In Kevin Nguyen's brilliantly chilling Mỹ Documents, the U.S. suffers several coordinated attacks. When the perpetrators are identified as having surnames like Nguyen and Tran, the government--as it did with Japanese Americans during World War II--rounds up Vietnamese Americans and puts them in internment camps.
Siblings Jen and Duncan have never been close with their half-siblings Ursula and Alvin, but due to the American Advanced Protections Initiative (AAPI), their communications are now entirely cut off. Jen and Duncan, both students, are relegated to camp, while Alvin, with a Google job, and Ursula, a white-passing budding journalist, are exempt. No devices are allowed inside camp, but when a bootleg system develops, Jen manages to send messages about the goings-on to Ursula, who writes exposés that bring her heady career ascension. But at what cost to Jen and the other detainees?
The title alone indicates how clever Nguyen is with language. The tilde on the y in Mỹ transforms the title's meaning to American Documents in Vietnamese--documents that couldn't keep Jen and Duncan safe. Nguyen also takes AAPI, which usually stands for Asian American Pacific Islander, and makes it represent the law that targets those very people. Mỹ Documents is a condemnation of racism in the U.S. and the country's willingness to repeat its worst mistakes. It's also a well-painted portrait of life inside the camp, in all its terror and banality and, yes, humor. But perhaps most important is how Nguyen avoids model-minority clichés in depicting the siblings. They're imperfect and sometimes unlikable but always relatable. They're not the enemy. They are Americans. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja