The Vietnam War: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature

Description

Reverberations of the Vietnam War can still be felt in American culture. The post-9/11 United States forays into the Middle East, the invasion and occupation of Iraq especially, have evoked comparisons to the nearly two decades of American presence in Viet Nam (1954-1973). That evocation has renewed interest in the Vietnam War, resulting in the re-printing of older War narratives and the publication of new ones. This volume tracks those echoes as they appear in American, Vietnamese American, and Vietnamese war literature, much of which has joined the American literary canon. Using a wide range of theoretical approaches, these essays analyze works by Michael Herr, Bao Ninh, Duong Thu Huong, Bobbie Ann Mason, le thi diem thuy, Tim O'Brien, Larry Heinemann, and newcomers Denis Johnson, Karl Marlantes, and Tatjana Solis. Including an historical timeline of the conflict and annotated guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for students and readers of contemporary American fiction

Brenda M. Boyle Brenda Boyle is an associate professor of English and the Director of the Writing Center at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. Her previous publications include Masculinity and Monstrosity in Contemporary Hollywood Films (2013) and Masculinity in Vietnam War Narratives (2009).

The reach and scope of this wonderfully insightful volume fundamentally remaps the study of Vietnam War literature. It is an indispensable guide not only to new critical perspectives from trauma, memory, gender and race studies on canonical American writings but also opens up the central place of works from Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora for our understanding of the war and its aftermath. * Mark Philip Bradley, University of Chicago, USA * In this first essay collection on Vietnam War literature since 2009, Boyle offers seven substantial essays by both established scholars in the field and relative newcomers that blend close textual analysis with theoretical approaches, well-known canonical texts with newer war narratives, and American-centered works with texts by Vietnamese-American and Vietnamese writers. The volume sheds new light on the literature of the Vietnam War and its ongoing critical debate, especially in its focus on the lens of trauma, gender studies, masculinity theories, the North Vietnamese experience, and the link between Vietnam War texts and the ongoing war in Iraq. The collection is a welcome addition to the canon of Vietnam War literature. * Catherine Calloway, Professor of English, Arkansas State University, USA * The literature of the Vietnam War has undergone many changes in the last forty years, and so has the critical thinking about that literature and that war. This anthology represents some of the newest thinking about these topics, and usefully focuses on key works of American, Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American literature. The book is a terrific introduction to a complicated body of writing. * Viet Thanh Nguyen, Associate Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California, USA * Kudos to Brenda Boyle for giving overdue attention to the depiction of war trauma in fictional literature. Wonderfully inclusive with studies of the Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien classics, introductions to Vietnamese writers new to many American readers, and critical treatments of recent work by Karl Marlantes and Tatjana Solis, this volume belongs on all our readings lists. * Jerry Lembcke, author of 'PTSD: Diagnosis and Identity in Post-empire America' * Forty years after the fall of Saigon, interest in the Vietnam War continues to be a topic of interest for scholars and students alike. Boyle adds to the canon of critical work on this experience ... Notably inclusive, the essays offer perspectives from voices often omitted, including those of North Vietnamese writers ... Boyle takes care, in both the introduction and the concluding essay, to connect the Vietnam experience with the experience of veterans in the first and second wars in Iraq ... With this book, Boyle speaks directly to the cultural 'hard work of imagination, interpretation, and remembrance' that follows any war, but especially a war as divisive and murky as Vietnam. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. -- D. A. Henningfeld, emerita, Adrian College * CHOICE * Boyle's introduction, "The War Stories We Tell" (pp. 1-25), is essential reading for both its perspective and insight, while the essays are individually strong and collectively reinforcing to the extent of producing the most up-to-date account of literary responses to the war. Familiar and lesser known novels are treated with equal probity, opening new avenues to understanding. * American Literary Scholarship * Essays in The Vietnam War: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature revisit well-known texts like Michael Herr's Dispatches, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods, Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story, and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country, but also address under-studied works by Vietnamese Americans as well as works that reflect upon the experience of Vietnamese people during the war ... The strength of the collection is in authors' attention to novels about the North Vietnamese and Vietnamese refugees' experience, ... evaluation of how the Vietnam War is refigured in the wake of 9/11 in aesthetic works, and close readings of canonical texts with nuanced engagement with new directions in trauma theory, such as Marianne Hirsch's work on postmemory. * This Year's Work in English Studies *