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

Mattia Arioli

doi:10.31261/rias.18343

Published: 2025-12-31

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2025)

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

Mattia Arioli

Website: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/mattia.arioli2/en

Section: FEATURES

https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.18343

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

Canada , Vietnam War , Diaspora , Memory , Thuong Vuong-Riddick , Mobile Memory , Resistance , Gratitude

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Arioli, M. (2025). Gratitude, Resistance, and Mobile Memory in Thuong Vuong-Riddick’s The Evergreen Country: A Memoir of Vietnam. Review of International American Studies, 18(2), 79–100. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.18343

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Mattia Arioli

mattia.arioli2@unibo.it
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4981-6396

Affiliation:

University of Bologna, Italy Italy

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Mattia Arioli is Adjunct professor at the University of Bologna. He holds a PhD degree in Modern Languages, Literatures, and Culture from the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna; his doctoral project focused on the remembrance of the Vietnam War in graphic narratives. His main research interests include Cultural Memory Studies, Comics Studies, Asian American Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Visual Culture. He authored several essays on War Comics and the relationship between Comics and Cultural Trauma. In 2022, his doctoral dissertation received an Agostino Lombardo Award Honorable Mention. He received a 2023 John A. Lent Award Honorable Mention.

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2025)
Published: 2026-01-09

eISSN: 1991-2773

10.31261/RIAS

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

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