On The Sympathizer:
Charlie Rose: You talk about the industry of memory. What’s that?
Viet Thanh Nguyen: Well, we like to think that our memories are all equal, sort of a democratic notion, but in actuality, I think certain groups’ memories dominate over other groups, and those are the groups that have control over the industries of memory. Hollywood is one example of that, publishing is another example of that. This is why even though the United States lost the war in Vietnam, it won the war in memory because it controls these kinds of industries like Hollywood that the Vietnamese don’t control. The Vietnamese could win in their country, they can’t win globally. That’s why when people think about the Vietnam war, they think about how Hollywood has remembered it.