Linh Thủy Nguyễn with Nikki Châu — 'Displacing Kinship'

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome Linh Thủy Nguyễn to our Ravenna store for a discussion of new book, , which offers a critical approach for reading family tensions and interpersonal conflict as affective investments informed by the material, structural conditions of white supremacy and racial capitalism. Nguyễn will be joined in conversation by local organizer Nikki Châu. This event is free and open to the public.

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This event is free to attend. Registration is required in advance.

Nearly fifty years after the end of the war in Vietnam, American children of Vietnamese refugees continue to process the meanings of the war and its consequences through creative work. Displacing Kinship examines how Vietnamese American cultural productions register lived experiences of racism in their depictions of family life and marginalization.
Second-generation texts illustrate how the children of refugees from Vietnam are haunted by trauma and a violent, ever-present, but mostly unarticulated past. Linh Thủy Nguyễn's analysis reveals that present experiences of economic insecurity and racism also shape these narratives of familial loss.
Developing a theory of intergenerational trauma, Nguyễn rethinks how U.S. imperialism, the discourse of communism, and assimilation impacted families across generations. Through ethnic studies and feminist and queer-of-color critique, Displacing Kinship offers a critical approach for reading family tensions and interpersonal conflict as affective investments informed by the material, structural conditions of white supremacy and racial capitalism.

Linh Thủy Nguyễn is Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, adjunct in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, and faculty in the Center for the study of Southeast Asia and its Diasporas at the University of Washington. Her first book Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production (Temple, 2024) is an examination of the tropes of family and war in sociological narratives about Vietnamese refugees and in the art and literature of the second-generation (children of refugees). Her research explores the interpersonal and structural relationships between history, memory, race, war, migration and family. She teaches classes on Asian American and Southeast Asian American cultural studies, immigration and refugee studies, and Asian American and Pacific Islander feminisms. She is passionate about bicycles, dogs, community engagement, and social justice pedagogy.
Nikki Châu has been organizing in the Puget Sound region for the last decade, working to combat the damaging impacts of deportation, incarceration, racism, and imperialism to our communities. Her current focus is on building Sông2Sea, a community organization for people with ancestral connections to Vietnam and surrounding areas in Asia Pacific. Sông2Sea seeks to create education for critical consciousness for poor and politically disempowered people, grounded in class struggle and social transformation. In addition, S2S endeavors to learn and contextualize their histories and build connection to their cultures beyond the frames of essentialism and Orientalism. Nikki is an avid fan of wuxia, vpop, and as a new parent: naps.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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