Body Counts - by Yen Le Espiritu

Book Synopsis

Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es) examines how the Vietnam War has continued to serve as a stage for the shoring up of American imperialist adventure and for the (re)production of American and Vietnamese American identities. Focusing on the politics of war memory and commemoration, this book retheorizes the connections among history, memory, and power and refashions the fields of American studies, Asian American studies, and refugee studies not around the narratives of American exceptionalism, immigration, and transnationalism but around the crucial issues of war, race, and violence--and the history and memories that are forged in the aftermath of war. At the same time, the book moves decisively away from the "damage-centered" approach that pathologizes loss and trauma by detailing how first- and second-generation Vietnamese have created alternative memories and epistemologies that challenge the established public narratives of the Vietnam War and Vietnamese people. Explicitly interdisciplinary, Body Counts moves between the humanities and social sciences, drawing on historical, ethnographic, cultural, and virtual evidence in order to illuminate the places where Vietnamese refugees have managed to conjure up social, public, and collective remembering.

From the Back Cover

"Eloquent, evocative, and urgent, Espiritu's Body Counts constantly hits the mark with regard to recalibrating and redirecting the dominant narrative about refugees as traumatized subjects. Espiritu focuses instead on the ways in which a close analysis of these bodies are integral to understanding the past, present, and future of U.S. imperialism and militarism."--Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work

"Espiritu uses her considerable scholarly talent to develop the notion of refuge(ee) not as a social problem but as a conceptual prism that exposes the multiple legacies of U.S. militarized violence and colonialism. Original and trenchantly argued, this book refracts light on the invisible stories of Vietnamese refugees and points us towards new innovative approaches for future inquiries."--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens

"A pathbreaking work in "critical refuge(e) studies," Body Counts introduces extremely rich and provocative new methodologies for investigating the humanitarian violence of U.S. military empire. Compelling us to move beyond the familiar terms of American war narrative and its silences, Espiritu offers the everyday refugee life as a site of politicizing possibilities and hopes for a world radically remade."--Lisa Yoneyama, Professor, University of Toronto, author of Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory

Review Quotes

"An important addition to the transnational history of the Vietnam War, Cold War global history, and the history of Asian migration to the United States. . . . An Innovative work."--Heonik Kwon "American Journal of Sociology (AJS)" (11/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Yen Le Espiritu is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of the award-winning Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries (UC Press, 2003).