Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Post-Trump Future of Literature

The apolitical times are over now What will writers do when the outrage is over? Will they go back to writing about flowers and moons? Donald Trump was an anti-literary president. It’s clear that the man doesn’t read, outside of highly diluted briefings and tweets. He’s missing a core element needed for literature: empathy. The election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris signals a return to empathy in 2021. But empathy’s only an emotion, and we should never mistake it for action. Barack Obama’s warmth didn’t reorient the world toward justice as much as some of us would have liked. […]