Two Writers Reflect on War and Peace

Visionary writer Maxine Hong Kingston has been writing about war and peace since her landmark 1976 book The Woman Warrior. Her lifelong efforts on this theme often touched on the Vietnam War, from China Men to The Fifth Book of Peace. These works influenced 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and critic Viet Thanh Nguyen as he dealt with the war in both fiction (The Sympathizer) and scholarship (Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War). Both writers shared the ALOUD stage to discuss their own personal histories with the war, and the responsibility of literature in depicting war machines and peace movements.