How To Recover Empathy In Speaking About Refugees — An Interview With Viet Thanh Nguyen

Displaced, a podcast by Vox Media and the International Rescue Committee, is often a wonky, in-depth dive into the latest humanitarian, policy, and innovation work within the field of migration and displacement around the world. But in this episode, the conversation with Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen adds another light to the discussion on refugees, their lives, and what can be done to combat nationalist narratives and use empathy to build stronger support for refugees.

In conversation with hosts Ravi Gurumurthy and Grant Norton, Nguyen tells the story of how he came to identify as a refugee himself. He was forcibly separated from his family in the United States at the age of four. And while he suppressed this very early, traumatic memory, coming to grips with it was crucial for him to start living more genuinely: 

"That was where the authenticity lay, in trying to keep drilling into that emotion, trying to understand it. In order to write genuine drama, genuine characters, I would have to sort of look inwardly into myself and my own experiences," Nguyen says. 

The conversation then connects with the way 'refugee' is a label that comes with negative connotations within the American imagination. It also delves in the many ways narratives shape how people understand the refugee experience, and how it is different from, say, economic migration. And in an era of renewed nationalist discourses, Nguyen explains why he sees power in describing himself as a refugee.

His personal story, in a nutshell, is a powerful tool to create empathy and change hearts, first, to then start having a different, more empathic conversation.