Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer grapples with the issue of identity formation when exposed to two different nations of the world, specifically when mixing American and Vietnamese backgrounds. Rather than subscribing to the binary system of choosing between the two nations, the novel proposes creating a multicultural status that contains elements from both. By incorporating elements from both regions, several new possibilities of identities emerge, this time birthing a more nuanced middle ground of racial background. The narrative accomplishes this feat by engaging with the analogy of music, featuring songs and artists with multicultural attributes, to oppose the notion of an uncomplicated identity. The music the novel chooses to feature crafts a resistance platform, which defies the notion of homogeneity and favors the heterogeneity of individuals instead. …show more content…
To apply this theory, The Sympathizer features multi-cultural figures and symbols, such as Lana singing American songs and a blonde-wigged Filipino band covering Diana Ross, to display how repealing the notion of homogeneity can reveal a diverse gamut of personalities. The narrative’s suggested goal is to empower Vietnamese-Americans to explore their own identities and to learn how to embrace their multicultural backgrounds. In analyzing this argument, we can begin to understand how shaping one’s own identity on their own terms functions within a multicultural