Tracing im/mobilities in contemporary Vietnamese American refugee literature

Prevalent portrayals often reduce refugees to symbols of crisis, framing them through shocking numbers, overwhelming statistics, or sensationalist imagery. But what about their stories? What about the individuals behind the (photo-)graphs? In this context, literary interventions can open up new perspectives, prompting a reconsideration of refugee experiences beyond the language of emergency and spectacularization.

This book addresses that challenge by exploring representations of im/mobilities and refugee identities in contemporary Vietnamese American literature. It focuses on novels and short stories by 1.5- and second-generation writers, including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ocean Vuong, Aimee Phan, lê thi diem thúy, and Eric Nguyen. Their works interrogate the politics of mobility inherent in forced migration, offering nuanced narratives that complicate dominant discourses of displacement.

Carole Martin finished her doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where she taught courses in North American literary history. Previously, she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and Anthropology at the University of Basel. In 2024, she joined the Swiss National Science Foundation as a scientific officer.