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Start Over Creator Healy, Dana

2. Negotiating gender and sexuality in contemporary Vietnamese literature

Creator:
Healy, Dana
Format:
bez média and svazek
Type:
model:article and TEXT
Subject:
sexuality and Vietnamese literature
Language:
English
Description:
This article investigates the representation of gender and sexuality, the relationship between gender and modernity and notions of the feminine in contemporary Vietnamese literature. The liberalized political atmosphere of the đổi mới period in Vietnam ushered in a new wave of creativity imbued with a strong critical charge and unleashed a process of social, cultural and political renegotiation. It necessitated and made possible a reconfiguration of fundamental social categories including those of gender, sexuality and female morality. As issues of gender and sexuality became an increasingly important focus in contemporary Vietnam, there emerged a new literary discourse interrogating women’s changing identities and agencies and celebrating female sexuality and subjectivity. A significant contribution of this literature of renovation lies in its engagement with the gendered exploration of the legacy of war and its tragic ramifications for female identity; such works enriched the representation of the conflict by highlighting the discrepancy between the wartime empowerment of women and their post-war disempowerment. Meanwhile, renovation also bolstered the consideration of female equality in terms of sexuality and individualism. The younger generation of writers is dismantling traditional female stereotypes of filial daughters, virtuous wives and caring mothers and renders a multifaceted portrayal of the new woman who personifies the break with conservative modes of womanhood. For contemporary writers the new woman becomes a powerful symbol of social change as she pursues her own ideals of womanhood, sexuality and modernity.
Rights:
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ and policy:public