Narratives Of The Vietnam War By Korean And American Writers

Original Scholarly Monograph

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

English summary: Media, war and the experiences of combatants stand in ambivalent, partly contradictory relation to each other, which has been reflected and analysed in many ways by the various academic disciplines. Be it the experiences of Swiss mercenaries in the Triple Alliance War in Paraguay, the role of an officer of the Wehrmacht in the deportation of Greek Jews from Rhodes, the re-interpretation of Maya the Bee as a Nazi cartoon or trauma processing in folk and punk music - the contributions of the present volume take diverse approaches to the tense relationship between war, war experience and its representation in the media. The volume is completed with reviews and brief descriptions of relevant new publications and a bibliography of literary, linguistic, historical, film and art studies published in 2007. German description: Medien, Krieg und die Erfahrungen der Kriegsteilnehmer stehen in einem ambivalenten, zum Teil widerspruchlichen Verhaltnis zueinander, das von den diversen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen vielfaltig gespiegelt und analysiert wird. Ob es um die Erfahrungen Schweizer Soldner im Triple-Allianz-Krieg in Paraguay geht, um die Rolle eines Wehrmachtoffiziers bei der Deportation griechischer Juden von Rhodos, die Umdeutung der Biene Maja als NS-Zeichentrickfilm oder die Verarbeitung von Kriegstraumata in Folk- und Punk-Musik - die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes nahern sich unter vielfaltigen Fragestellungen dem Spannungsverhaltnis von Krieg, Kriegserfahrung und ihrer Reprasentation in den Medien. Erganzt werden die Beitrage durch Rezensionen und Kurzinformationen zu einschlagigen Neuerscheinungen sowie eine Bibliographie 2007 erschienener literatur-, sprach-, geschichts-, film- und kunstwissenschaftlicher Studien.

In 2014, the US marks the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the basis for the Johnson administration’s escalation of American military involvement in Southeast Asia and war against North Vietnam. Vietnam War Slang outlines the context behind the slang used by members of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. Troops facing and inflicting death display a high degree of linguistic creativity. Vietnam was the last American war fought by an army with conscripts, and their involuntary participation in the war added a dimension to the language. War has always been an incubator for slang; it is brutal, and brutality demands a vocabulary to describe what we don’t encounter in peacetime civilian life. Furthermore, such language serves to create an intense bond between comrades in the armed forces, helping them to support the heavy burdens of war. The troops in Vietnam faced the usual demands of war, as well as several that were unique to Vietnam – a murky political basis for the war, widespread corruption in the ruling government, untraditional guerilla warfare, an unpredictable civilian population in Vietnam, and a growing lack of popular support for the war back in the US. For all these reasons, the language of those who fought in Vietnam was a vivid reflection of life in wartime. Vietnam War Slang lays out the definitive record of the lexicon of Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. Assuming no prior knowledge, it presents around 2000 headwords, with each entry divided into sections giving parts of speech, definitions, glosses, the countries of origin, dates of earliest known citations, and citations. It will be an essential resource for Vietnam veterans and their families, students and readers of history, and anyone interested in the principles underpinning the development of slang.

Argues that the examination of contemporary American war narratives can lead to newfound understandings of American literature, American history, and American national purpose. To prove such a contention, the book blends literary, rhetorical, and cultural methods of analysis.

Nothing Ever Dies, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes. All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the bestselling novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both the Americans and the Vietnamese.

"Provides rich, nuanced readings." - Victor Bascara, University of California, Los Angeles

This Companion surveys Asian American literature from the nineteenth century to the present day.

A compelling alternative narrative of the modern "miracle" of South Korea.

"Many of the twelve stories and fifty poems assembled [in this book] have long been out of print and are almost impossible to find in any other source. The editors have enhanced this collection by providing maps, a chronology of the Korean War, and annotated lists of novels, works of nonfiction, and films. In a detailed introduction, [the editors] discuss the milestones of the Korean War and place each fiction writer and poet represented into historical and literary contexts"--Page 4 of cover.

Chinese American authors often find it necessary to represent Asian history in their literary works. Tracing the development of the literary production of Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Lisa See, and Russell Leong, among others, this book captures the effects of international politics and globalization on Chinese American diasporic consciousness.

In the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans’ understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nation’s collective memory of the war and its aftermath. Instead, veterans’ accounts are mined for colorful quotes and then dropped from public discourse; are accepted as factual sources with little attention to how memory, no matter how authentic, can diverge from events; or are not contextualized in terms of the race, gender, or class of the narrators. Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War is a landmark study of the cultural heritage of the war in Vietnam as presented through the experience of its American participants. Crossing disciplinary borders in ways rarely attempted by historians, John A. Wood unearths truths embedded in the memoirists’ treatments of combat, the Vietnamese people, race relations in the United States military, male-female relationships in the war zone, and veterans’ postwar troubles. He also examines the publishing industry’s influence on collective memory, discussing, for example, the tendency of publishers and reviewers to privilege memoirs critical of the war. Veteran Narratives is a significant and original addition to the literature on Vietnam veterans and the conflict as a whole.

Alphabetically arranged entries include discussions of individual authors, literary movements, institutions, notable texts, literary developments, themes, ethnic literatures, and "topic" essays.

This book provides a survey of literature by North American writers of Asian descent, both by national origins (Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, Vietnamese) and by shared concerns. It introduces readers to the distinctive literary history of each group of writers and discusses issues that connect or divide these different groups. Part I provides a literary history of each constituent national group and underlines salient historical events that have affected its writing. Part II, addressing common racial issues such as nationalism, representation and crises of identity, explores the forces that bind, divide, and foster exchange between writers of diverse ethnic origins. The volume is intended to serve as both a guide and a reference work for scholars, teachers and students in Asian American studies, ethnic studies and American studies. In terms of breadth and depth of coverage it is the first of its kind.

The Gulf War and its aftermath have testified once again to the significance placed on the meanings and images of Vietnam by US media and culture. Almost two decades after the end of hostilities, the Vietnam War remains a dominant moral, political and military touchstone in American cultural consciousness. Vietnam War Stories provides a comprehensive critical framework for understanding the Vietnam experience, Vietnam narratives and modern war literature. The narratives examined - personal accounts as well as novels - portray a soldier's and a country's journey from pre-war innocence, through battlefield experience and consideration, to a difficult post-war adjustment. Tobey Herzog places these narratives within the context of important cultural and literary themes, including inherent ironies of war, the "John Wayne syndrome" of pre-war innocence, and the "heavy Heart-of-Darkness trip" of the conflict itself.