Download or read book Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War written by John A. Wood and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades since the Vietnam War, veteran memoirs have influenced Americans’ understanding of the conflict. Yet few historians or literary scholars have scrutinized how the genre has shaped the nation’s collective memory of the war and its aftermath. Instead, veterans’ accounts are mined for colorful quotes and then dropped from public discourse; are accepted as factual sources with little attention to how memory, no matter how authentic, can diverge from events; or are not contextualized in terms of the race, gender, or class of the narrators. Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War is a landmark study of the cultural heritage of the war in Vietnam as presented through the experience of its American participants. Crossing disciplinary borders in ways rarely attempted by historians, John A. Wood unearths truths embedded in the memoirists’ treatments of combat, the Vietnamese people, race relations in the United States military, male-female relationships in the war zone, and veterans’ postwar troubles. He also examines the publishing industry’s influence on collective memory, discussing, for example, the tendency of publishers and reviewers to privilege memoirs critical of the war. Veteran Narratives is a significant and original addition to the literature on Vietnam veterans and the conflict as a whole.
Download or read book Vietnam War Memoirs The Most Prominent Veterans Narrative About Vietnam War written by Mike Parson and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Social Memory and War Narratives written by C. Weber and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vietnam War has had many long-reaching, traumatic effects, not just on the veterans of the war, but on their children as well. In this book, Weber examines the concept of the war as a social monad, a confusing array of personal stories and public histories that disrupt traditional ways of knowing the social world for the second generation.
Download or read book Revisiting Vietnam written by Julia Bleakney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the memorializing practices of American veterans of the Vietnam War at several of the most significant contemporary sites of memory in the United States and Vietnam. These sites include veterans' memoirs, museum exhibits, replicas of the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and tourism to Vietnam. Because war memorializing has, since the late 1960s, shifted focus from national soul searching to personal identity and recovery, I emphasize how contemporary narratives of the war, shaped more by memory than by history, often are detached from the specific history of the war and its political controversies. Drawing on trauma and cultural memory scholarship, as well as empirical data gathered during field research in the U.S. and Vietnam, the author examines how veterans' memorializing practices have become increasingly individualized, commodified, and conservative since the early 1980s.
Download or read book The Vietnam War in American Memory written by Patrick Hagopian and published by Culture, Politics, and the Col. This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title presents a penetrating account of the cultural politics surrounding the memorialisation of the Vietnam War. It is a study of American attempts to come to terms with the legacy of the Vietnam War.
Download or read book Tangled Memories written by Marita Sturken and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1997-02-28 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing the ways U.S. culture has been formed and transformed in the 80s and 90s by its response to the Vietnam War and the AIDS epidemic, Marita Sturken argues that each has disrupted our conventional notions of community, nation, consensus, and "American culture." She examines the relationship of camera images to the production of cultural memory, the mixing of fantasy and reenactment in memory, the role of trauma and survivors in creating cultural comfort, and how discourses of healing can smooth over the tensions of political events. Sturken's discussion encompasses a brilliant comparison of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the AIDS Quilt; her profound reading of the Memorial as a national wailing wall—one whose emphasis on the veterans and war dead has allowed the discourse of heroes, sacrifice, and honor to resurface at the same time that it is an implicit condemnation of war—is particularly compelling. The book also includes discussions of the Kennedy assassination, the Persian Gulf War, the Challenger explosion, and the Rodney King beating. While debunking the image of the United States as a culture of amnesia, Sturken also shows how remembering itself is a form of forgetting, and how exclusion is a vital part of memory formation.
Download or read book The Vietnam War Era written by Bruce O. Solheim and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vietnam War continues to haunt America?s collective memory. With only the Civil War surpassing the Vietnam War in terms of national divisiveness, earlier discord continues as conflicting lessons from the Vietnam War are applied to current U.S. war policy. Bruce O. Solheim provides a broad picture of the Vietnam War era at home and in Southeast Asia by combining historical narrative with biographical profiles and personal reflections, allowing the story to unfold in multiple layers, as seen from all sides of the conflict through the eyes of those who were actually involved. In The Vietnam War Era, Solheim explores, and hopes to answer, vital questions about the American war in Vietnam. What lessons have Americans learned from our defeat, and how should we apply that knowledge in implementing current foreign policy? How do we fit the Vietnam War era into our greater historical narrative?
Download or read book Looking Back on the Vietnam War written by Brenda M. Boyle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than forty years have passed since the official end of the Vietnam War, yet the war’s legacies endure. Its history and iconography still provide fodder for film and fiction, communities of war refugees have spawned a wide Vietnamese diaspora, and the United States military remains embroiled in unwinnable wars with eerie echoes of Vietnam. Looking Back on the Vietnam War brings together scholars from a broad variety of disciplines, who offer fresh insights on the war’s psychological, economic, artistic, political, and environmental impacts. Each essay examines a different facet of the war, from its representation in Marvel comic books to the experiences of Vietnamese soldiers exposed to Agent Orange. By putting these pieces together, the contributors assemble an expansive yet nuanced composite portrait of the war and its global legacies. Though they come from diverse scholarly backgrounds, ranging from anthropology to film studies, the contributors are united in their commitment to original research. Whether exploring rare archives or engaging in extensive interviews, they voice perspectives that have been excluded from standard historical accounts. Looking Back on the Vietnam War thus embarks on an interdisciplinary and international investigation to discover what we remember about the war, how we remember it, and why.
Download or read book Vietnam War Stories written by Tobey C. Herzog and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gulf War and its aftermath have testified once again to the significance placed on the meanings and images of Vietnam by US media and culture. Almost two decades after the end of hostilities, the Vietnam War remains a dominant moral, political and military touchstone in American cultural consciousness. Vietnam War Stories provides a comprehensi
Download or read book Never Forgotten written by Jenny La Sala and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Vietnam Veterans tours were over, they came home to find a country divided and a nation unappreciative of their service. How they were treated, how they integrated back into society, and how their wartime experiences changed them are just some of the questions answered, as their stories unfold in Never Forgotten. Told by the Veterans themselves, these are their stories. "The book Never Forgotten, captures 58 Veterans accounts and others on what it was like to experience the Vietnam War. In their own words, they talk about their return home, struggles to maintain healthy relationships, decades of recovery, and feelings of worthlessness. Many find emotional well-being and self-worth by helping other Veterans. Those of us who are Veterans or whose loved ones have served in war, know with certainty we are different when we return home, than before we marched off to war. Because of this difference, for ourselves and for those we love and enjoy having in our lives, Never Forgotten is a must read." ~ Michael B. Christy, Lt. Col. USA (ret) and Vietnam Veteran
Download or read book The Spitting Image written by Jerry Lembcke and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the startling image of an anti-war protested spitting on a uniformed veteran misrepresented the narrative of Vietnam War political debate One of the most resilient images of the Vietnam era is that of the anti-war protester — often a woman — spitting on the uniformed veteran just off the plane. The lingering potency of this icon was evident during the Gulf War, when war supporters invoked it to discredit their opposition. In this startling book, Jerry Lembcke demonstrates that not a single incident of this sort has been convincingly documented. Rather, the anti-war Left saw in veterans a natural ally, and the relationship between anti-war forces and most veterans was defined by mutual support. Indeed one soldier wrote angrily to Vice President Spiro Agnew that the only Americans who seemed concerned about the soldier's welfare were the anti-war activists. While the veterans were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable about their service, this sense of unease was, Lembcke argues, more often rooted in the political practices of the Right. Tracing a range of conflicts in the twentieth century, the book illustrates how regimes engaged in unpopular conflicts often vilify their domestic opponents for "stabbing the boys in the back." Concluding with an account of the powerful role played by Hollywood in cementing the myth of the betrayed veteran through such films as Coming Home, Taxi Driver, and Rambo, Jerry Lembcke's book stands as one of the most important, original, and controversial works of cultural history in recent years.
Download or read book Soldier Talk written by Paul Vincent Budra and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soldier Talk is a collection of essays about the Vietnam combat veteran and his representation of his experience. The Vietnam War created a vast archive of recorded accounts of the war, permitting an unprecedented opportunity to confront its brutal secrets. This book is about how to read and how to hear the historical, psychological, and narrative truths of soldiers' talk. The ten chapters explore the phenomenon of soldier talk; the oral narrative form of so much of the Vietnam War literature; the collection of veteran interviews published under the title Nam; Vietnam War poetry; the strange tale of Bobby Garwood, the private who disappeared 10 days before he was to return home and surfaced 13 years later in Hanoi; Vietnam oral history and revolutionary socialism; the historiography of the Vietnam War; "queering Vietnam"; the African American experience of Vietnam; and women and the war. Along the way the authors touch on most of the best-known and most important writing to come out of the war.
Download or read book Voices from the Vietnam War written by Xiaobing Li and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2010-05-07 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Some of this book is heartrending; some of it is as gripping as a thriller; and all of it will add to our understanding of the war” (Booklist). The Vietnam War’s influence on politics, foreign policy, and subsequent military campaigns is the center of much debate and analysis. But the impact on veterans across the globe, as well as the effects on individual lives and communities, is a largely neglected issue. As a consequence of cultural and legal barriers, the oral histories of the Vietnam War currently available in English are predictably one-sided, providing limited insight into the inner workings of the Communist nations that participated in the war. Furthermore, many of these accounts focus on combat experiences rather than the backgrounds, belief systems, and social experiences of interviewees, resulting in an incomplete historiography of the war. Chinese native Xiaobing Li corrects this oversight in Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans. Li spent seven years gathering hundreds of personal accounts from survivors, accounts that span continents, nationalities, and political affiliations. The twenty-two intimate stories in this book feature the experiences of American, Chinese, Russian, Korean, and North and South Vietnamese veterans, representing the views of both anti-Communist and Communist participants, including Chinese officers of the PLA, a Russian missile-training instructor, and a KGB spy. These narratives humanize and contextualize the war’s events while shedding light on aspects of the war previously unknown to Western scholars—providing fresh perspectives on a long-discussed topic. “Li’s achievement is most remarkable for the window he opens onto the lives of Chinese and Russian veterans; their rare accounts appear here for the first time in English.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Strong Hearts Wounded Souls written by Tom Holm and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An all-encompassing study . . . Holm shows the interconnecting historical, social and psychological attributes of Native American veterans.” —Historynet.com At least 43,000 Native Americans fought in the Vietnam War, yet both the American public and the United States government have been slow to acknowledge their presence and sacrifices in that conflict. In this first-of-its-kind study, Tom Holm draws on extensive interviews with Native American veterans to tell the story of their experiences in Vietnam and their readjustment to civilian life. Holm describes how Native American motives for going to war, experiences of combat, and readjustment to civilian ways differ from those of other ethnic groups. He explores Native American traditions of warfare and the role of the warrior to explain why many young Indigenous men chose to fight in Vietnam. He shows how Native Americans drew on tribal customs and religion to sustain them during combat. And he describes the rituals and ceremonies practiced by families and tribes to help heal veterans of the trauma of war and return them to the “white path of peace.” This information, largely unknown outside the Native American community, adds important new perspectives to our national memory of the Vietnam war and its aftermath. “An overview of one kind of serviceman about which nothing substantive has been written: the Native American . . . A fascinating introduction to the role of military traditions and the warrior ethic in mid-20th-century [Native American] life.” —Library Journal
Download or read book Echoes of Combat written by Fred Turner and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using psychological trauma as its guiding metaphor, Echoes of Combat is the first book to explore the parallels between the healing of Vietnam veterans and Americans' collective recovery from the war. Drawing on such diverse sources as films, novels, television series, political speeches, monuments, medical texts, and inside accounts of the men's movement, Fred Turner shows how the healing narratives of individuals have allowed us to transform our recollections of our aggression in Vietnam into tales of national sacrifice.
Download or read book Echoes of Combat written by Fred Turner and published by . This book was released on 2002-02 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the parallels between the healing of Vietnam veterans and Americans' collective recovery from the war. Examines films and novels, as well as political speeches, national monuments, and the backwoods rituals of the men's movement in light of the testimony of traumatized veterans. During the Vietnam War, both soldiers in combat and citizens on the home front witnessed the collapse of the myths on which they had been raised. As they have tried to rebuild those myths over the last 25 years, both traumatized veterans and Americans at large have slipped into complex cycles of denial and recollection. Americans must accept, rather than seek to expunge, their memories of the conflict.
Download or read book Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories written by Sarah A. Larsen and published by Wisconsin Historical Society. This book was released on 2010 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A companion book to the documentary produced by Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories showcases 40 first-person stories from those who fought in America's longest war. From barely-legal sons of Wisconsin to seasoned soldiers, the men and women in these pages make up a diverse collection of voices: an army chaplain who led services at Khe Sanh but never picked up a weapon; identical twin brothers who discover they are stationed at the same South Vietnam base; a Hmong refugee who fought the Secret War at age 12 in the jungles of Laos and later moved to Milwaukee; two prisoners of war whose years in captivity total almost 14; a Medal of Honor recipient; and dozens more. The stories in these pages expand beyond the borders of the war to include personal accounts of the events leading up to it, as well as the experiences of veterans as they return home to civilian life at the height of antiwar protest. Supported by original maps, photographs from the veterans' own collections, historical chapter introductions, biographies, and a comprehensive "honor roll" of Wisconsin-born soldiers who died or remain missing, Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories is an unforgettable collection and lasting tribute to our veterans.
