Pasadena Library Director Michelle Perera to Give Library Commission Preview of One City, One Story 2017 Program

The Pasadena Public Library will feature “The Sympathizer,” winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, during this year’s One City, One Story community reading celebration throughout the month of March.

Written by Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, “The Sympathizer” is a sweeping story of love and betrayal set in the post-Vietnam War period when Vietnamese refugees were building a new life in America.

The book tells the story of the South Vietnamese Government in 1975 and subsequent events in Los Angeles, narrated through the eyes of a half-Vietnamese, half-French undercover communist agent. The spy remains unnamed throughout the novel from the fall of Saigon, to refugee camps and relocation in Los Angeles, to his time as a film consultant in the Philippines, and finally to his return and subsequent imprisonment in Vietnam.

A Vietnamese reviewer noted that with the book, Americans will finally have a chance to gain a new perspective on the Vietnam War, one that is starkly different from the one provided by Hollywood myth makers.

Pasadena Library Director Michelle Perera will give the City’s Library Commission a preview of the One City, One Story 2017 program when the Commission meets Wednesday, February 15. The program includes a conversation with the author on March 2.

The project, now on its 15th year, is designed to broaden and deepen an appreciation of reading and literature by recommending a compelling book that sparks a community conversation on important issues.

Perera will also present readerships reports from the City’s main public library and its nine branches, which initially shows that more e-books are now being checked out from the library than traditional printed books.

During the meeting, the Commission is set to approve changes in the Commission’s By-Laws, including a change in the schedule of the monthly meetings from the second Wednesday of the month to the third Wednesday.

The changes will be passed on to the Pasadena City Council for final approval.

The meeting will open promptly at 6 p.m. at the Central Library at 285 E. Walnut Street in Pasadena.