Margarita asked Viet Thanh Nguyen:

The Refugees is a stunning collection of stories. Thank you! Question: The family in the first story has been visited by a ghost. How do ghosts figure in Vietnamese American culture? I am Hispanic and was once told by my grandmother that if I was ever visited by a dead relative, that I shouldn't be scared, and I believe I was visited once by my grandmother shortly after her death. That story really resonated.

Viet Thanh Nguyen Ghosts are very important. Most Vietnamese believe that the dead need to be worshiped at an ancestral shrine in the home, and that the graves of the dead need to be tended regularly, all to appease their souls. Those who die badly--violently, unnaturally, or away from home--become "wandering souls." Ghosts can be both benevolent and malevolent. Visits by the dead soon after death are often not supposed to bee frightening, as you say. The dead come to say goodbye.

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