Hận: The Haunt of Home, Vietnamese Refugee Melancholia, and the Challenges to Asian American Critiques

Based on writings of first-generation Vietnamese refugees, this article explores hận (a deep hatred and resentment, or a haunting anguish) through the lens of melancholia to uncover the convergence and divergence of Vietnamese refugee politics and Asian American politics. I argue that hận exposes the double forces and geographies of violence (by/in both the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the United States) that produce the constraints that refugee free wills are not just pushing against, but are also bound by, resulting in the divergence between first-generation Vietnamese refugee politics and Asian American anti-imperialism and decolonization politics.