My Viet
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Edited by:
Michele Janette
About this book
Twentieth-century America reduced Vietnam to “’Nam”: the surreal site of a military nightmare. The early twenty-first century has seen the revision of this image to recognize the people and culture of Vietnam itself. Vietnamese Americans, both immigrants and the American children of immigrants, have participated in changing this perception, consistently presenting their side of the story in memoirs published since the 1960s. My Viet is the first anthology to provide a comprehensive overview of these memoirs and the historical picture they offer and to include Vietnamese writing that goes beyond memoir, revealing a new generation of Vietnamese American poetry, fiction, and drama.
The narratives in Part 1, Tales of Witness, treat the major events of the Vietnamese diasapora: Vietnam’s resistance to French colonization, the “Vietnam War,” post-war Vietnamese life, immigration to and life in America, and reconnections with contemporary Vietnam. Part 2, Tales of Imagination, moves beyond the master narratives of war and immigration to survey exciting innovations in the work of Vietnamese American writers. The texts demonstrate the full flowering of Vietnamese American literature in English and are among the best contemporary writings of any category.
My Viet presents a rich, varied, and provocative collection of literary work that explores Vietnam from many Vietnamese points of view, sees America through a specifically Vietnamese American lens, and broadens the scope of Vietnamese American literature to its fullest extent.
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
v -
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Acknowledgments
vii -
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Introduction
ix -
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A Note on Language
xxix - Part One: Tales of Witness
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Fallen Leaves
3 -
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Shallow Graves
12 -
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Twenty Years and Twenty Days
20 -
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A Thousand Tears Falling
28 -
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A Vietcong Memoir
36 -
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“Electioneering: Vietnamese Style”
41 -
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No Passenger on the River
48 -
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Our Endless War: Inside Vietnam
61 -
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In the Jaws of History
65 -
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When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
72 -
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The Sacred Willow
95 -
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At Home in America
106 -
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South Wind Changing
113 -
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The Unwanted
120 -
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“The Stories They Carried”
127 -
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Catfish and Mandala
133 - Part Two: Tales of Imagination
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Beyond the East Wind
141 -
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The Little Weaver of Thái-Yên Village
149 -
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The Land I Lost
154 -
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Miles from Home
161 -
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Monkey Bridge
166 -
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placing the accents
183 -
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“Georgia Red Dirt”
187 -
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Song of the Cicadas
193 -
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In the Mynah Bird’s Own Words
197 -
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The Book of Salt
202 -
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“the gangster we are all looking for”
207 -
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All Around What Empties Out
215 -
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“Visitors”
217 -
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Breaking the Map
230 -
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Living Dead in Denmark
235 -
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“It Was His Story”
247 -
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Permissions
249
