The Country of Memory
Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam
Hue-Tam Ho Tai(Editor)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 1. October 2001
Book
Hardback
284 pages
978-0-520-22266-3 (ISBN)
Description
The American experience in the Vietnam War has been the subject of a vast body of scholarly work, yet surprisingly little has been written about how the war is remembered by Vietnamese themselves. "The Country of Memory" fills this gap in the literature by addressing the subject of history, memory and commemoration of the Vietnam War in modern day Vietnam. This pathbreaking volume details the nuances, sources and contradictions in both official and private memory of the War, providing a provocative assessment of social and cultural change in Vietnam since the 1980s. Inspired by the experiences of Vietnamese veterans, artists, authorities and ordinary peasants, these essays examine a society undergoing a rapid and traumatic shift in politics and economic structure. Each chapter considers specific aspects of Vietnamese culture and society, such as art history, commemorative rituals and literature, gender and tourism. The contributors call attention to not only the social milieu in which the work of memory takes place, but also the historical context in which different representations of the past are constructed.
Drawing from a variety of sources, such as prison memoirs, commemorative
Drawing from a variety of sources, such as prison memoirs, commemorative
More details
Series
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
23 b-w photographs
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-22266-3 (9780520222663)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Hue-Tam Ho Tai is the Kenneth T. Young Professor of Sino-Vietnamese History at Harvard University. She is the author of Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam (1983) and Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution (1992). John Bodnar is Chancellors' Professor of History at Indiana University and author of Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century.
Content
Acknowledgments Illustrations Foreword John Bodnar Introduction: Situating Memory Hue-Tam Ho Tai Part One: Constructing Memory 1. Reading Revolutionary Prison Memoirs Peter Zinoman 2. "The Motherland Remembers Your Sacrifice": Commemorating War Dead in Northern Vietnam Shaun Kingsley Malarney 3. Museum-Shrine: Revolution and Its Tutelary Spirit in the Village of My Hoa Hung Christoph Giebel Part Two: Repackaging the Past 4. Framing the National Spirit: Viewing and Reviewing Painting under the Revolution Nora A. Taylor 5. The Past Without the Pain: The Manufacture of Nostalgia in Vietnam's Tourism Industry Laurel B. Kennedy & Mary Rose Williams Part Three: Gendered Memory 6. Faces of Remembrance and Forgetting Hue-Tam Ho Tai 7. Contests of Memory: Remembering and Forgetting War in the Contemporary Vietnamese Cinema Mark Philip Bradley Afterword: Commemoration and Community Hue-Tam Ho Tai Glossary Bibliography List of Contributors Index