Gratitude, Resistance, and Mobile Memory in Thuong Vuong-Riddick’s The Evergreen Country: A Memoir of Vietnam

This article discusses how Canada has appropriated the narrative of the Vietnam War to present itself as a progressive country. Specifically, it analyzes how the Land of Maple Leaf co-opted diasporic Vietnamese narratives to promote a nation-building project that exalted the country’s multicultural ideology and fostered its image as a peaceful kingdom. The article also examines how one of the first memoirs written by a Vietnamese Canadian, Thuong Vuong-Riddick’s The Evergreen Country: A Memoir of Vietnam (2007), complicates our understanding of the diaspora by both enforcing and resisting dominant narratives that portray Vietnamese Canadians as emblematic victims and/or successful immigrants who are grateful beneficiaries of liberal freedom, democracy, and wealth.