To Save And To Destroy
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To Save And To Destroy
''To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other'' is a 2025 essay collection by Pulitzer Prize–winning Vietnamese American writer and professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. It was published by Belknap Press, an imprint of Harvard University Press. Background The book is an "edited compilation" of the six Norton Lectures which Viet had delivered to Harvard University from 2023–2024. Viet had drafted the lectures, while in Paris, during the preceding summer. Its release, on April 8, 2025, coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and specifically Black April. Between the second and third Norton Lecture, the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel happened, prompting Viet "to address that and all of its consequences" by writing an argument establishing solidarity between Palestinians and Asian Americans: "I felt like there was an organic relationship for me to Palestinian thought and anti-colonial thinking that was deeply tied into the Vietnam War and to me becom ...
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Nguyễn
Nguyễn (阮) (sometimes abbreviated as Ng̃) is the most common surname of the Vietnamese people. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as ''Nguyen''. By some estimates 30 to 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this surname.Lê Trung Hoa, ''Họ và tên người Việt Nam'', NXB Khoa học - Xã hội, 2005 Origin and usage is the transcription of the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation of the character 阮, which originally was used to write a name of a state in Gansu or ruan, an ancient Chinese instrument. The same Chinese character is often romanized as in Mandarin and as in Cantonese. The first recorded mention of a person surnamed Nguyễn is a description dating AD 317, of a journey to Giao Châu undertaken by Eastern Jin dynasty officer Nguyễn Phu and his family. Many events in Vietnamese history have contributed to the name's prominence. In 1232, after usurping the Lý dynasty, Trần Thủ Độ forced the descendants of ...
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Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen (; born March 13, 1971) is a South Vietnamese-born American professor and novelist. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Viet's debut novel, '' The Sympathizer'', won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and many other accolades. He was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017. Viet is a regular contributor, op-ed columnist for ''The New York Times'', covering immigration, refugees, politics, culture, and Southeast Asia. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2020 was elected as the first Asian American member of the Pulitzer Prize Board in its 103-year-history. In the teaching field, in 2023, Viet is also the first Asian American to headline the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series at Harvard University. Earl ...
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Belknap Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The press maintains offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard Square, and in London, England. The press co-founded the distributor TriLiteral LLC with MIT Press and Yale University Press. TriLiteral was sold to LSC Communications in 2018. Notable authors published by HUP include Eudora Welty, Walter Benjamin, E. O. Wilson, John Rawls, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Jay Gould, Helen Vendler, Carol Gilligan, Amartya Sen, David Blight, Martha Nussbaum, and Thomas Piketty. The Display Room in Harvard Square, dedicated to selling HUP publications, closed on June 17, 2009. Related publishers, imprints, and series HUP owns the Belknap Press imprint (trade name), imprint, which it inaugurated in May 1954 with the publication of the ''Harvard Guide to ...
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Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyman John Harvard (clergyman), John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Harvard was founded and authorized by the Massachusetts General Court, the governing legislature of Colonial history of the United States, colonial-era Massachusetts Bay Colony. While never formally affiliated with any Religious denomination, denomination, Harvard trained Congregationalism in the United States, Congregational clergy until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in the 18th century. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston B ...
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Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, fourth-most populous city in the European Union and the List of cities proper by population density, 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, Fashion capital, fashion, and gastronomy. Because of its leading role in the French art, arts and Science and technology in France, sciences and its early adoption of extensive street lighting, Paris became known as the City of Light in the 19th century. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 inhabitants in January 2023, or ...
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct United States in the Vietnam War, US military involvement escalated from 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian Civil War, Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming Communism, communist in 1975. After the defeat of the French Union in the First Indoc ...
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Black April
The fall of Saigon, known in Vietnam as Reunification Day (), was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by North Vietnam on 30 April 1975. As part of the 1975 spring offensive, this decisive event led to the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the evacuation of thousands of U.S. personnel and South Vietnamese civilians, and marked the end of the Vietnam War. The aftermath ushered in a transition period under North Vietnamese control, culminating in the formal reunification of the country as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under communist state, communist rule on 2 July 1976. The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC), under the command of General Văn Tiến Dũng, began their final attack on Saigon on 29 April 1975, with the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces commanded by General Nguyễn Văn Toàn (general), Nguyễn Văn Toàn suffering a heavy artillery bombardment. By the afternoon of the next day, the PAVN/VC had oc ...
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October 7 Hamas-led Attack On Israel
On October 7, 2023, Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups launched coordinated armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The attacks, launched on the Jewish holiday Simchat Torah, initiated the ongoing Gaza war. The attacks began with a barrage of at least 4,300 rockets launched into Israel and vehicle-transported and powered paraglider incursions into Israel. Hamas militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, including Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Haasara, and Alumim. According to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) report that revised the estimate on the number of attackers, 6,000 Gazans breached the border in 119 locations into Israel, including 3,800 from the elite " Nukhba forces" and 2,200 civilians and other militants. Additionally, the IDF report estimated 1,000 Gazans fi ...
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LitHub
''Literary Hub'' or ''LitHub'' is a daily literary website that was launched in 2015 by Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin, American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, and ''Electric Literature'' founder Andy Hunter. Content Focused on literary fiction and nonfiction, ''Literary Hub'' publishes personal and critical essays, interviews, and book excerpts from over 100 partners, including independent presses (New Directions Publishing, Graywolf Press), large publishers (Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf), bookstores (Book People, Politics and Prose), non-profits (PEN America), and literary magazines (''The Paris Review'', n+1). The mission of ''Literary Hub'' is to be the "site readers can rely on for smart, engaged, entertaining writing about all things books." The website has been featured in ''The Washington Post'', ''The Guardian'', and ''Poets & Writers''. In 2019, ''Literary Hub'' launched their new blog, ''The Hub'', alongsid ...
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Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling." With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. History Nineteenth century The magazine was founded by bibliographer Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly'' was being read by nine tenths of the booksellers in the country. In 1878, Leypoldt sold ''The Publishers' Weekly'' to his friend Richard Rogers Bowker, in order to free up time for his other bibliographic endeavors. Augu ...
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Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature. ''Kirkus Reviews'', published on the first and 15th of each month, previews books before their publication. ''Kirkus'' reviews over 10,000 titles per year. History Virginia Kirkus was hired by Harper & Brothers to establish a children's book department in 1926. In 1932, the department was eliminated as an economic measure. However, within a year, Louise Raymond, the secretary Kirkus hired, had the department running again. Kirkus, however, had left and soon established her own book review service. Initially, she arranged to get galley proofs of "20 or so" books in advance of their publication; almost 80 years later, the service was receiving hundreds of books weekly and reviewing about 100. Ini ...
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