"What Matters to Me and Why” represents a creative solution to an important and often unrecognized problem in the university setting: the separation of intellectual life from personal and spiritual issue. The people who shape USC, who teach students the ways of their particular disciplines, and who help them develop marketable skills also have a great deal to pass on in terms of worldly wisdom, moral guidance, and sources of spiritual strength.
Việt Thanh Nguyễn is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English, American Studies & Ethnicity, and Comparative Literature. Nguyễn is also a member of the steering committee for the Center for Transpacific Studies. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, having obtained his B.A. in Ethnic Studies and English as well as his Ph.D. in English. He is a MacArthur Fellow (2018-2022), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Guggenheim Fellow for 2017-2018.
His novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His other books include the bestselling short story collection The Refugees and The Committed. In his spare time, he co-directs the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, edits diaCRITICS, a blog on Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese arts and culture, and writes for Time, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times.