Memories of War: Trauma and Silence in the Narratives of Black Vietnam Veterans

Memories of War: Trauma and Silence in the Narratives of Black Vietnam Veterans is an interdisciplinary examination of how the trauma of the Vietnam War affected Black Vietnam Veterans and manifested itself into a profound silence and how that silence affected the telling of their stories and experiences of the war. Narratives of Black Vietnam Veterans and oral histories are examined to demonstrate how the trauma of war have altered or misconstrued their narratives and how their participation in the Vietnam War has been discredited and how this has led to their silence, invisibility, and misrepresentation in both Vietnam War and American literature. Within their narratives, they continuously grapple with their two-ness, the double consciousness of fighting for a country that deprived them of their inalienable rights as human beings--of being both a Black soldier in the first war with integrated troops and being treated as second class citizens when they returned home. Memories of War brings to the forefront of the American literary landscape the voices and memories of those Black Vietnam Veterans who have so often been forgotten.