Diasporic Vietnamese Nationalism in America : An analysis of the Simpathizer

Abstract

ABSTRACTS

This thesis is a humanities-oriented research that examines the discourse of Vietnamese nationalism in Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer. Borrowing the theoretical perspectives from Benedict Anderson's framework about "imagined communities" and Nu-anh Tran's "contested nationalism", this thesis interrogates the "contested" nationalist sentiments in Vietnam and further analyse the diasporic Vietnamese nationalism in America, particularly in the book The Sympathizer. This is achieved through analyzing a series of historical conditions taking place before and after the Vietnam War and theories regarding nationalism. This thesis reveals the conditions for the formation of the Vietnamese diasporic community in relation to the refugee status and the experience in cultural hegemonic society.