The Forgotten Soldiers: Puerto Rican and Chicano Narratives of the U.S. Wars in East Asia. Challenging Racism from Within

Katrina Oko-Odoi
Literature
UC San Diego

Katrina Oko-Odoi’s dissertation addresses the literary and cultural representation (through fictional narrative, non-fiction chronicle and autobiography, historiography, screenplays, and documentaries) of the experience of minority ethnic soldiers of Latino heritage—specifically Puerto Ricans and Chicanos—in the U.S. military during the Korean and Vietnam wars. As a minority ethnic soldier—an “outsider within,” to borrow from Patricia Hill Collins—she argues, the Puerto Rican and Chicano soldier, as well as his extended Latino/a and Chicano/a community, have the potential to view the U.S. military through a critical lens due to the minority ethnic soldier’s marginalization within the armed forces, and to draw attention to the systemic racism within the very system to which he belongs.

Her work makes several unique interventions into the extant scholarship on these subjects. The experiences of Puerto Ricans in these two wars present an almost completely untapped area of research in the literature and cultural studies disciplines. The project examines the work of Puerto Rican authors José Luis González and Emilio Díaz Valcárcel (Korean War veteran), as well as a screenplay, and documentary on minority soldiers’ experience in Korea. Moreover, through an analysis of the narratives Let Their Spirits Dance by Stella Pope Duarte, Motorcycle Ride in a Sea of Tranquility by Patricia Santana and Toy Soldiers and Dolls by Gloria Velásquez, she reflects on the unique positionality of female authors to reflect on the Vietnam War’s impact on the larger Chicana/o community. Through this discussion, she fills the gap in scholarship addressing the experience of Chicana women and other family members left behind during these wars.