Jennifer Lee
From Public Engagement to Publication
1.Introduction
In Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016) claims that all wars are fought twice — the first time on the battlefield, and the second, in our collective memory. Our collective memory of the Vietnam War is constructed from manifold narratives, but most are told from the point of view of the majority — in this case, White Americans. Nguyen points out that that the majority enjoys narrative plentitude; most of the stories focus on them, and they are told from their perspective. Minorities, by contrast, experience narrative scarcity. Relatively few stories are told about us, and even fewer are told from our perspective.
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