The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) and Asian American Diasporic Writers Series present a book talk by Kevin Nguyen about his 2025 novel Mỹ Documents, followed by a discussion with CSER’s Writer-in-Residence, Marie Myung-Ok Lee.

Dinner provided. Non-CU affiliates should email cser@columbia.edu to be registered for campus access.

Location: CSER Seminar Room (420 Hamilton)

Co-sponsored by The Asian American Initiative at Columbia University and Asian Diaspora and Asian American Studies at Barnard College. 

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A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, THE NEW YORKER, ESQUIRE

Informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen’s novel gives us an version of reality only a few degrees away from our own. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family.