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  • Chapter 14 - Representations of White Masculinity in Veteran-Authored Iraq War Fiction

  • from Part II - Aggressions
  • Edited by Jean M. Lutes, Villanova University, Pennsylvania, Jennifer Travis, St John's University, New York
  • Book:
    Gender in American Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    01 April 2021
    Print publication:
    15 April 2021, pp 219-234

  • Summary

    Over the last decade, the Iraq War (2003-2011) has become a common subject in mainstream literary fiction. In this chapter, I analyze three key examples of veteran-authored novels: Nico Walker’s Cherry (2018), Michael Pitre’s Fives and Twenty-Fives (2014), and Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds (2012). I argue that it is important to read these novels not only as war literature but also as significant cultural representations of contemporary white masculinity. I show how, through their representations of the soldier as both a laboring white body and (as veteran) the traumatized bearer of witness to combat violence, these novels place their white, male protagonists in an exceptional space in which they are insulated from accountability. As such, they illustrate how trauma is used to shore up a particular version of white masculinity that is vulnerable in many ways but still claims a particular kind of authority and narrative control.