Citizens of the Imagination: Refugee Memory in Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer and Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.

Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel The Sympathizer and his nonfiction work Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War act as companion pieces that explore not only the Vietnam War and its aftermath but also the concepts of just and unjust memory. Drawing from memory studies and critical refugee studies, I explore Nguyen's search for a just memory in his works. Nguyen yearns for a world where individuals see themselves not as "citizens of nations," perpetuating entrapping discourses, but as "citizens of the imagination," providing disrupting alternatives possible in a resistant refugee memory, a site of "belonging without borders." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]