The New School Honors Voices of the Vietnamese Diaspora with a Special Reception at Rizzoli Bookstore
In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, The New School joined with Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN), Poets & Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail for the special event Cleaving: Celebrating and Honoring the Vietnamese Diaspora, held at Rizzoli Bookstore on May 2, 2025. The reception celebrated the release of two publications, the anthology The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers of the Diaspora, which features voices of the Vietnamese diaspora from across the world, and To Save and To Destroy by MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen.
The Cleaving: Vietnamese Writers of the Diaspora, edited by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan Duong, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, explores themes of identity, belonging, creativity, and resilience through conversations about family history, legacies of colonialism and militarism, and the writers’ own artistic and literary achievements. The evening featured reading and discussions by some of the editors and contributors to the anthology, including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Lan Duong, Cathy Linh Che, Monique Truong, and Isabelle Thuy Pelaud.
The event was co-sponsored by several literary and academic organizations, including The Brooklyn Rail, Poets & Writers, and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, and various New School departments including the Provost’s Office, the Faculty Center, the Schools of Public Engagement, Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College, the School of Media Studies, and Parson’s Art and Design History and Theory.