The Post-Trump Future of Literature by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Macarthur Grant winner and refugee Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a retrospective assessment on the Trump era’s influence on literature in the New York Times. The article presents a rousing challenge for writers to remain engaged with politics and not retreat to writing about “flowers and the moon” once the Trumpian triggers fire less often or less loudly. I recommend a full read. This excerpt on “immigrant literature” is especially relevant to ImmigrationProf Blog readers:

During the xenophobic Trump years, when immigrants and refugees were demonized, simply standing up for immigrants became a politically worthwhile cause. But so much of immigrant literature, despite bringing attention to the racial, cultural and economic difficulties that immigrants face, also ultimately affirms an American dream that is sometimes lofty and aspirational, and at other times a mask for the structural inequities of a settler colonial state. Most Americans have never heard of settler colonialism, much less used it to describe their country. That’s because Americans prefer to call settler colonialism the American dream. Too much of immigrant and multicultural literature fails to rip off that mask. 

MHC