The Viet Nam War/the American war: images and representations in Euro-American and Vietnamese exile narratives

Abstract

This book seeks to reformulate canon of writings on what is called the Viet Nam War in America and the American War in Viet Nam. Until recently, accepted canon has consisted almost exclusively of American white male combat narratives, which often reflect and perpetuate Asian stereotypes. Renny Christopher introduces material that displays a bicultural perspective, including works by Vietnamese exile writers and by lesser-known Euro-Americans who attempt to bridge cultural gap. Christopher traces history of American stereotyping of Asians and shows how Euro-American ethnocentricity has limited most American authors' ability to represent fairly Vietnamese in their stories. By giving us access to Vietnamese representations of war, she creates a context for understanding way war was experienced from other side, and she offers perceptive, well-documented analyses of how and why Americans have so emphatically excised Vietnamese from narratives about a war fought in their own country.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 49 citations exist upstream.