Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory PDF
Preview Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory
Returns of War Nation of Nations: Immigrant History as American History General Editor: Matthew Jacobson Founding Editors: Matthew Jacobson and Werner Sollors Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: The Third Asiatic Invasion: Migra- Korean Military Brides in America tion and Empire in Filipino America, Ji-Yeon Yuh 1898–1946 Rick Baldoz Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America Race for Citizenship: Black Orien- Thomas J. Ferraro talism and Asian Uplift from Pre- Emancipation to Neoliberal America Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean Helen Heran Jun American Narratives and the Second Generation Entitled to Nothing: The Struggle for Lisa D. McGill Immigrant Health Care in the Age of Welfare Reform Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Lisa Sun- Hee Park Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship Sara K. Dorow The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden Immigration and American Popular Lisa Sun- Hee Park and David Naguib Culture: An Introduction Pellow Jeffrey Melnick and Rachel Rubin Arab America: Gender, Cultural Poli- From Arrival to Incorporation: Mi- tics, and Activism grants to the U.S. in a Global Era Nadine Naber Edited by Elliott Barkan, Hasia Diner, and Alan M. Kraut Social Death: Racialized Rightless- ness and the Criminalization of the Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Unprotected Politics in the U.S.- Mexico Borderlands Lisa Marie Cacho Alicia Schmidt Camacho Love and Empire: Cybermarriage and The Force of Domesticity: Filipina Citizenship across the Americas Migrants and Globalization Felicity Amaya Schaeffer Rhacel Salazar Parreñas Global Families: A History of Asian Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of International Adoption in America Citizenship Catherine Ceniza Choy Edited by Rachel Ida Buff Who’s Your Paddy?: Racial Expecta- Rough Writing: Ethnic Authorship in tions and the Struggle for Irish Ameri- Theodore Roosevelt’s America can Identity Aviva F. Taubenfeld Jennifer Nugent Duffy Islam Is a Foreign Country: Ameri- Strange Fruit of the Black Pacific: can Muslims and the Global Crisis of Imperialism’s Racial Justice and Its Authority Fugitives Zareena Grewal Vince Schleitwiler Soft Soil, Black Grapes: The Birth of The New Immigrant Whiteness: Italian Winemaking in California Neoliberalism, Race, and Post- Soviet Simone Cinotto Migration to the United States Claudia Sadowski- Smith African & American: West Africans in Post– Civil Rights America Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Re- Marilyn Halter and Violet Showers fusal in the Dominican Americas, from Johnson the 19th Century to the Present Dixa Ramírez Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War Girlhood in the Borderlands: Mexican Cindy I- Fen Cheng Teens Caught in the Crossroads of Migration From the Land of Shadows: War, Revo- Lilia Soto lution, and the Making of the Cambo- dian Diaspora Returns of War: South Vietnam and Khatharya Um the Price of Refugee Memory Long T. Bui The Cultural Politics of U.S. Immigra- tion: Gender, Race, and Media Leah Perry Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the US Racial Imagination in Brown and White Lee Bebout Returns of War South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory Long T. Bui NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York www.nyupress.org © 2018 by New York University All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bui, Long T., author. Title: Returns of war : South Vietnam and the price of refugee memory / Long T. Bui. Description: New York : New York University Press, [2018] | Series: Nation of nations : immigrant history as American history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018012206| ISBN 9781479817061 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479871957 (pb : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Vietnamese Americans. | Vietnamese—United States—Historiography. | Refugees—Vietnam (Republic) | Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Refugees. Classification: LCC E184.V53 B84 2018 | DDC 973/.0495922—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018012206 New York University Press books are printed on acid- free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppli- ers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook Contents Note on Language ix Introduction 1 1. Archival Others: The Vietnamese as Absent Presence in the Historical Record 25 2. Refugee Assets: The Political Reeducation of Personal Trauma and Family Bonds 57 3. Dismembered Lives: The Fractured Body Politics of the “Little Saigon” Community 87 4. Militarized Freedoms: Vietnamese American Soldiers Fighting “Future Vietnams” 122 5. Empire’s Residuals: The Return Migration of Former Exiles to Globalizing Vietnam 169 Epilogue 201 Acknowledgments 205 Notes 209 References 219 Index 239 About the Author 251 vii Note on Language Modern Vietnamese is a monosyllabic tonal language that uses diacriti- cal marks in written form. However, many Vietnamese living overseas have adopted different linguistic and writing patterns. The compound word “Vietnam” has somewhat displaced the once common spelling, “Viet Nam,” in English, though the latter has regained popularity. Work- ing between multiple languages lends visibility to the ways language can change depending on context or historical periods, thus creating inevi- table problems and a variety of confusions of which readers must be aware. In Vietnamese, a person’s last name or family surname comes first, and this causes confusion when names appear with the surname last in Western sources but first in Vietnamese sources. I have chosen to faithfully present names as I am introduced to them by primary and sec- ondary sources. I often refer to the “American War” when talking from a Vietnamese perspective, but then refer to the “Vietnam War” when speaking from the U.S. context. I employ the phrase “South Vietnam” to refer to the former Republic of Vietnam (RVN) (1955– 1975), but this term may be confused with the general territory of Vietnam’s south- ern region. Most of the time, I am referring to the RVN, except when I explicitly refer to the south as purely a geographic space. The creative language I employ throughout the book offers a mix of anecdotes, puns, colloquialisms, and academic jargon that speaks to the creative disor- derly nature of writing about the structure of memory and identity. This decision to include both formal and informal elements encourages read- ers to make their own sense of things as they are presented in the text. ix
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