Ahead of Survival

While critics on the literature of the Vietnam War have almost exclusively focused on male authors, the contribution of American women writers has been largely ignored. In her study of novels by American women writers on the Vietnam War, the author pursues the notion of correlation between gender and genre for the ongoing discussion on the meaning of the war. The study extends from close readings of classical male texts on the war (Herr, O'Brien) to autobiographical texts by former nurses and officers' wives to novels by Joan Didion, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Bobbie Ann Mason.