Looking Back on the Vietnam War

BRENDA M. BOYLE is an associate professor of English at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She was a military intelligence officer in West Germany during the Cold War, and she is the author and editor of several books including Themes in Contemporary American Fiction: The Vietnam War.  JEEHYUN LIM is an assistant professor of English at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.  She is the author of the forthcoming book Bilingual Brokers: Race, Capital, and the Cultural Politics of Bilingualism.

"A collection of studies on the way the war is being remembered and commemorated … The diasporic theme is a welcome counterbalance to the US-centered canon that obscures the presence of the Vietnamese people in their own struggle for independence and all but elides them in studies of the postwar years ... Recommended." (Choice) "It is a crucial and timely moment to revisit the meanings of the Vietnam War. This book is a hugely valuable reassessment of the war's legacies and cultural impact." - Marita Sturken (author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering) "We're just now barely getting a grip on the myriad aftermaths of the Vietnam War. I enthusiastically urge anyone interested in wars or 'post-wars' to read this fine book--slowly." - Cynthia Enloe (author of Globalization and Militarism, updated edition) "This superb volume brings together a remarkable group of scholars whose attention to disaporic sensibilities, war memory, and contrapuntal narratives fundamentally remakes our understanding of the Vietnam War's cultural politics." - Mark Philip Bradley (The University of Chicago) "Looking Back on the Vietnam War is haunting in its unflinching critique and intervention to denaturalize warfare and disentangle its afterlife. It is most sublime in rupturing once conventional narratives." - Linda Trinh Vo (University of California, Irvine)

• ChronologyNote on the TextIntroduction: Looking Back at the Vietnam WarBrenda M. Boyle and Jeehyun LimChapter 1: Vietnamese Refugees and Internet Memorials: When Does War End and Who Gets to Decide?Y?n LÊ EspirituChapter 2: Broken, but Not Forsaken: Disabled South Vietnamese Veterans in Vietnam and the Vietnamese DiasporaQuan Tue TranChapter 3: What Is Vietnamese American Literature?Viet Thanh NguyenChapter 4: Vi?t Nam and the Diaspora: Absence, Presence, and the ArchiveLan DuongChapter 5: Liberal Humanitarianism and Post–Cold War Cultural Politics: The Case of Le Ly HayslipJeehyun LimChapter 6: Ann Hui’s Boat People: Documenting Vietnamese Refugees in Hong KongVinh NguyenChapter 7: “The Deep Black Hole”: Vietnam in the Memories of Australian Veterans and RefugeesRobert Mason and Leonie JonesChapter 8: Missing Bodies and Homecoming SpiritsHeonik KwonChapter 9: Agent Orange: Toxic Chemical, Narrative of Suffering, Metaphor for WarDiane Niblack FoxChapter 10: Re-Seeing Cambodia and Recollecting The ’Nam: A Vertiginous Critique of the Military SublimeCathy J. Schlund-VialsChapter 11: Naturalizing War: The Stories We Tell about the Vietnam WarBrenda M. BoyleAppendix A: ArchivesAppendix B: Publications since 2000Notes on ContributorsIndex