[In honor of
Veteran’s Day, a series on cultural and historical moments and issues related
to that sizeable and growing American community. I’d love to hear your
Veteran’s Day thoughts, connections, and perspectives for a crowd-sourced
weekend post!]
On the book and
author that can help bring our conversations about veterans into the 21st
century.
There’s no doubt
that our narratives about veterans have evolved a lot in the last half-century
(the post-Vietnam era, we could call it). Thanks to a number of topics about
which I’ve written in this space—controversial activist efforts like Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, greater awareness of issues
like PTSD, the stories and voices of prominent social and cultural figures like
Tim
O’Brien and Pat
Tillman—the very concept of a veteran now includes many more elements and
angles than, I would argue, at any prior point in our history. But on the other
hand, it seems likely to me that there’s a certain identity that is still most
strongly associated with the concept—the identity of a white male, to put it
bluntly—and that quite simply doesn’t align with the realities of our veterans.
As the long
history of African
American veterans or William
Apess’s War of 1812 service remind us, that stereotypical image of veterans
has never been sufficient. On a more recent note, better remembering the service
and tragic death of Danny Chen would help us broaden our naratives of 21st
century veterans (Chen’s death means he did not serve in a war, but his story
demands inclusion in those narratives nevertheless). But alongside those important
issues of race and ethnicity, shifting our images of contemporary veterans to
include gender and sexuality will be equally meaningful, and especially salient
in this 21st century moment that includes a move
toward women in combat roles, the repeal
of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and other such evolutions. And I don’t know of a
better voice and book through which to better include and engage with those
aspects of identity in our images of veterans than Miyoko Hikiji and her autobiographical
and activist book All I Could
Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq (2013).
Hikiji’s story,
as an Asian American young woman from Iowa whose army service took her to the
heart of the Iraq War, represents 21st century American life in a number
of distinct but interconnected ways, and she tells that story—along with many
stories of both her fellow soldiers and the Iraqis they encountered—with grit,
humor, and power. But to my mind, even more telling and significant have been
her activisms and advocacies on the home front—on a number
of important issues, but especially her work to raise awareness of, and
demand responses to, the widespread presence of Military
Sexual Trauma (MST) among our armed forces and veterans. I’ve written a
good deal this week about histories and stories that unite veterans, and of
course MST is the opposite, an issue and history that not only reveal conflicts
within our military, but also have the potential to divide both our veterans’
communities and our national perspectives on them. But as I argue
in my next book, ignoring such dark histories is neither possible nor
effective—we must instead engage with them if we hope to move forward, and
Hikiji’s voice and work can most definitely help us do just that.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one more
time: what do you think? Other veterans texts, moments, or issues you’d share
for that weekend post?
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