Literature, Survival and Reappropriating Suppression in Bao Ninh’s “The Sorrow of War”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37130/8erf0312Keywords:
identity, literature, survival, testimony, Orientalism, autonomyAbstract
Literature offers an unbridled power to its creators: through literature, authors are able to provide power to the powerless, a voice to the voiceless and an autonomy to the oppressed. Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam works to grant each of these to its characters and author much in the same way that postcolonial literature works to preserve the history and legacy of cultures pre-colonization, or other anti-Orientalist writings work to promote more accurate accounts from the Eastern hemisphere as a means to challenge the West’s carefully constructed conceptualizations of “the Orient.” What makes The Sorrow of War so remarkable as a piece of anti-Orientalist literature, however, is that the novel provides power, a voice and an autonomy to his central characters and author in a manner that is three-fold. Not only does The Sorrow of War, in its construction and reception, ensure the survival of its author by allowing Ninh a sense of collective resolution and an outlet for providing testimony to his experiences, Ninh’s debut novel also works to immortalize his memory and provide North Vietnam an auspicious and undeniable narrative autonomy and agency.
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