Mimi Thi Nguyen's new work, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, argues that the American form of liberal empire and liberal war are defined by violence and “the gift of freedom.” Nguyen asserts that “freedom” is far more than a slogan or jingoistic catchphrase; rather she calls on scholars to recognize freedom as a concept which must be unpacked and investigated in all its complexity, promise, and violent origins. Her work is largely theoretical, and it aims to speak to scholars in cultural studies and Asian American studies, as well as those interested in humanitarianism, visual culture, and the contemporary politics of the War on Terror.

Nguyen's book oscillates between an engagement with Vietnamese American history and a broader theoretical engagement with postcolonialism and US liberalism. She argues that there are direct linkages, both discursive and military, between the US's failed wars in Southeast Asia, the US wars in the Middle East and the US War on Terror “at home.” Drawing on Foucault and Derrida, she argues that a “gift” always comes with a debt, and in the context of US culture and history, freedom emerges out of violence and asymmetrical power relations.

In the first chapter, Nguyen focusses on the optics and politics of the 1975 Vietnamese refugee operation and the decision to house refugees on US military bases. In 1975, the US government transformed US military bases in California, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania into refugee camps for the more than a hundred thousand Vietnamese who entered the United States. She focusses on Timothy Linh Bui's film Green Dragons (2001), which explores the refugee experience on Camp Pendleton. She rightly argues that on the one hand the camps were spaces of refuge and “freedom,” yet on the other hand the military base/refugee camp signaled a system of “disciplinary powers” that “target[ed] the refugee for a whole array of tactics and technologies” (73). The Vietnamese camp experience in the United States is one ripe for exploration and analysis; however, I would suggest that Nguyen missteps in her single-minded focus on The Green Dragon at the expense of military archives and media accounts that would bolster her argument about the paradox of a holding camp for privileged migrants. A greater engagement with the archival record would allow her to tease out the way in which gift and debt, freedom and detention, refugeeness and citizenship were meted out in tandem and forced many Vietnamese Americans into a contradictory relationship with the US state.

Nguyen's second chapter is an in-depth analysis of the famous photo of Kim Phúc fleeing a napalm attack. This highly circulated and popularly reproduced photograph has been analyzed and profiled numerous times. Nguyen uses the repetition of the images and the sentimentalization of Phúc's own story as a centerpiece for her analysis of the politics of reconciliation, memory, and violence in the wake of a liberal war. She analyzes not only the original photograph, which she decisively does not include in the monograph, but also the “follow-up” human-interest stories that have appeared everywhere from the Los Angeles Times to the Oprah Winfrey Show. Nguyen argues that Phúc has been repositioned as the ultimate vessel of forgiveness. Finally, Nguyen analyzes how American popular media also reframed Phúc's story of physical and psychological rehabilitation (and forgiveness) to imply that the war in Vietnam could be ameliorated by personal growth, à la Oprah Winfrey, rather than come to terms with the violence of war.

The final chapter of the book is by far the strongest, and in it she makes explicit links between the US war in Vietnam and the US wars in the Middle East after 11 September 2001. Through the personage of Viet D. Dinh, an assistant attorney who served in the George W. Bush Department of Justice, she argues that the refugee becomes the ultimate patriot. Dinh was one of the central architects of the 2001 Patriot Act, and she argues, “The refugee patriot illumines for us an imperial hospitality, as that obligation to welcome but also to discipline the stranger, lest he subvert the hospitable power” (135). This chapter is firmly grounded in Vietnamese American politics and analyzes Dinh's own role in the Bush administration and community politics over the RVN flag. It is in this chapter that the violence of liberal empire emerges in the contemporary moment through the political decisions of the refugees who received the “gift of freedom” as a result of previous wars.

In short, this book is provocative and challenging, and raises key questions in theoretical and contemporary discourse. However, I would argue that it is strongest when its case studies are concrete, allowing Nguyen to develop her arguments and analyze the archives to the fullest.