127012 KO Critical Readings in Literature (2019S)

In this course, we will survey the field of Vietnamese American literature, which has been steadily growing since the fall/liberation of Saigon in 1975 and the consequent flight of South Vietnamese citizens to the United States. We will study how the Vietnam War – or the American War, as it is often called in Vietnam – is remembered in literature and how its impact is negotiated by first- and second-generation Vietnamese Americans. By recognizing the refugee status of the authors or their parents, we will challenge the categorization of Vietnamese American literature as immigrant literature, and we will also situate it in relation to other traditions of minority writing in the United States. We will study a variety of genres, including life writing, poetry, short stories, and novels, some of which go beyond the context of the war by imagining the lives of historical figures or focusing on issues like gender and (alternative) forms of kinship. Our analyses will be sharpened by different theoretical approaches, most notably queer and postcolonial and theory.