ABSTRACT
With the Vietnam War serving as the quintessential site of trauma for the Vietnamese diaspora, this chapter asks how do we mourn those who are lost outside of the war and its refugee displacement. This comparative reading of Vietnamese diasporic literature engages with the figure of the spectral brother, who dies outside of war, and how he is remembered by his younger sister. Attending to the spectral brother's absence made present in mourning, the chapter proposes spectral relations to register how haunting persists and how the sister conjures the spectral brother as a way to live with his absence and loss.
