Asian American War Stories

Dr. Jeff Gibbons is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His primary areas of scholarship are Asian American Studies and Critical Race Studies. At West Point he teach a variety of electives in contemporary Asian American literature, African American literature, and Critical Race studies; he also serves at the director of the Introduction to Literature course that all first-year students must take.

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION: Trauma and Healing in Contemporary Asian American Literature ………1

CHAPTER 1: Discovering Beauty through Illness and Failure in Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered…………………………………………………………………………...23

CHAPTER 2: Open Wounds and Half Lives: Post-traumatic Illness and the Struggle to Heal in Lan Cao’s The Lotus and the Storm………………………………………...66

CHAPTER 3: Testimony in Asian American Literature………………………………………116

CHAPTER 4: Intergenerational Trauma in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous………………………………………………………………………………………..159

CHAPTER 5: The Trauma of Citizenship: Collective Healing in Lawson Inada’s Internment Poetry……………………………………………………………………………….188

Index