“Writing about War”: Dương Thu Hương’s Representations of the Vietnam-American War

While 30 April 1975 represented the end of hostilities between North and South Vietnam, it was not internecine conflicts. The victorious communists treated Southerners with contempt subjected them to humiliation violence, including incarceration in so-called re-education camps. Dương Thu Hương served Women’s Youth Brigade during war hoped that victory would lead establishment a more egalitarian democratic society. appalled when communist party clamped down on all freedoms she expressed her dissent public through fiction. This essay analyses two novels English translation, Novel Without Name (1995) Memories Pure Spring (2000), focusing recurrent thematics are central these works, paradoxes remembrance, critiques war, idea fiction as testimony, indictments orthodoxy double standards.