From Saigon to Gaza: War, Memory, and the Politics of Solidarity
Why Vietnamese Americans Are Speaking Up for Gaza
"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory," writes Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen in his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War. Nguyen fled Vietnam with his family as a child refugee which inspired his life's work of exploring how war trauma echoes across generations, and how conflicts leave imprints that outlast bullets and bombs.
As we mark the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon while watching the devastation unfold in Gaza, Nguyen’s insights feel less like academic theory and more like a painful truth we're living through in real time. The connections between Vietnam and Gaza—separated by decades but linked through patterns of displacement, resistance, and imperial violence, show us how historical memory becomes not just reflection, but illumination.
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