Becoming Refugee American: The Politics of Rescue in Little Saigon
Becoming Refugee American: The Politics of Rescue in Little Saigon
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Abstract
This pioneering social history of Little Saigon examines the institutionalization and preservation of a Southern California ethnic enclave and its people through the politics of rescue. It argues that Little Saigon’s emergence and growth was fuelled by American guilt over losing the war and Vietnamese gratitude for being rescued from communism. Thus the largest of diasporic Vietnamese communities, along with most of its counterparts nationwide, was framed as the least a guilt-ridden country could do to atone for its Cold War failures. The politics of rescue helps to explain why Little Saigon enjoyed a level of mainstream moral, economic, and political support historically unknown to most other Asian Americans. As for the Vietnamese exiles, the politics of rescue placed extreme pressure on them to act like model minorities in order to justify an unpopular war that killed 58,000 Americans and nearly invalidated American Exceptionalism. By becoming Refugee American, the losers of the Vietnam War could cast themselves as winners of the postwar, whereby Vietnamese and Americans, rather than forgetting, could mutually affirm a tragic past by rewriting it.
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Front Matter
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Introduction: A Nation of Refugees
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1
Accidental Allies: America’s Crusade and the Origins of Refugee Nationalism
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2
From Grief to Gratitude: Reaffirming the Past by Rewriting It
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3
“Farewell, Saigon, I Promise I Will Return”: Social Work and the Meaning of Exile
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4
The Anticommunist Việt-Cộng: Freedom Fighters and the New Politics of Rescue
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5
Assimilationists and the Postwar: Model Minority Politics in Little Saigon
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6
Divided Loyalties: America’s Moral Obligation in the Post–Cold War Era
- Conclusion: Finding Roots in Exile
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End Matter
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