Masculinity in Vietnam War Narratives

Book excerpt: Occurring alongside the Women's Rights, Gay Rights, Civil Rights, and other identity movements of the 1960s, the Vietnam War was part of an era that rescripted gender and other social identity roles for many, if not most, Americans. This book examines the ways in which the war and its accompanying movements greatly altered traditional American conceptions of masculinity, as reflected in discourses ranging from fictional narratives to memoirs, films, and military recruiting advertisements. Analysis of two canonical fiction texts--John Del Vecchio's The 13th Valley and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country--illustrates the interrelatedness of race, sexuality, disability and masculinity, an approach appearing in no other book-length study. The text illustrates how, decades later, the masculine anxieties of the Vietnam era persist.