After the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in 1973 and the fall of Saigon in 1975, most U.S. citizens wanted to forget the war in Southeast Asia. Veterans of the conflict came home to a divided society that did not seem to care about them and viewed them as symbols of a great national failure. By the 1980s, the suspicion and indifference to which the soldiers returned had begun to change into sympathy and gratitude. With the opening of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington in late 1982, a process of healing had begun, but a definitive novel about the long-term effects of the war, and about the lives and experiences of U.S. vets, had yet to be written.
Upon its publication in 1985, Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country marked an important new direction in American literary
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Citation: Chura, Patrick. "In Country". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 December 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26152, accessed 23 November 2024.]
