Towards a More Inclusive Memory: Vexed Returns and Just Memory in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees

Towards a More Inclusive Memory: Vexed Returns and Just Memory in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees

In a collection of essays titled Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016), Vietnamese American author and critic, Viet Thanh Nguyen, coins the term “just memory” to discuss the interconnections between memory and war. According to Nguyen, public memories of war are nation-centered. Departing from an ethics of remembering one’s own, Nguyen calls for “an alternative ethics of remembering others.” Taking Nguyen’s discussion of memory and war as a point of departure, this essay examines how the author’s short story collection, The Refugees (2017), enacts the ethics of just memory. I am particularly interested in exploring how the ethics of remembering others in The Refugees is close linked to the experience of return. This essay examines how stories of return in The Refugees expand the ways that war is remembered publicly by including the memories of forgotten others. I argue that the trope of return in Nguyen’s collection of stories is informed by vexed moments of intimate encounter that rewrite public memories of the war.