4 Quotes by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Editor)

Even those on the left talk about how immigrants make America great. They point to photographs of happy refugees turned good citizens, listing their contributions, as if that is the price of existing in the same country, on the same earth.

But what America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we don’t give you sugary success stories.

Is the life of happy mediocrity a privilege reserved for those who never stray from home?

But stared, with unmistakable violence, at people who spoke strange tongues. Stay away from them—they love their homeland so much they’ll take that love out on refugees.