Nugyen Should Reconsider What Thanksgiving Is For

In the wake of his 2016 Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Sympathizer," Viet Thanh Nugyen has donned the cloak of public intellectual, becoming a prominent voice in the intensifying U.S. culture wars. I previously wrote about his condemnation of alleged white-male domination of writers' workshops here.

But why stop there? Why not reform the Thanksgiving holiday as well?

In a recent piece in The New York Times, Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam, asks: "What is wrong with saying that Thanksgiving is about genocide as much as it is about gratitude?" That, in fact, is what he has been teaching his now four-year-old biracial son.





Nguyen is, of course, not the first person to claim, or observe, that America was built on the often-savage appropriation of land from the Indians, most of whom were killed, or died from imported diseases, in the process. It is a grim history, but whether it was genocide -- technically speaking -- is debatable.

What is significant, of course, is that the lengthy episode underlies white American culture and nation-building  -- and those early white Americans brought Western European culture and ideas with them.

It's a seriously compromised history (even without considering slavery) and because of that, Nguyen sees himself firmly on the moral high ground.

Many people think if that is the way be feels, why doesn't he go back to Vietnam and take his son with him?

"Please refrain from sending me your letters. I already have plenty like them and don’t need any more, thank you," the author said in the Times article.

Why then does he want to stay, amid all this moral turpitude and cultural hypocrisy?

"Generally, we are thankful to be in America and not in Vietnam, where we would not be free to say words like genocide or to contradict propaganda, as we do here," Nguyen said.

Really?

Where, I wonder, does he suppose the notion of freedom of speech comes from? What culture brought that to America?

Maybe for Nguyen, Thanksgiving should be more about freedom of speech than anything else and he might be wise to so instruct his son since that particular freedom is very fragile.