[In honors of Veterans Day, a
series AmericanStudying veteran figures, histores, and stories. Leading up to a
crowd-sourced post on all things veterans and Veterans Day—share your own
stories and connections, please!]
On the book and
author (and now candidate!) that can help bring our conversations about veterans
into the 21st century.
There’s no doubt
that our narratives about and images of veterans have evolved a lot in the last
half-century (the post-Vietnam era, we could call it). Thanks to a number of
topics about which I’ve written in this space—controversial activist efforts
like Vietnam
Veterans Against the War, greater awareness of issues
like PTSD, the stories and voices of prominent social and cultural figures
like Tim
O’Brien and Pat
Tillman—the collective concept of a veteran now includes many more elements
and angles than, I would argue, at any prior point in our history. But on the
other hand, it seems likely to me that there’s a certain identity that is still
most strongly associated with the concept—the identity of a white male, to put
it bluntly—and that quite simply doesn’t align with either the historical or
the contemporary realities of our veterans.
As the long
history of African
American veterans or William
Apess’s and Filipino
Americans War of 1812 service remind us, that stereotypical image of
veterans has never been sufficient. On a more recent note, better remembering
the service
and tragic death of Danny Chen would help us broaden our naratives of 21st
century veterans (Chen’s death during training means he did not serve in a war,
but his story demands inclusion in those narratives nevertheless). But
alongside those important issues of race and ethnicity, shifting our collective
images of contemporary veterans to include gender and sexuality more fully would
be equally meaningful, and especially salient in this 21st century
moment that includes a move
toward women in combat roles, the repeal
of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and other such evolutions. And I don’t know of a
better voice and book through which to better include and engage with those
aspects of identity in our images of veterans than Miyoko Hikiji and her autobiographical
and activist book All I Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior
in Iraq (2013).
Hikiji’s story,
as an Asian American young woman from Iowa whose army service took her to the
heart of the Iraq War, represents 21st century American life in a
number of distinct but interconnected ways, and she tells that story—along with
many stories of both her fellow soldiers and the Iraqis they encountered—with
grit, humor, and power. But to my mind, even more telling and significant have
been her activisms and advocacies on the home front—on a number
of important issues, but especially her work to raise awareness of, and
demand responses to, the widespread presence of Military
Sexual Trauma (MST) among our armed forces and veterans. I’ve written a
good deal this week about histories and stories that unite veterans, and of
course MST is the opposite, an issue and history that not only reveal conflicts
within our military, but also have the potential to divide both our veterans’
communities and our national perspectives on them. But as I argue in
my forthcoming book, ignoring such dark histories is neither possible nor
effective—we must instead engage with them if we hope to move forward, and
Hikiji’s voice and work can most definitely help us do just that.
Addendum: Hikiji
is running
for State Senate in Iowa, so I wanted to make sure to share this post on
Election Day, and am sending my best thoughts that she can carry her great work
into that setting as well!
Next post
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Stories or histories you’d share for the weekend post?
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