Vietnam War

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.

• Chronology Introduction: The War Stories We Tell Brenda M. Boyle Chapter One: Michael Herr’s Traumatic New Journalism: Dispatches Mark Heberle Chapter Two: Duong Thu Huong’s Paradise of the Blind and Novel without a Name, and Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War: Corrective, Politically Incorrect, and ChallengingMichele Janette Chapter Three: “Ten years burning down the road”: Trauma, Mourning and Postmemory in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In CountryJoanna Price Chapter Four: Vietnamese American literature and le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking ForIsabelle Thuy Pelaud Chapter Five: The Homefront and the Frontlines in the War Novels of Tim O’BrienSusan Farrell Chapter Six: The Ghost that Won’t be Exorcised: Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s StoryStacey Peebles Chapter Seven: American Totem Society in the Twenty-First Century: Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn, and Tatjana Solis’ The Lotus EatersBrenda M. Boyle Further Reading Works Cited Index