Introduction

This is the introductory chapter to a book on the representations of victimhood in American narratives about the war in Vietnam in the context of the conflict’s cultural narrative in the United States. Apart from a statement of aims and an overview of the book’s main themes and the material to be analyzed in subsequent chapters, the introduction also contains a summary of recent narrative output concerning the war in Vietnam (recently published novels, TV shows, etc.), briefly analyzed in the context of the volume’s topic. Moreover, the introductory chapter includes a breakdown of the book’s contents; a statement of its political, or rhetorical, position; and an extended qualification of its thesis, explaining that while the volume’s aim is to offer a politicized critique of American discourses of the country’s supposed victimization in the Vietnam War, it should not be read as an absolute statement of American non-victimhood but rather as a rhetorical exercise in a different kind of interpretational optics.