue
magazine died, chia pets died,
oak saplings died,
squirrels died, elk died.
We feasted.
Google would not last long.
Neither would the internet
or any of the infrastructure.
But in the beginning
of the beginning,
let us brag, if
only to ourselves
in the absence of others,
because who was there to envy
us, to be proud of us?
Our googlings darkened,
turned inward.
We googled 'Maslow's pyramid' to
see how many of the need levels
we could already fulfill--
the first two.
We googled '2011 fever
survivors,' hoping to find
others like us, and when all we
found were the same outdated,
inconclusive news articles,
we googled 'seven stages
grief' to track our
emotional progress.
We were at anger,
the slower among us
lagging behind at denial.
We googled 'is there a
god,' clicked 'I'm feeling
lucky,' and were directed
to a suicide hotline site.
[LAUGHTER]
In the 12 rings it
took for us to hang up,
we held our breaths for someone
else, some stranger's voice
confirming that we weren't
the only ones living,
despite Bob's
adamant assertions.
There was no answer.
From this and
other observations,
it was deduced that we
were alone, truly alone."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
CLARISSE ROSAZ
SHARIYF: Thank you.
And I'll just add
quickly that what
makes this ceremony
very special is
that we're able to actually
center the writing.
And as you can tell,
we've heard already
such beautiful and
powerful words.
So now onto the program with
our winner, Tommy Orange.
His brilliant novel There There
was recognized by our judges
in their citation in
the following way,
"Tommy Orange's There There is
a devastatingly beautiful novel,
as acutely attuned to our
current cultural and political
condition as it is to be
indelible legacy of violence
that brought us here.
This novel is not only
breathtaking but also
profoundly moving,
as Orange assembles
a chorus of characters whose
collective narrative disrupts
and expands our
literary landscape.
The breadth and
scope of this novel
are matched only by the fierce
and relentless intelligence
that Orange brings to
his characters, who
despite tragedy,
heartbreak, and loss, reside
in a remarkable world
of hard earned grace."
Please join me in
congratulating and welcoming
Tommy Orange to the stage.
[APPLAUSE]
TOMMY ORANGE: Thank you
for that introduction,
and thank you all
for coming today.
I apologize for my lack
of professionalism.
I'm going to read from my phone.
[LAUGHTER]
Sincerely, I'm sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
I first read Hemingway
10 years ago.
At the time I was living
in southern Oregon,
commuting 20 miles on my bike
every day between Phoenix
and Ashland, where I worked
for a New Age company.
The guy hired me
because I'm native,
and he was having
dreams telling him
to bring back the ghost dance.
Not needless to say,
the guy was white,
a retired record
label executive who
hired me to ship things
like meditation CD's
and spiritual stones and
scented, colored aura sprays.
I was reading Hemingway
because of the way
I'd heard writers
who wrote about how
to write revere his writing.
I read all of his short
stories that summer.
I was then writing objectively
unreadable short, short stories
the length of
then-limited tweets.
[LAUGHTER]
I had quit my job
to write and read
as much as possible in
isolation in southern Oregon,
staying with a woman who had
advertised a room for cheap
in an artist's commune.
When I got to her door,
I found a six foot tall
wooden engraving of the
named Jesus on fire,
and exactly zero other
artists living there.
[LAUGHTER]
I kept to myself that summer,
read Hemingway, shipped New Age
novels with talking dogs in
them all over the country.
By then, I knew all I
wanted to do was write,
and I was just
starting to understand
the work you need
to put in to just
have a chance at writing well.
Hemingway was part of that.
I never even dreamed of
anything close to this.
I'd like to thank the Hemingway
Foundation for acknowledging me
in this way, for all the work
that it takes to get someone
like me here, for
creating this award,
and acknowledging a new writer.
Thank you to Viet
for his presence
here today, for his
work, and for the person
he is in the publishing
world, the way
he carries himself
and asks us to be
better writers and humans.
I'd like to thank everyone
at PEN America for the work
they're doing in our world.
And to everyone at Knopf,
my publicist, Gabrielle,
and my wonderful editor, Jordan,
and my agent, Nicole Aragi.
Thank you to my wife and
son for putting up with me,
both while writing the
book and now for putting up
with me being gone so much.
I couldn't have done it
without their love and belief,
nor without the love
and belief and reception
I've gotten for the book
since it's been out.
So I'm going to read--
there were originally--
the version of the book
that I sent to my agent had
two references to Hemingway.
One of them was cut with the
death of a character that never
made it, so I'm going to
read from the part that
made it, obviously.
[LAUGHTER]
Are both of these functional?
Sorry.
"Bill Davis.
Bill moves through the bleachers
with the slow thoroughness
of one who's had a job too long.
He slogs along, plods,
but not without pride.
He immerses himself in his job.
He likes to have something
to do to feel useful,
even if that work, that job,
is currently in maintenance.
He's picking up garbage missed
by the initial post-game crew.
It's a job for the old guy
they can't fire because he's
been there so long.
He knows.
But he also knows he means
more than that to them,
because don't they count on
him to cover their shifts?
Wasn't he available any day
of the week for any shift?
Didn't he know the ins
and outs of that Coliseum
better than anyone?
Hadn't he'd done almost every
single available job over all
the years he'd worked there?
From security, where
he started, all the way
to peanut vendor, a job he'd
only done once and hated.
He tells himself he means more.
He tells himself he can
tell himself and believe it,
but it's not true.
There's no room here
for old people like Bill
anymore, anywhere.
Bill makes an arc like the
bill of a hat with his hand
and puts it on his
forehead to block the sun.
He wears light
blue latex gloves,
holds his trash
grabber in one hand,
and a clearish gray
garbage bag and the other.
He stops what he's doing.
He thinks he sees something
come over the top rim
of the stadium, a small
thing, an unnatural movement,
definitely not a seagull.
Bill shakes his head,
spits on the ground
then steps on the
spit, pivots, then
squints to try to see
what it is up there.
His phone vibrates
in his pocket.
He pulls it out and sees that
it's his girlfriend, Karen.
No doubt it's about
her man boy son, Edwin.
Lately, she's been calling
all the time about him, mostly
about him needing
rides to and from work.
Bill can't stand the
way she babies him,
can't stand the
30-odd-year-old baby he is,
can't stand what the youth are
allowed to become these days,
coddled babies all of them,
with no trace of skin,
no toughness left.
There's something
wrong about all of it,
something about the ever-present
phone glow on their faces
or the too fast way
they tap their phones,
their gender fluid
fashion choices,
their hyper-PC gentle way of
being, while lacking all social
graces in old world
manners and politeness.
Edwin's this way too,
tech savvy, sure,
but when it comes to the
real, cold, hard, gritty world
outside beyond the screen,
without the screen,
he's a baby.
Yes, things look bad these days.
Everyone talks like
it's getting better,
and that just makes it all the
worse that it's still so bad.
It's the same with his own life.
Karen tells him
to stay positive,
but you have to
achieve positivity
in order to maintain it.
He loves her though, all
the way, and he tries,
he really tries, to
see it as being OK.
It just seems like young people
have taken over the place.
Even the old people in charge,
they're acting like kids.
There's no more scope,
no vision, no depth.
We want it now,
and we want it new.
This world is a mean
curve ball thrown
by an overly-excited
steroid-fueled kid pitcher who
no more cares about the
integrity of the game
than he does about the Costa
Ricans who painstakingly stitch
the balls together by hand.
The field is setup for baseball.
The grass is so short
it doesn't move.
It is the oak cork stillness
of the center of a baseball.
The grass is chalked
to straight lines
that separate foul and fair
that reach out to the stands
and back toward the infield,
where the players play
the game, where they pitch
and swing and steal and tag,
where they signal and hit
and strike and ball, score
runs, where they sweat and
wait in the shade of the dugout
just chewing and spitting
until all the innings run out.
Bill's phone rings again.
This time he answers.
"Karen, what is it?
I'm working."
"I'm so sorry to bother
you at work, honey,
but Edwin needs to
be picked up later.
He just can't, you
know, after what
happened to him on the bus."
"You know how I feel about--"
"Bill, please just
do it this time.
I'll have a talk with him later.
I'll let him know he can't count
on you anymore," Karen says.
Count on you anymore.
Bill hates the way
she can turn it on him
with just a few choice words.
"Don't put it like that.
Put it on him.
He needs to be able to
make it on his own now.
He's--"
"At least he's got a job now.
He's working every day.
That's a lot for him.
Please.
I don't want to discourage him.
The goal is to get him out
there on his own, remember?
And then we can talk about you
being able to move in finally,"
Karen says, her voice sweet now.
"OK."
"Really?
Thanks, hon.
If you could pick
up a box of Franzia
on the way home, the pink one.
Were out."
"You owe me tonight,"
Bill says, and hangs
up before she can respond.
Bill looks around the stadium
appreciating the stillness.
He needs this kind of
stillness, clean of movement.
He thinks about the
incident on the bus, Edwin.
It could still make Bill
laugh just to think of it.
He smiles a smile
he can't contain.
On his first day of
work, Edwin got into it
with a vet on the bus.
Bill doesn't know how it
started, but whatever happened,
the bus driver ended up kicking
both of them off the bus.
Then the guy chased Edwin all
the way down International
in his wheelchair.
[LAUGHTER]
Luckily, he chased him
the right direction,
and Edwin made it to
work on time despite--
[LAUGHTER]
--getting kicked off the bus,
probably because he got chased.
Bill laughs out loud
thinking about Edwin
running for his life
down International,
making it in on time
to work a sweaty mess.
Well, that part
wasn't funny actually.
That part made it sad.
Bill walks by a metal
surface on the east wall.
He sees himself reflected there.
He studies is unstable,
distorted reflection
in the dented metal paneling,
straightens his shoulders,
picks up his chin.
The guy in the black
windbreaker there,
whose hair is fully
gray and receding
and whose stomach
comes out a little
more each year, whose feet
and knees hurt when he stands
or walks too long, he's OK.
He's making it.
He could easily
not be making it.
He's almost always
not been making it.
This Coliseum, the team,
the Oakland Athletics,
had once been the most important
thing in the world for Bill
during that magical time for
Oakland, 1972 to 1974, when
the A's won three
World Series in a row.
You don't see that
happen anymore.
It's too much of a business now.
They would never allow that.
Those were strange years
for Bill, bad, awful years.
He'd gotten back from Vietnam
after going AWOL in '71,
dishonorably discharged.
He hated the country, and
the country hated him.
There were so many drugs
coursing through him then
it was hard to believe he
could still remember any of it.
Most of all, he
remembers the games.
The games were all he had then.
He had his teams, and they were
winning, three years in a row
right when he
needed it after what
felt to Bill like a
lifetime of losing.
Those were the years of
Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter,
Reggie Jackson, the
bastard Charlie Finley.
And then when the Raiders
won in '76 two championships
that San Francisco
teams hadn't won yet,
it was a really good
time to be from Oakland,
to feel that you were from
that thing, that winning.
He got hired at the
Coliseum in 1989
after doing five years at
San Quentin for stabbing
a guy outside a biker
bar on Fruitvale
down by the railroad tracks.
It wasn't even Bill's knife.
The stabbing was coincidental.
It was self-defense.
He didn't know how the
knife ended up in his hand.
Sometimes you just did things.
You acted or reacted
the way you needed to.
The problem had been
that Bill couldn't
get his own story straight.
The other guy had
been less drunk,
had a more consistent story.
So Bill took the fall.
It was his knife
somehow in the end.
He was the one with a history
of violence, the crazy AWOL
Vietnam vet.
But jail had been good to Bill.
He read almost the
whole time he was in.
He read all the
Hunter S. Thompson
he could get his hands on.
He read Hunter's lawyer,
Oscar Zeta Acosta.
He loved The Autobiography
of a Brown Buffalo
and The Revolt of
the Cockroach People.
He read Fitzgerald and
Hemingway, Carver and Faulkner,
all the drunks.
He read Ken Kesey.
He loved One Flew Over
the Cuckoo's Nest.
He was pissed when
they made the movie
and the native guy, who was
the narrator of the whole book,
just played the crazy,
silent, stoic Indian
who threw the sink through
the window at the end.
He read Richard
Brautigan, Jack London.
He read history
books, biographies,
books about the prison
system, books about baseball,
football, California
native history.
He read Stephen King
and Elmore Leonard.
He read, and he
kept his head down,
let the years dissolve the
way they could when you were
somewhere else inside them, in a
book, on the block, in a dream.
Another good year that came
out of bad times for Bill
was 1989, when the A's swept
the San Francisco Giants.
When in the middle
of the World Series,
just before the start of game
three, the earth slipped,
dropped, quaked.
The Loma Prieta earthquake
killed 63 people,
or 63 people died because of it.
The Cypress Freeway
collapsed, and someone
drove right off the Bay
Bridge where a section
had collapsed in the middle.
That was the day
baseball saved lives
in Oakland and the
greater Bay Area.
If more people hadn't
been at home sitting
around the TV watching
the game, they
would have been on freeways.
They would have been out in the
world where it was collapsing,
just falling apart."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
SHARON DYNAK: Good afternoon.
I'm Sharon Dynak, President
of Ucross Foundation.
Raymond Plank, the founder of
Ucross, was a force of nature.
He grew up in Minnesota,
the son of a farmer;
graduated from Yale; became
a World War II bomber
pilot; founded an international
oil and gas company, Apache
Corporation; started other
nonprofits, such as the Fund
for Teachers; and in
1981, he had the vision
to create an artistic
oasis in Ucross, Wyoming,
population, 25.
I first met Raymond
over 20 years ago
at this same literary
event that we are at today.
He passed away last
November at the age of 96
at his beloved home in
Ucross surrounded by family,
and outside by wild turkeys
that he had kept well-fed, owls,
bald eagles, and
towering trees that he
himself had planted
40 years earlier.
Ucross is a one of
a kind residency
that gives some of the world's
most gifted individuals
the opportunity to work in
beautiful studios on a 20,000
acre ranch on the majestic high
plains of the American West.
We offer the rare gift of
uninterrupted time to create.
The vastness of the
landscape translates
into a vastness of imagination.
More than 2,000
writers, visual artists,
and composers have spent time
at Ucross, and all of them
would tell you that
Raymond created
something very special there.
Ucross has partnered with
the PEN/Hemingway Awards
since 1996, an idea that came
from Annie Proulx, who was
a Ucross trustee at the time.
She had written her first
two novels at Ucross.
She'd served as a
judge and suggested
that we offer more support
to emerging writers in whose
work she saw so much potential.
Since then, Ucross has given
residencies to 65 PEN/Hemingway
honorees, including Colson
Whitehead, Elizabeth Gilbert,
Ha Jin, Yaa Gyasi, Kevin
Powers, and Sigrid Nunez,
who won the National Book
Award just last year.
When Raymond was a
first grader, a teacher
suggested he write
a diary in order
to improve his penmanship.
He kept the diary
his entire life.
He became a book lover
and read constantly,
logging the names of
every book he read.
In his last years,
he wrote a memoir
that he chose to call
A Small Difference,
noting that all of us
have the chance to leave
the world a better place.
Raymond had a number
of things in common
with Ernest Hemingway.
He hunted all over the world.
He loved to fish,
including in Michigan.
They were both
legendary pipe smokers.
They both loved Wyoming.
One of Raymond's favorite
toasts was, "To courage."
His legacy to all of us
at Ucross and for writers
everywhere is to continue to
approach life courageously
with curiosity, enthusiasm,
and intensity, to make time
for the work.
He set the Ucross
magic in motion,
and supporting writers,
like these amazing writers
that we're honoring today, is
what keeps the magic alive.
So congratulations to all
of this year's PEN/Hemingway
honorees.
We hope to see you in
Wyoming one day soon.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
HILLARY JUSTICE: Good afternoon.
My name is Dr. Hillary Justice.
I have the honor and
privilege of serving
as the Ernest Hemingway
Collection's Hemingway scholar
in residence, a position
that literally would not
exist if it weren't for
Patrick and Carol Hemingway.
So as everyone else has,
Patrick and Carol, we miss you,
and we wish you were
here with us today.
In 1976, Ernest
Hemingway's widow, Mary,
established the
PEN/Hemingway Award
to raise awareness
of and support
for beginning writers working
in the genre of fiction.
In 1980, when the
Hemingway Collection
was dedicated by Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis and Patrick
Hemingway, it was a great
day for the John F. Kennedy
Library.
10 years later, at the
10th birthday celebration,
if you will, of the
Hemingway Collection,
the International Hemingway
Foundation and Society
held its conference here, and
they brought in Mrs. Kennedy--
then Mrs. Onassis, forgive me--
as a guest of honor.
And a very dear friend
of mine, and my mentor
in Hemingway studies,
Dr. Susan Beegel,
had the honor of
sitting with her
at dinner when she got an idea.
So if you'll allow me to share
with you a once upon a time--
once upon a time at a gala in
the pavilion here at the JFK
Library, the president's widow,
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy
Onassis, was there in a yellow
raw silk suit and her signature
pearls enjoying birthday cake.
And she looked around
and she said, wouldn't it
be great if we had the
PEN/Hemingway Award here
at the JFK Library every year.
And Susan Beagle informs me that
she said it in that first lady
way of, make it so.
[LAUGHTER]
And so it was done.
The PEN/Hemingway Award
has been given here
at the John F. Kennedy
Library and Museum every year
ever since.
And until ill health
prevented her from attending,
Mrs. Kennedy Onassis would
come and warmly congratulate
the winners.
And I'm sure that in
spirit she's congratulating
our honorees today as well.
It's my honor today to
introduce our keynote speaker.
Viet Thanh Nguyen is a
university professor,
Aerol Arnold Chair of
English and Professor
of English American
Studies and Ethnicity
and Comparative Literature
at the University
of Southern California.
And he somehow also
has time to write.
He is the author of
Race and Resistance--
Literature and Politics in
Asian America and the novel
The Sympathizer
from Grove Atlantic.
The Sympathizer won the 2016
Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Hemingway sends his
congratulations, by the way.
His work Old Man and the
Sea was honored similarly.
The Sympathizer also won the
Dayton Literary Peace Prize,
an Edgar Award for Best First
Novel from the Mystery Writers
of America, the First
Novel Prize from the Center
for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal
for Excellence in Fiction from
the American
Library Association,
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],,
a California Book Award
and the Asian/Pacific
American Award for Literature
and Fiction from the
Asian/Pacific American
Librarians Association.
It was also a finalist for the
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham
Prize for Debut Fiction.
The novel made it to over
30 book of the year lists,
including The Guardian, The
New York Times, The Wall Street
Journal, amazon.com, slate.com,
and The Washington Post.
He's also the author
of Nothing Ever Dies--
Vietnam and the
Memory of War, which
is the critical bookend to
a creative project whose
fictional bookend
is The Sympathizer.
Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist
for the National Book
Award in Nonfiction and the
National Book Critics Circle
Award in General
Nonfiction, examines
how the so-called Vietnam
War has been remembered
by many countries and
people, from the US
to Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, and South Korea.
Kirkus Reviews calls the
book, "A powerful reflection
on how we choose to
remember and forget."
It has won the John G. Cawelti
Award for Best Textbook/Primer
from the Popular Cultural
Association/American Cultural
Association and the René
Wellek Prize for the Best Book
in Comparative Literature
from the American Comparative
Literature Association.
More recent books
are The Refugees,
a short story collection
from Grove Press,
and The Displaced--
Refugee Writers on Refugee
Lives, which he edited.
He is an opinion writer
for The New York Times,
and has written for Time,
The Guardian, The Atlantic,
and other venues.
Along with Janet Hoskins,
he co-edited Transpacific
Studies--
Framing an Emerging Field.
His articles have appeared in
numerous journals and books,
including PMLA, American
Literary History,
Western American
Literature, Positions--
East Asia Cultures Critique,
The New Centennial Review,
Postmodern Culture, and
The Japanese Journal
of American Studies.
He has been a fellow of the
American Council of Learned
Societies, the
Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Studies at Harvard,
and the Fine Arts Work Center.
He has also received
residencies, fellowships,
and grants from the Luce
Foundation, the Mellon
Foundation, the Asian Cultural
Council, the James Irvine
Foundation, and I
could basically keep
reading for the next. hour.
[LAUGHTER]
But instead, please join me in
welcoming our keynote speaker,
Dr. Viet Thanh Nguyen.
[APPLAUSE]
VIET THANH NGUYEN: Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Justice, for that
incredibly long introduction.
I almost fell asleep myself.
Thank you to the JFK Library
and to the Ernest Hemingway
Collection for hosting
the PEN/Hemingway Awards.
Good afternoon, Boston.
It is so good to be back here on
the occasion of congratulating
Tommy Orange on his
fabulous novel, There There.
For those of you who haven't
read it, shame on you.
It's terrific.
You won't regret it.
Last summer, I had the pleasure
of meeting Tommy in Paris.
That's actually the
entire anecdote.
I just wanted to say we
saw each other in Paris.
I think we should all
have the opportunity
at one point in
our lives to say,
we saw each other in Paris.
It's like something that
Ernest Hemingway would say--
saw Spot, Gertrude, Alice,
on the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]..
I'm taking adult French
classes right now,
just want to show that off.
[LAUGHTER]
Hemingway has certainly been
on my mind for a long time.
I remember when I was 18.
I was a college freshman,
wanted to be a writer.
Told my college
freshman roommate,
I'm going to be a writer.
And thinking of
Hemingway, I told him,
I'm going to publish my
first novel when I'm 25.
Got to 25, be another
19 years before I
published my first novel, so
clearly I am no Hemingway.
What I am is a refugee.
And it may seem a
little odd for me
to say that in
the present tense,
because if you look at
me, it's clearly the case
that I made the transition
from refugee to bourgeoisie
a long time ago.
[LAUGHTER]
From camps to clubs.
Very exclusive clubs, such as
the JFK Presidential Library.
Such an honor to be here.
And when I realized this event
would be hosted at the JFK
Presidential Library, I
remembered that I had actually
quoted John F. Kennedy earlier
this semester in my class
on the American War in Vietnam,
so on the airplane flight
over, I looked up my PowerPoint
slide to that quotation.
John F. Kennedy was a
senator at the time in 1957,
and of course, Indochina,
as it was called--
Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam--
were on the American radar.
And speaking of Indochina,
John F. Kennedy said,
"This is our offspring."
So as one of JFK's offspring,
I would like to say, dad,
I'm home.
[LAUGHTER]
Coming to United
States was not exactly
like coming home for me.
I was a refugee, as I mentioned.
I was born in 1971, came
here in 1975 at four
years of age along with 130,000
other Vietnamese refugees.
And we ended up in one of
four refugee camps that
were set up to take care of us.
Ours was Fort Indiantown
Gap in Pennsylvania.
And in order to leave
one of these camps,
a refugee had to have
a sponsor to guarantee
that they wouldn't be a
drain on the American state.
The problem for
my family of four
was that there was not a sponsor
who would take all four of us.
So one sponsor took my parents.
One sponsor took my
10-year-old brother.
One sponsor took
four-year-old me.
And that's where
my memories began,
being taken away from my
parents howling and screaming.
And I'm a father now of a
five and a half year-old son,
and when he turned four,
it was the occasion for me
to look back on
this time in my life
that I had tried to suppress,
it had been so painful.
And I realized that I
had not forgotten it,
that it had been
an invisible brand
stamped between my shoulder
blades for decades.
But also as an
adult, as a parent,
I could look at
my parents and see
what they must have felt
having their sons taken away
from them.
And we were taken away from
them for a good reason, which
was to help my parents find the
time to get back on their feet.
That's not the case in
terms of what's happening
at our southern border.
When I think about what happened
to myself and my brother,
I empathize deeply
with what's happening
with families that are having
their children separated
from them.
I know that it is wrong
and it is inhumane
what we are doing at
our southern border
with the families
that are coming here.
[APPLAUSE]
Those families, the
parents and their children,
will be scarred for life if my
experience is any indication.
And I was comparatively lucky.
I was only taken away from
my family for three months.
My brother, who is
seven years older,
didn't come home for two years.
And that's why he
likes to say to me,
mom and dad love you more.
[LAUGHTER]
Don't feel too bad for him.
Seven years after coming to
this country with no English,
he went to Harvard.
And then, just to
rub it in because I
went to my last
choice college, he
went to Stanford
Medical School, which
is what you're supposed
to do when you're Asian.
[LAUGHTER]
So clearly being a
refugee is not all bad,
and that was the
case for me as well.
I did get some good
things out of being
a refugee, such as the
requisite emotional damage
necessary to become a writer.
[LAUGHTER]
And as a father, I've done my
best to pass on that legacy
to my son.
[LAUGHTER]
Five and a half
years old, like I
said, like most five and a
half year-olds, he loves LEGOs.
Always asking for LEGOs.
And if you're a parent, you
know you cannot always say yes
to what your children want.
So sometimes I have to say,
no, you cannot get these LEGOs.
And I ask him, you
know why you're not
going to get these LEGOs?
And he thinks about
it for a while,
and he says, because
you're a refugee.
[LAUGHTER]
I say, that's right.
[LAUGHTER]
I want him to remember that
both of his parents are refugees
and that all four of his
grandparents are refugees.
And it seems crucial to
remind a young boy of this
at this time in
our history, when
we were undergoing the worst
refugee crisis in world history
since World War II.
The United Nations says
approximately 68 million people
are displaced, 22 million
of whom are officially
classified as refugees.
And I am certain that
many of the people who
are coming to our
southern border
are refugees, whether the United
Nations calls them that or not,
whether we call
them that or not.
Of course, the President
of the United States
calls these refugees animals.
And as a refugee, I object
to this characterization.
And I object because I
myself have experienced
some of the sting
of dehumanization,
beginning with when my
family moved from Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania to San
Jose, California in 1978,
and my parents opened perhaps
the second Vietnamese grocery
store in San Jose,
which is what you're
supposed to do when you're
a refugee or an immigrant
to this country.
You're supposed to pursue
the American dream.
So it was kind of a shock when
I walk down the street, when
I was around 10 or
11 years old, and saw
a sign in another window that
said, another American driven
out of business
by the Vietnamese.
And I thought, does
this person know
that my parents work 12
to 14 hour days every day
in this shop?
Does this person know
that my parents were shot
in the store on Christmas Eve?
Does this person know anything
about who my parents are
and what they've had to go
through to get to this country
and to open this door?
And of course, that
person did not know that,
did not care to know
anything about my parents,
saw them as less than human.
The saddest thing about this was
that I internalized that sign.
I remember going to high school,
to the most elite high school
in San Jose, California, a
primarily white high school,
but there were a handful of
us who were of Asian descent.
And we knew we were
different, we just
had a hard time
putting into words.
So every day at
lunch, we would gather
in a corner of the campus,
and we would call ourselves
the Asian Invasion.
[LAUGHTER]
Funny thing is, I went back
to my campus a couple of years
ago to give a speech, and
we really have taken over.
[LAUGHTER]
Where do we get this idea
of the Asian invasion from?
At least partly from movies,
from American popular culture
that we had absorbed.
For me, it was all of
the American movies
about the Vietnam
War that Hollywood
was putting forth in
the '70s and the '80s,
but very particularly
Apocalypse Now.
I remember watching that when
I was 10 or 11 years old, much
too young of an age,
way too precocious.
And I was someone who
loved American war movies.
I identified with American
soldiers, John Wayne and so on.
And so when I was
watching this movie,
I was identifying
with American soldiers
up until the point they
killed Vietnamese civilians.
And then I was split in two.
Was I the American
doing the killing,
or was I the Vietnamese
being killed?
Well, that experience convinced
me of the power of stories.
I was already in love with
stories as a young refugee
because I found so much comfort
and solace from the refugee
life in stories.
But watching Apocalypse Now and
movies like it also crushed me
and convinced me of
the power of stories
to destroy us as
well as save us.
And I think that was
the moment that I
began hoping to be a
writer because I thought,
one day, one day I will
take revenge on Hollywood.
[LAUGHTER]
Which is exactly what
happened in The Sympathizer.
But I was yearning
for representation,
although that was not the
word I would have used.
And I think I shared
something in common
with so many of us
who have suffered
from a lack of representation,
from misrepresentation,
from under representation.
We know that not having enough
representation is dangerous.
Not having enough representation
can actually destroy lives.
Not having enough representation
can psychically destroy lives.
So there's a great urgency
to the task of representation
that so many of us as writers
and storytellers and artists
feel.
And so it's difficult
for me to say
that as much as
representations matter,
as much as we need more stories
and voices and representatives,
perhaps it's
actually not enough.
I'll give you the example of
the publishing industry, which
seems very relevant today.
The publishing
industry is 87% white.
And in 1955, James Baldwin, in
his book Notes of a Native Son,
could write, "The world
is white no longer,
and it will never
be white again."
But a publishing industry
that lionizes James Baldwin
and yet is still 87% white,
is still quite white.
So we have a lot of work
to do, because insomuch
as we have representation and
representatives in figures
like James Baldwin, and Toni
Morrison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates,
and so on and so forth,
so many great writers,
there is still nevertheless
the persistence
of racial and economic
inequality in our civilization.
And for me, what that
means is not simply
that there's inequality but
that there is the persistence
of colonization.
Now, some of you in the room
are thinking, what colonization?
Well, the United
States is an example
of successful colonization.
Usually when we think
of colonization,
we think of France in
Indochina, for example,
which colonized Indochina
for 80 or so years
and then was defeated
and kicked out.
Successful
colonization, however,
is successful at renaming
itself so that it is not
called colonization.
In the United States,
successful colonization
is called the American dream.
Successful colonization is
never called colonization
for the same reason that
successful treason is never
called treason,
for the same reason
that successful war crimes
are never called war crimes.
If we look back upon our
history at the founding moments
of our country, which is
what Tommy Orange's novel,
There There, does in
its first 20 pages.
And if you read the
first 20 pages--
and this my
interpretation, Tommy.
You may disagree with me.
I'm used to that.
I'm a professor and a scholar.
Writers are always
saying, I don't
know what you're talking about.
But when I read the first
20 pages of Tommy Orange's
There There, I
can't help but think
that would be very hard to deny
that this country was built
on the foundation of genocide,
and not just genocide,
but slavery, occupation,
war, and racism as well.
The United States is a
successful colonizing country,
and if we need further evidence
of that it is that whenever
the United States has had
the choice between choosing
the sides of the colonized
or the colonizer,
it has almost always chosen the
side of the colonizer, which
is what happened in the
1940s and 1950s in Indochina.
The United States had
the opportunity to side
with Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia.
Instead, it chose
willingly to take over
the war from the French.
Now I said this in my
novel, The Sympathizer,
and something
interesting happened
after that novel came out.
In the first major
review of the novel,
in the second or third
line, the reviewer said,
"Viet is the voice
for the voiceless."
And I was like, no, have
you ever actually met
any Vietnamese people?
We're really, really loud.
The problem is not that
we don't have voices.
The problem is that
we're not heard.
Now this phrase, the
voice for the voiceless,
I'm sure you've heard it before.
Maybe you've used it yourself.
It's a dangerous
sentiment, even though it
sounds like a compliment.
And the reason why it's
a dangerous sentiment,
because what it implies is
that people would much rather
hear one voice, rather than
a chorus, or a cacophony,
or a community.
The desire to hear the
voice for the voiceless
is itself a symptom
of colonization.
If we would rather hear
a voice of the voiceless
than abolish the conditions
of voicelessness, then
we've resigned ourselves
to, or agree with,
colonization's persistence.
So representation matters.
We need writers,
but it's not enough.
What we need is decolonization.
Colonization--
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I must be in Boston.
[LAUGHTER]
Colonization has resulted in
a massive transfer of wealth
to the colonized and
their descendants.
So what would we need to do?
Greater taxation,
redistribution,
universal health care,
child care, education,
abolishing the prison-industrial
complex, demilitarization,
reparations, and
yes, representation.
So on this list, you can
clearly see that representation
is the easiest
task, which is why
we tend to focus
on it, especially
in the world of literature.
Now, novels themselves
cannot decolonize.
But novels can
depict colonization,
can depict the processes and
the dreams of decolonization.
I can think of
many books that do.
I'll give you a few
here to show you
that it's not actually
impossible to have
a literature of decolonization.
Books that I have found striking
in recent years have included--
Han Kang's Human Acts, which
is about the Korean military
dictatorship's suppression
of a democratic uprising
in Guangzhou in 1980 in Korea;
António Lobo Antunes' The Land
at the End of the World, which
was a touchstone for me when I
was writing The Sympathizer,
which is about the Portuguese
Colonial War in Angola from
the perspective of a reluctant
soldier; Laila Lalami's
The Moor's Account,
which is the account of
the first black slave taken
by Spanish conquistadors to
the Americas; and, of course,
Tommy Orange's
There There as well.
The problem that in
the United States
our dominant literature, in
contemporary American fiction
at the very least,
tends to be apolitical.
Decolonization is
beyond the horizon
of most of our contemporary
American writers.
That doesn't mean it should
be beyond our imagination.
Now, even for those of
us who are committed
to decolonization, who
imagine ourselves working
not just in the
solitude of our rooms
but in the solidarity of
social and political movements
that transform the landscape,
those of us who are doing
this work or imagine
ourselves doing this work
should not call ourselves
the voices for the voiceless.
We should imagine ourselves
as one voice among many,
among the many social and
political movements that
are committed to abolishing
the conditions of voicelessness
that make it so easy to
privilege us as writers.
So looking back to my teenage
self, proto-Asian Invasion,
I realize now that I was living
in conditions of voicelessness.
I was living in conditions
of narrative scarcity.
And what that means is that when
you live in narrative scarcity,
almost none of the
stories are about you.
So any story that
comes out about you
takes on tremendous weight.
It's an unfair burden
of representation
put on these few voices or
these few representatives.
So when Crazy Rich
Asians came out,
all the Asians freaked
out, like, oh my god!
There's a movie about us!
Too bad it's a bad
movie, but it's OK.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm just kidding.
I actually haven't
seen Crazy Rich Asians.
I'm a bad Asian.
I did listen to the book though.
The opposite of
narrative scarcity
is narrative plenitude.
That's when almost all of
the stories are about you.
That's how you know
you have privilege,
when you can take it for granted
that almost all of the stories
are about you.
Abolishing the conditions
of voicelessness
is about achieving
narrative plenitude
for everyone in our society,
not just for the majority
or the wealthy or
the privileged.
So looking back on my
teenage self, the self
so desperately in need of
more voices, more stories,
it's clear that one of the
causes for that condition
was structural racism,
structural inequality.
But there was one
other major factor.
I'm going to leave you with
that as a parting public service
announcement, one last
factor for why there
are so few stories by Vietnamese
and Asian-Americans out there.
Do you know what it is?
Asian parents.
[LAUGHTER]
Asian parents.
Asian parents out
there, or you who
will one day be Asian parents
or parents of Asian children,
do not crush the
hopes and dreams
of your artistic children.
Nourish them, nurture
them, help them grow,
until one day they
too can become
writers writing scathing
autobiographies featuring you.
[LAUGHTER]
Boston, thank you.
You've been great.
[APPLAUSE]
ALAN PRICE: In a
moment, I hope you
will be able to join us in
the pavilion, where we'll
be able to shake hands,
greet each other,
and celebrate these
marvelous writers.
Again, as we exit,
I would ask you
to join me for one
more round of applause
for all you have done
to enrich the world.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you for being
with us this afternoon.
[APPLAUSE]
