Re-Membering and Surviving

African American Fiction of the Vietnam War

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Pub Date 01 Nov 2020 | Archive Date 30 Oct 2020

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Description

The first book-length critical study of the black experience in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, this text interrogates the meaning of heroism based on models from African and African American expressive culture. It focuses on four novels: Captain Blackman (1972) by John A. Williams, Tragic Magic (1978) by Wesley Brown, Coming Home (1971) by George Davis, and De Mojo Blues (1985) by A. R. Flowers. Discussions of the novels are framed within the historical context of all wars prior to Vietnam in which Black Americans fought. The success or failure of the hero on his identity quest is predicated upon the extent to which he can reconnect with African or African American cultural memory. He is engaged therefore in “re-membering,” a term laden with the specificity of race that implies a cultural history comprised of African retentions and an interdependent relationship with the community for survival. The reader will find that a common history of racism and exploitation that African Americans and Vietnamese share sometimes results in the hero’s empathy with and compassion for the so-called enemy, a unique contribution of the black novelist to American war literature.

The first book-length critical study of the black experience in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, this text interrogates the meaning of heroism based on models from African and African American...


Advance Praise

“Shirley A. James Hanshaw’s Re-Membering and Surviving is a powerful call seeking a response. This superb analytical voice examines literature by four black writers who are masterful storytellers shaped in the caldron of war. Through her attention to these figures, Hanshaw reveals an American voice that has been kept in obscurity. Here, the historical background illuminates a post modern imagination.”

—Yusef Komunyakaa, winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems

“Shirley A. James Hanshaw’s Re-Membering and Surviving is a powerful call seeking a response. This superb analytical voice examines literature by four black writers who are masterful storytellers...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781611863710
PRICE $39.95 (USD)
PAGES 336

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