Read This Book if
—you’ve ever felt as though you were from two different worlds.
—your best friends are closer than your family.
—you’re always able to see both sides of an issue.
—you’re of mixed descent.
—you’re interested in the Vietnam War.
—you’d like to better understand what it feels like to be an immigrant.
Life Question This Book Helped Me Answer:
How not to underestimate people, especially non-native speakers.
The Sympathizer helped me remember that the immigrant man or woman who works at a store-near-me and doesn’t speak perfect English might have been a doctor (or a general) in his or her home country. It’s easy for me to see them only in the context of our society but I need to keep my mind open about who they are and where they came from and not make assumptions.
Brief Synopsis
The narrator (who is never named) is a double agent in the Vietnam War. While he really works for the North (the communists), he is positioned with a general from the South, spying on him and sending information back to the communists. At the fall of Saigon, the narrator escapes with the South Vietnamese general and becomes a refugee in Los Angeles. He continues to send intelligence reports back to Vietnam, until he can sneak back into the country. He had a Vietnamese mother and a French priest for a father, so he is ostracized from Vietnamese society and from white society. His parents are both dead. His real family are his two blood brothers. One is a high-ranking communist who remains in Vietnam. The other is a South Vietnamese assassin, who escaped Saigon with the narrator and lives with him in L.A. The novel is written in the form of a “confession” for the narrator’s “reeducation.”
Before You Read
Look at the VIETNAMESE WAR TIMELINE. The historical aspects (dates, names) aren’t overwhelming in the book, but it’s helpful to have an understanding of them.
Read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I happened to read Invisible Man before I read The Sympathizer. I kept thinking that the themes in the two were really similar, and then I read that author Viet Thanh Nguyen was heavily influenced by Invisible Man. Reading the Ellison first gave me a deeper understanding of both books.
Google images of a rucksack and/or army rucksack. The narrator’s rucksack plays a big role. It’s his only piece of luggage throughout most of the book, and one of his only possessions. It’s a gift from an American CIA operative that he was close with in the war, and it has a false bottom to hide things in.
While You Read
Scavenger Hunt: Look for these items in the book.
—Acronyms and initials and how they’re used, especially on the rucksack (The narrator’s Vietnamese initials are on the bag. He later gives himself an American name, too.)
—The plant bougainvillea (which the narrator mentions seeing in California and in Vietnam)
—What photos he takes with his Kodak camera, versus his Minox mini camera
—Mentions of Nothing (Compare BOOK REVIEW: PLAY IT AS IT LAYS)
—Timepieces: clocks and watches
—What the narrator hides in the false bottom of his rucksack
—The joke regarding Richard (Dick) Hedd’s name, author of the fictional book Asian Communism and the Oriental Mode of Destruction
Themes
—Nothing
—Truth
—Instances of two: two minds, two sides, double meanings, two worlds
—Time
—Representation
After You Read
Try BEEF PHO SOUP, the national soup of Vietnam.
Drink vodka from a plastic bottle or drink some fine cognac, depending on which extreme of the narrator’s life you want to explore: low or high.
Listen to
—“White Christmas” (the song played to announce the evacuation of Saigon)
—“Hey Good Lookin’” by Hank Williams (the best song to be piped into a torture chamber)
—“SAIGON DEP LAM” (“Beautiful Saigon”)
—Songs by artists Pham Duy, Trinh Cong Son, and Duc Huy
Set a clock to Vietnam time for an hour or so (as two of the characters in the book permanently do) and see how it affects you.
Make cornstarch-based INVISIBLE INK and then use iodine to reveal the message.
