Bodies of War Curate the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq

This chapter considers selected literary works on the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq that throw light on an array of people living in war and navigating its aftermaths. Novels and memoirs curate through stories that miniaturize and narrow war to a few featured characters and experiential moments of larger conflicts. Importantly, literary sites of war knowledge bring to the fore dark essentials of war, including torture, rape and the abject corpses that war museum exhibitions and official memorials to war veterans avoid showing. The novels and memoirs featured here are classics by Americans, Iraqis and Vietnamese, soldiers and civilians, among them works by Bao Ninh, Sinan Antoon, Kevin Powers, Helen Benedict, and Riverbend.