Postmemory's Graphic Symptom: Disembodied Voice, Repetition Compulsion, and Working through Trauma in GB Tran's Vietnamerica

In the graphic memoir Vietnamerica, GB Tran draws and narrates his family history, which revolves around the First Indochina and the Vietnam Wars. Growing up as a second-generation Vietnamese American, GB did not know much about his parents' Vietnam War experiences due to their silence on the topic (I will use GB Tran's first name to differentiate him from family members whose surnames are also Tran). Indeed, in Vietnamerica, Vietnam War survivors—and in particular GB's parents, Tri and Dzung—show neither negative emotions nor traumatic symptoms in spite of the tragic events in their lives. Although his parents display no obvious symptoms of trauma, scholars have discussed Vietnamerica as a work of postmemory, as coined by Marianne Hirsch to explain Art Spiegelman's relationship to his parents' traumatized memory of the Holocaust.¹ Hirsch conceives of postmemory as belonging to second-generation war survivors, like GB, thereby presupposing a child adopting or accommodating a parent's trauma. In this article, I argue that despite the lack of traumatic symptoms, Vietnamerica does in a sense represent a work of postmemory, but not as heretofore discussed. Rather, trauma is not conveyed by the parents or their son but implied in a disembodied, haunting voice—in expressions or phrases that mysteriously return throughout the narrative and in contexts not ordinarily considered to be traumatic flashbacks. I term this mode of communicating an instance of trauma a graphic symptom.

More specifically, words associated with GB's parents are repeated in unusual contexts to signal trauma and to communicate that, at times, trauma is not obvious and is also more pervasive than might be expected. As such, a graphic symptom could conceivably be thought of as a flashback experience. As I discuss below, however, their words reappear in narration boxes or in quotation marks instead of in speech balloons, thereby becoming a disembodied, ghostly voice. While this mode of revealing trauma could be called many things, I call it a graphic symptom since its presentation underscores how graphic narratives can communicate in a complex manner. Pursuing graphic symptoms in Vietnamerica also reveals postmemory a more complex condition than heretofore discussed. After all, since his parents do not have obvious traumatic symptoms, the graphic symptoms appear only in GB's work of postmemory.

To discuss graphic symptoms, I adapt Hirsch's observations concerning images in postmemory to explain why the disembodied voice recurs in the manner of repetitive compulsion, which she identifies as a particular symptom in trauma survivors, who repeat their traumatic events through reenactments, flashbacks, or dreams. I further rely on Cathy Caruth and Dori Laub to underscore the fact that it is not GB's parents but the graphic memoir itself that shows repetition compulsion. Thus, regardless of whether their trauma exists or not, Caruth's trauma work on textual symptoms legitimizes GB's working through the trauma on behalf of his parents. Likewise, Laub's work on an absence in witness' knowledge undergirds my observation on Vietnamerica's disembodied voice. This article thereby contributes to the literature on Vietnamerica, since the disembodied voice in the graphic memoir has not yet received scholarly attention.² This article further contributes to the literature on postmemory since it articulates a theory of the graphic symptom, found not in trauma survivors but only in second-generation postmemory. For purposes of this article, I will focus on GB's father, on Tri's story, since he is a mysterious figure with an emotionless façade behind sunglasses and an influential character, less of a voice but more of a presence in the graphic memoir.

Postmemory

As revealed later in the narrative, Tri had catastrophic experiences. He had been fatherless since the age of three, after GB's paternal grandfather, Huu Nghiep, left to aid North Vietnam. Suddenly single, GB's grandmother, Le Nhi, lived with a French colonel who eventually left her and his own son to protect her children from vengeful repercussions. And indeed, because the South Vietnamese government had been pursuing him, Huu Nghiep could...