My Documents

A Novel

By: Kevin Nguyen

Narrated by: Kelly Marie Tran

The paths of four family members diverge drastically when the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans, in this “rich, gripping novel that lands squarely as a mirror of our contemporary moral squalor” (Los Angeles Times).

“Comically macabre . . . Nguyen [is] a stellar satirist who takes bold imaginative risks.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

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

Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family. As young adults, they’re on the precipice of new ventures: Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naïve freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America creates a national panic, prompting a government policy that pushes Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions.

Cut off entirely from the outside world, forced to work jobs they hate, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long, dusty days in camp and acclimate to life without the internet. That is, until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this connection as a chance to tell the world about the horrors of camp—and as an opportunity to bolster her own reporting career in the process.

Informed by real-life events, from Japanese incarceration to the Vietnam War and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen’s novel gives us a 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. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to one another, and to ourselves, after tragedy.

Compelling and realistic!

4.5 stars! Compelling and realistic story of an imagined detention in internment camps of Vietnamese-Americans after a violent domestic terrorism event that killed seven and injured 40+ creates a national panic. The story is a mirror image of the detention of Japanese Americans after WWII. The story seems plausibly dystopian considering recent activities which includes building of more and more detention centers across the U.S.

The story follows siblings Ursula and Alvin and their half siblings Jen and Duncan. Ursula and Alvin’s lives are free because they “pass” as white (due to a white mother) and their free life is contrasted with that of Jen and Duncan’s lives in detention, Camp Tacoma, who are detained along with their mother.

The story covers the three years the network of camps functioned across the U.S. and is an often funny and touching portrait of family connections, human resilience (i.e. our innate ability to adjust and make the best of situations we find ourselves in when we have no control), and how an incarcerated people find ways to extract comfort by being resourceful and adaptable. It also covers the time after incarceration ends and Jen re-enters society.

The book cover features an obelisk-like black tower in the middle of the Camp that nobody knows the purpose of and theories abound. Perhaps it’s human nature to create conspiracy theories when facts are hidden.

I enjoyed how the author incorporated how journalism works in our current culture. How everyone wants juicy stories and after time passes and very little changes the news dies off and stops getting reported. The detention centers turned into “old news” and status was no longer reported on although the Vietnamese- American people remained incarcerated with zero ability to thrive, had no real beds to sleep on, had limited medical care, limited contact to the outside world, shared community bathrooms, regulated schedules, and zero privacy. It was all old news. It made me consider what else we are no longer hearing about because its become “old” news in journalism standards.

I listened on audiobook narrated extremely well by Kelly Marie Tran. I can recommend this fictional novel full of cultural and family vibrancy and subtleties to anyone interested in history, and speculative ideas based on “what if” questions. Well done Kevin Nguyen. You created a believable world which mixed hardship with human emotion and resilience.

Not Nguyen's best

There were enough of ideas here for a short story, but stretching them across a novel disappointed this reader. The main satirical idea is timely, and could have been developed more deeply with greater attention to the characters.

My documents

I liked this book. The story related to today’s events and it a reminder of how everyone is affected in such a different way.

The narrator was excellent! The story felt too close to home in today’s America.

The characters were real and an opening to understanding the Vietnamese people and their culture.

Unique story and characters

Beautifully written book. Exploring themes so relevant to today’s political climate in a sensitive and personal way. Highly recommend <3