Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and USC Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen was disinvited from a book event at 92NY, a cultural center and nonprofit Jewish organization in New York, after he signed an open letter condemning Israel.
“[92NY’s] language was ‘postponement,’ but no reason was given, no other date was offered, and I was never asked,” Nguyen, a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature, wrote in an Instagram post. “So, in effect, cancellation.”
The event scheduled for October 20 was supposed to feature Nguyen reading from his new memoir, “A Man of Two Faces,” followed by a conversation with Min Jin Lee, the author of “Pachinko.” According to Nguyen’s Instagram post, he and Lee held their event at McNally Jackson Books Seaport instead after receiving news of the postponement five hours before the planned event.
Nguyen signed “An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine” in the London Review of Books’ blog, which called for an immediate ceasefire and the admission of humanitarian aid into Gaza. It was signed by 750 artists and writers based in the European Union, the United Kingdom and North America.
“Human rights groups have long condemned Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the inhumane treatment of — and system of racial domination over — Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli state,” the letter said. “But we are now witnessing a new and even more drastic emergency. The UN expert Francesca Albanese has warned that Israel’s current actions in Gaza constitute a form of ethnic cleansing.”
In a statement quoted by The New York Times, 92NY said that the attack by Hamas on Israel has “absolutely devastated the community.”
“Given the public comments by the invited author on Israel and this moment, we felt the responsible course of action was to postpone the event while we take some time to determine how best to use our platform and support the entire 92NY community,” the statement read.
Following the event’s cancellation, Nguyen stood by his previous statements.
“I have no regrets about anything I have said or done in regards to Palestine, Israel, or the occupation and war,” Nguyen wrote in an Instagram post the day after the 92NY event was canceled. “I only regret that [event organizer Bernard Schwartz] and other staff at the Y have been so deeply and negatively affected by standing up for art and writers.”
USC professor Howard A. Rodman, a colleague of Nguyen’s who teaches in USC’s John Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television, said that he was “very upset” when he first heard of the event cancellation.
“They can invite [and disinvite] whoever they want,” Rodman said. “But it seems to me that what they were doing was saying that anyone who calls for a cease-fire, anyone who makes a statement against genocide, is therefore not an acceptable guest in our house. And that bothered me.”
Rodman said he fears the possible wider implications of 92NY canceling Nguyen’s event.
“If uttering an opinion about a very, very pressing world event can get you deaccessioned from your platforms, then I think we have to look hard at what free speech means,” Rodman said. “I fear for Palestinian students and Palestinian members of the professoriate who may feel that to speak out against what they see as the genocide of their people will have adverse repercussions on their lives, career and rights to speak.”
Nguyen, whose debut novel “The Sympathizer” won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is known for his writing about Vietnam and the Vietnam War. He was born in Buôn Mê Thuột, Vietnam, but moved to the United States with his family in 1975 and settled in a camp for Vietnamese refugees in Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, according to his biography on his personal website. Nguyen said on Instagram that his new memoir, “A Man of Two Faces,” references this time in his life.
“I spoke about my book, yes, but also about how art is silenced in times of war and division because some people only want to see the world as us versus them,” Nguyen said in the same Instagram post about the last-minute event he held in Seaport after 92NY’s cancellation. “But art is one of the things that … can help us see beyond the hatred of war, that can make us understand that we cannot be divided into the human versus the inhuman because we are, all of us, human and inhuman at the same time.”
Three days after the cancellation of Nguyen’s event and the following controversy, 92NY announced Monday that its 2023-2024 literary series was “on pause given recent staff resignations,” according to The New York Times.