Kevin Nguyen stopped by the Daily Show to discuss his latest novel, Mỹ Documents.
Nguyen’s novel, published in April by One World/Random House, follows four young people, members of the same large family, whose lives are upended when the U.S. government opens internment camps for Vietnamese Americans after a series of terrorist attacks. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a disturbing page-turner and a powerful look at American racism.”
Asked by host Ronny Chieng to explain the book, Nguyen said, “It imagines this far-fetched dystopian future where the government is detaining people for no reason.”
“Oh,” replied Chieng.
“I completely imagined this,” a deadpan Nguyen said. “I came up with this idea in the throes of the first Trump administration. Trump had evoked…the Alien Enemies Act, which is the threadbare piece of legislation that allowed FDR to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II. So I just imagined, What if it happened again today? And because I’m Vietnamese, I made it happen to Vietnamese people.”
Chieng noted that the book is “catching up to reality,” and said, “Do you have a takeaway for what we—can you fix everything, please? Please fix it.”
“I don’t think there are strong takeaways,” Nguyen said. “I did want the book to be really grounded in reality. A lot of the forces that are at play—we've been living under the Department of Homeland Security for two decades. Some people act like ICE just emerged during this second Trump term. It’s been with us for a very long time. We have this history of Japanese American incarceration. We have the legacy of the Vietnam War. ICE has…detained millions of migrants over the past decade. What’s happening right now has escalated, but it is not new. I think the goal of the book was to draw a line between all of these things.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
