The Distant Shores of Freedom analyses literary works in English written by Vietnamese refugees in the US. Fiction and memoirs by Vietnamese Americans recover stories and memories that are often different from mainstream American ones and that difference enables readers to think of the US war in Vietnam from perspectives that are missing in mainstream representations. Dwelling not only on the war and its aftermaths, Vietnamese American writings also ponder over the existential issues of exile; the idea of home; the pain of marginality and racism; the question of community formation within the US; and the complexity of diasporic lives. Subarno Chattarji raises critical questions such as who gets to speak and write, and to what ends and purposes? Who reads Vietnamese American writings and how can we account for these publications in the US over a period of time? What can and cannot be written or spoken? What is remembered and what is silenced? What traumas and memories are articulated? These questions point towards a larger context of diaspora studies as well as 'the rituals of cultural memory' that complicate our understanding of the Vietnam War and its aftermaths.

Author Biography

Subarno Chattarji is Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of Delhi. He studied at the universities of Delhi and Oxford and was awarded a doctorate in American poetry on the Vietnam War. He has taught for three decades, primarily in Delhi, and also in Japan and Wales. Dr Chattarji is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the Felix Scholarship at the University of Oxford, a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship, a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress, and an Academic Writing Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, Italy. He has authored and edited several books and articles on subjects ranging from Indian media to English Studies in India and US poetry on the Vietnam War.