Critical Juxtaposing of War and Migration: A Content Analysis of Southeast Asian Refugee Children’s Literature

Abstract

Abstract Using critical refugee studies as a theoretical lens, I analyzed Southeast Asian refugee children’s literature to identify its pedagogical values and limitations for critical teaching about the Vietnam War. The findings suggest the children’s literature can help challenge the dominant narratives of the Vietnam War as exclusively an American tragedy and of the Southeast Asian refugees as simply helpless victims by centering Southeast Asian experiences of the war. Yet the children’s literature largely remained silent about the refugees’ complex personhood and the U.S. role as a violent aggressor generating the refugee crisis in the first place. The implications for teaching practice are suggested.