Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-2024
Publication Title
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
Keywords
Bride trafficking, Clément Baloup, psychological trauma, Vietnamese refugees, Vietnamese memories
Abstract
Baloup’s approach to using personal narratives in graphic novels transcends the specific realm of refugee comics or human rights campaigns, yet it faces challenges when attempting to bridge the gap between the intimate narratives of refugees and a broader commercial audience. Blurring the lines between autobiography, historiography, reportage, testimony, and docufiction, Vietnamese Memories retraces the global dimensions of the Vietnamese diaspora while engaging with the representation of transgenerational trauma in ways that reflect the diversity of the Viet Kieu experience. Transitioning from family history in the first volume to inferred advocacy in the third, Baloup’s exploration and graphic representation of the Viet Kieu in various spatiotemporal contexts add layers of historical, memorial, and narrative complexity to the series with the publication of each new volume. The resulting multilayered narrative of the refugee experience elicits reader empathy, yet also raises ethical considerations regarding the representation of trauma, particularly for women. Central to this analysis is the exploration of Baloup’s framing of women’s narratives and its impact on reader engagement.
Funding Source
This article was published Open Access thanks to a transformative agreement between Milner Library and Taylor & Francis.
DOI
10.1080/21504857.2025.2459322
Recommended Citation
Howell, J. (2025). From “life as lived” to “life as text”: gendered geographies of diaspora and exile in Clément Baloup’s Vietnamese memories. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2025.2459322
Comments
First published in Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics: https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2025.2459322
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.