Photo by Doug Anderson
QUOTES FROM OTHER WRITERS:
From Nguyen Phan Que Mai: "Wayne Karlin is a rare American author who can write about Vietnamese people and culture with such insight and profound understanding. Everything Their Fathers Never Told Them centers on generations of Vietnamese and Americans whose lives are forever changed because of their parent’s wars. Yet the book goes beyond that. It shines light onto the root causes of war and its damage as it moves from generation to generation and in doing so suggests ways we can come together to create a better future for our children and grandchildren. I look forward to the day this book is published so that I can advocate it and tell readers how important, electrifying, and grippingly beautiful this novel is!" (for What Their Fathers Never Told Them).
From Tim O’Brien: “Wayne Karlin is one of the most gifted writers to emerge from the Vietnam War” (Lost Armies).
From George Garrett: “Karlin is one of the most gifted, passionate and powerful writers of his generation.” (Dictionary of Literary Biography)
From Bobbie Ann Mason: “The reader is drawn into this powerful, richly-laden novel by the poetic language, the compelling stories, and the wide-ranging themes. (Prisoners)
From Maxine Hong Kingston: “For the sake of humanity, we need to read Wayne Karlin on war and peace.” (Rumors and Stones)
From Lucille Clifton: “I think that Wayne Karlin has more of a feel and understanding of the language than most poets I know.” (Rumors and Stones)
From Richard Bausch: “Line by line, [Karlin] is lyrical, precise, deeply insightful, and breathtakingly vivid. He has long been among the best writers we have in this country—in fact I believe he is among the best writers we ever had.” (The Wished For Country)
From Edward P. Jones: “He shows us war in language that makes him seem not just a storyteller but a witness. Karlin’s work is inspired, a gift, and a pure treasure.” (A Wolf by the Ears)
From Arcelis Girmay: “… what makes this work pulse with vitality is Karlin's attention to that which is fleeting--the smallest instant, the slightest flesh. Lush, elemental, seeping with place, this novel is a reckoning, a confrontation, an excavation of a history made of breath and touch. (A Wolf by the Ears)
From Martin Espada: “For many years…Vietnam veteran writer Wayne Karlin has challenged conventional narratives of war, race, history and memory… Karlin makes this profoundly ironic and contradictory history so human and intimate, so tragic and yet redemptive, testimony to his great skill as a storyteller and his experience with the realities of war.” (A Wolf by the Ears).
From Fred D’Aguiar: Wayne Karlin’s love of justice and the calling of his just art celebrate the ways struggle triumphs in the face of despair. He refracts the past against the present and makes us examine how we live now and ask why the moral dilemma of this time seems so reminiscent of that past. (A Wolf by the Ears).
From Jeff Biggers (in the Bloomsbury Review) “Karlin’s consistent wisdom and clarity in every work, and his sweep of imagination and brilliant fictional styles, confirm his position as one of the finest American writers at work now. Wayne Karlin is reclaiming our cultural memory through literature. In turn, Karlin’s breathtaking work will never be forgotten.” (Prisoners)
From Le Minh Khue (Vietnamese novelist): With profound vision, Wayne Karlin speaks for many people about what they want to express – the necessity of tolerance and compassion in a world full of hatred and confusion. (Wandering Souls)