Abstract
This chapter traces the afterlife of war and empire in Aimee Phan’s short story collection, We Should Never Meet (2004), through the orphan-refugee and mother subjects that emerge from the Vietnam War. Phan’s mother-characters in wartime Vietnam and orphan-characters in the USA after the war reveal the structures of violence related to war and empire, in particular race, gender, American national meaning-making, and the transnational adoption industry. They also reveal the work of the postwar religious imagination as these figures labor to make meaning out of trauma and loss.
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Khúc, M. (2016). (Un)Making Mothers, Orphans, and Transnational Adoptees: The Afterlife of the Vietnam War in Aimee Phan’s We Should Never Meet . In: Kim, N., Joh, W. (eds) Critical Theology against US Militarism in Asia. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48013-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48013-2_4
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-48012-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48013-2
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