The Boat single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2008... 2008 The Boat
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Adaptations

y separately published work icon The Boat Matt Huynh , Australia : SBS , 2015 8518445 2015 single work graphic novel

An interactive, graphic adaptation of Nam Le's short story, 'The Boat'.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Boat Nam Le , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1495449 2008 selected work short story (taught in 42 units)

    'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)

         Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008     pg. 264-313
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Conjunctions no. 50 Spring 2008 Z1551904 2008 periodical issue 2008
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Works about this Work

'Ethnic Literature's Hot': Asian American Literature, Refugee Cosmopolitanism, and Nam Le's The Boat Donald C. Goellnicht , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Asian American Studies , June vol. 15 no. 2 2012; (p. 197-224) This article examines The Boat as a coherent collection of stories that self-consciously takes up, in 'Love and Honor,' some central debates in Asian American literary studies: questions of cultural authenticity, authorial ownership, responsible representation of trauma, the selling out of the community by subsequent generations, and what constitutes Asian American literature and/or 'ethnic literature.' It argues that Le complicates the concept of ethnic literature through the middle stories of the collection by imbricating the ethnic with the cosmopolitan, two concepts that are usually viewed in opposition, to arrive at the idea of 'refugee cosmopolitanism' in the final story, 'The Boat' (Author's abstract).
'Ethnic Literature's Hot': Asian American Literature, Refugee Cosmopolitanism, and Nam Le's The Boat Donald C. Goellnicht , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Asian American Studies , June vol. 15 no. 2 2012; (p. 197-224) This article examines The Boat as a coherent collection of stories that self-consciously takes up, in 'Love and Honor,' some central debates in Asian American literary studies: questions of cultural authenticity, authorial ownership, responsible representation of trauma, the selling out of the community by subsequent generations, and what constitutes Asian American literature and/or 'ethnic literature.' It argues that Le complicates the concept of ethnic literature through the middle stories of the collection by imbricating the ethnic with the cosmopolitan, two concepts that are usually viewed in opposition, to arrive at the idea of 'refugee cosmopolitanism' in the final story, 'The Boat' (Author's abstract).
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Last amended 6 Jan 2009 15:11:00
Subjects:
Settings:
  • c
    Vietnam,
    c
    Southeast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
  • At sea,
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