America's Vietnam : the longue durée of U.S. literature and empire / Marguerite Nguyen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nguyen, Marguerite Bich, 1976- author.

Contributor:

Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Asian American history and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Social aspects--United States.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975.

Popular culture--United States--History--20th century.

Popular culture.

United States.

History.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Influence.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Literature and the war.

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Mass media and the war.

War and society.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Mass media and war.

Social aspects.

War and literature.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 232 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : Temple University Press, 2018.

Summary:

"America's Vietnam challenges the prevailing genealogy of Vietnam's emergence in the American imagination--one that presupposes the Vietnam War as the starting point of meaningful Vietnamese--U.S. political and cultural involvements. Examining literature from as early as the 1820s, Marguerite Nguyen takes a comparative, long historical approach to interpreting constructions of Vietnam in American literature. She analyzes works in various genres published in English and Vietnamese by Monique Truong and Michael Herr as well as lesser-known writers such as John White, Harry Hervey, and V Phi?n. The book's cross-cultural prism spans Paris, Saigon, New York, and multiple oceans, and its departure from Cold War frames reveals rich cross-period connections. America's Vietnam recounts a mostly unexamined story of Southeast Asia's lasting and varied influence on U.S. aesthetic and political concerns. Tracking Vietnam's transition from an emergent nation in the nineteenth century to a French colony to a Vietnamese-American war zone, Nguyen demonstrates that how authors represent Vietnam is deeply entwined with the United States' shifting role in the world. As America's longstanding presence in Vietnam evolves, the literature it generates significantly revises our perceptions of war, race, and empire over time"-- Provided by publisher.

"Examining works written in English and Vietnamese, this book maps a transnational, longue dureé model for understanding the history of Vietnamese-American encounters and demonstrates how genre significantly shapes our perceptions of war, race, and empire"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Melodrama, Miscegenation, and Americanized Empire in French Indochina

2. Who Served Up Modernism? Vietnamese Labor and Anticolonialism in Modernist Paris

3. Vietnam War Exceptionalism: Dismembering and Disremembering Vietnam

4. Critical Refugee Studies and the Emergence of Vietnamese American Letters.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Anne and Joseph Trachtman Memorial Book Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Nguyen, Marguerite Bich, 1976- America's Vietnam.

ISBN:

9781439916124

1439916128

9781439916117

143991611X

OCLC:

1010986263

Publisher Number:

40028319807

40028301022