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The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages . By Mimi Thi Nguyen . Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press , 2012. xvi, 276 pp. $84.95 (cloth); $23.95 (paper).
Book Reviews--Southeast Asia
What does it mean to declare war in the name of freedom? What are the remainders of war, and how might we reflect on freedom as a function of empire? These are just a couple of questions that may arise from reading The Gift of Freedom, a provocative work that examines the relationship between post-war Vietnamese refugees and their host country, America. Author Mimi Thi Nguyen defines the "gift of freedom" as a form of debt placed on subjects of American wars, a gift that can only be graciously received by adhering to the stipulations of the gift giver. This notion remains central throughout the monograph and serves as the primary argument in unpacking liberal ideologies of progress, humanity, and freedom, and their relation to the refugee figure as a freed subject.
As a cultural studies project, The Gift of Freedom combines film and media analysis and draws from a number of theoretical frameworks, such as critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and poststructural theory. In particular, Derrida's idea of the gift as an "economy of exchange and obligation between giver and recipient" (p. 6) and...