America's Vietnam : The Longue Duree of U.S. Literature and Empire PDF

by Nguyen Marguerite Nguyen

Part of the Asian American History & Cultu series

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Americaâ€™s Vietnam challenges the prevailing genealogy of Vietnamâ€™s emergence in the American imaginationâ€”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 VÃµ Phiáº¿n. The bookâ€™s cross-cultural prism spans Paris, Saigon, New York, and multiple oceans, and its departure from Cold War frames reveals rich cross-period connections.

Americaâ€™s Vietnam recounts a mostly unexamined story of Southeast Asiaâ€™s lasting and varied influence on U.S. aesthetic and political concerns. Tracking Vietnamâ€™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 Statesâ€™ shifting role in the world. As Americaâ€™s longstanding presence in Vietnam evolves, the literature it generates significantly revises our perceptions of war, race, and empire over time.