Paisley Rekdal’s New Book on The Continuing Legacy of Vietnam

Paisley Rekdal, Professor of English, has published a new book titled The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam, through University of Georgia Press. The Broken Country uses a violent incident that took place in Salt Lake City in 2012 as a springboard for examining the long-term cultural and psychological effects of the Vietnam War. 

To make sense of the shocking and baffling incident—in which a young homeless man born in Vietnam stabbed a number of white men purportedly in retribution for the war—Rekdal draws on a remarkable range of material and fashions it into a compelling account of the dislocations suffered by the Vietnamese and also by American-born veterans over the past decades. She interweaves a narrative about the crime with information collected in interviews, historical examination of the arrival of Vietnamese immigrants in the 1970s, a critique of portrayals of Vietnam in American popular culture, and discussions of the psychological consequences of trauma. 

“The Broken Country is an audacious and extraordinary story of war’s endless effects,” said Beth Loffreda, author of Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder. "Paisley Rekdal unearths from the forgotten wreckage of one life a sweeping and necessary account of America, Vietnam, and the lives lived in their shadow. Assembling a remarkable range of materials and testimonies, she shows us both the persistence of war’s trauma and how we might more ethically imagine those it harms. She is the boundlessly sympathetic witness and clear-eyed investigator we need.”

Photo Credit: Austen Diamond