War Writing and Travel Writing: Americans in Vietnam

David Espey (University of Pennsylvania, USA) [BIO]

Email: despey@english.upenn.edu

 

ABSTRACT:

War both inhibits and promotes travel. It sends multitudes of soldiers across borders, yet curtails civilian travel. In contrast to war writing, in which the perspective of the warrior is severely limited by the realities of combat and the view of enemy as other, travel writing is free-spirited and open to cross cultural experience. The experience of Americans in Vietnam in the last three decades of the 20th century, first as soldiers and then as travelers, provides striking examples of how war can distort one’s view of a foreign culture and how travel can help correct those distortions. This difference shows especially in the writing of American veterans who have revisited Vietnam as travelers long after the war, as well as Americans who have been welcomed as travelers in post-war Vietnam. By comparing war writing by Michael Herr (Dispatches) and Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried) to travel writing by Karen Muller (Hitchhiking Vietnam) and Andrew Pham (Catfish and Mandela), I’ll explore how travel is a kind of antidote to war, and how travel writing can express as a spirit of healing and revision of cultural misunderstanding and hostility caused by war.