A Review of G.B. Tran’s Vietnamerica (Villard, 2011)

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GB Tran’s much-acclaimed Vietnamerica, a graphic memoir of his family’s history in Vietnam and the U.S., was published in early 2011, but I just got around to reading it, so I’m going to talk about it now. In addition to winning many awards, it has been much reviewed, including here (April 28, 2011), the L.A. Times, diaCRITICS, Washington Post, and many other places, so I won’t reiterate a summary. Rather, I’ll just mention a couple things that struck me.

Although the story is bookended and filtered through the perspective of the American-born GB, his parents, and to a much lesser extent his siblings, most of the forward narrative drive takes place in Vietnam. Within this text, the U.S. is a place of remembering and reflection, while action – war, marriage, migration, even building one’s own house – takes place in a remembered Vietnam. It’s not a typical adjusting-to-life-in-America/generational conflict story, although these things are briefly alluded to. Like Maus, which it’s often compared to, the text is much more about excavating the traumas of the past that shape the present.

Vietnamerica is also visually intriguing. As other readers have noted, the pictures of people are very unstable; characters look different from page to page, perhaps highlighting the sense of uncertainty of memory. Tran makes full use of the space on and between the pages, particularly to convey senses of time. For instance, in two sections depicting imprisonment for long periods of time (Tran’s father in police custody; his father’s friend, Do, in a labor camp), the page’s panels depicting the monotonous horror are repeated in increasingly smaller size in the bottom, right-hand corner, in an infinite regression of fear, exhaustion, and violence. In another section towards the end, GB is learning about past events from family and friends. The events from the past are depicted in the panels on the bottom third of the verso (left) page and through the recto (right) page. GB’s question appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the recto page, which trails to the top of the next verso page, which takes us to the “present,” or the time and place of the telling. I also love the plays on communist Vietminh propaganda posters; I have a weird fascination with communist art.

Vietnamerica seems like it would be very teachable. I’d love to hear about your experiences with it in the classroom!