"The Committed" by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Committed is a sequel to Nguyen's The Sympathizer, which follows the previous book's protagonist after his experience--okay, torture--at a communist "reeducation" camp at the hands of his "blood brother," Man. Now living in Paris with the third "blood brother," Bon, the protagonist is psychologically tortured by a number of things: 

1. The lies he's told Bon
2. The people he murdered while a communist spy
3. His "bastard" heritage as the son of Vietnamese woman and a French priest
4. His love for his mother and his self-aware objectification of all other women
5. Colonialism and the persistent racism as a result

And when I say "tortured," these five items are almost all he thinks about, except for occasional intrusions to get high or drunk and consider the drug-dealing business he's now a part of (including his ambivalence about supporting capitalism, given that he's nominally still communist). There's both power and tedium in the fact that the narrator waxes, ad nauseum, about these items. For example, we know that racism didn't end with slavery, and that racism today is not a result only of actions in the past but persistent racism today. The protagonist emphasizes that the same is true of colonialism. France's complicated and violent interactions with Vietnam (and other countries) didn't end with the end of colonialism, and even Vietnamese living in France as French citizens are still living with perpetual racism. There's power in the protagonist's recognition--and eventual exploitation--of these truths, but there's also the sense that the novel could have been trimmed without losing the message.

In fact, every one of the protagonist's revelations is repeated so often--and in such detail--that they begin to feel tiresome. Then again, perhaps that's part of the point. Racism is ever-present for those experiencing it but something to be addressed only when "convenient" when part of the privileged group. The idea is reinforced with the protagonist's perpetuation of sexism. There's a great line from Bo Burnham that goes something like, "self-awareness absolves you of nothing," which applies. The protagonist realizes he has used women as sex objects, but he doesn't stop doing so. In his final interaction with a woman, he can only focus on her partially-addressed (and very sexy [eye roll]) appearance, not her intelligence and power.

Nguyen is an engaging writer, and I eagerly followed the protagonist's desperate attempts to survive in a world so complicated there's no clear way out. Its stark depiction of the continuing harm of colonialism also serves as a reminder that racism is a multi-faceted, world-wide issue.