My identity is deeply intertwined with being a refugee because that's the first experience that I remember.

Immigrants who come to a country are going to lose something, for sure, but they hope to gain a great deal by making this journey, whereas refugees by definition have lost a tremendous amount - not just country and society, but also more personal things like careers, prestige, status, relatives, identities. This inevitably makes the longing to remember the past even more powerful among refugees, to the point of often debilitating them.

I think my parents' lives are worthy of writing about. I don't think my life is particularly worthy of writing about.

40, 50 years ago, Americans - the majority of Americans did not want to accept these Vietnamese refugees who they saw as completely foreign. Now there are new foreigners - Syrians and other people from the Middle East, people of Muslim backgrounds. And the sense among many Americans is, well, these people are completely different from us, and they're not like the Vietnamese who are much more assimilable. And I think that's very, very doubtful. I think that the majority of these new foreigners, if given the opportunity, will be able to assimilate and deal with American culture.

Immigrants, as troubling as they are to some people, are an integral part of what the American Dream is supposed to be. They're understandable to a considerable number of Americans.

No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

Writers from the majority can assume their audiences know what they're talking about - they don't have to explain things, whereas minority writers are expected to.