American War Stories in the 21st Century: Notes

American War Stories in the 21st Century

The course focuses on American war stories in the 21st century, particularly memoirs and home front autobiographies.
Types of narratives to be analyzed include:
- Deployment Diaries
- Memoirs
- Auto/biographies

Examples of deployment diaries include:
- One Army Wife's Tale by Jenn Carpenter
- My Afghanistan Campaign Diary by A. Piper Burgi
- My Year Without Him: The Life of a Military Wife by Micaela Alexander
The narratives often depict the emotional and practical challenges faced during deployments.
Diaries capture the dailiness of life, emotional responses, and observations in a fragmented, revisionary, and in-process manner.
Diaries derive immediacy from the diarist's lack of foreknowledge about life's outcomes.
Journals are sometimes distinguished from diaries as being more public records and less intimate.
Living apart is a common theme, and people are interested in hearing about relationships and working through life's challenges.
The military way of life fosters a sense of community among spouses, who understand the experience of living alone and coping with the challenges of military life.
Military spouses support each other and don't expect anyone to struggle alone.

Donna Alvah's work, Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965, provides historical context.
Military spouses often move every few years and reinvent themselves, which is a challenging aspect of their lives.
They are seen as "silent warriors" who serve alongside their military member.

Examples of memoirs include:
- Going Overboard: The Misadventures of a Military Wife by Sarah Smiley
- I Love a Man in Uniform: The War at Home by Lily Burana
- A Wife's Search for Peace (and Other Missions Impossible) by Rachel Starnes
Memoirs situate the subject in a social environment, focusing on the lives and actions of others.
Domestic memoirs focus on family life, while secular memoirs emphasize life in the public sphere, chronicling professional careers and activities of historical import.
The concept of the "Perfect Army Wife" is explored, a mythical creature who flawlessly performs every domestic task with patriotic resolve.
The author rejects the pressure to conform to this ideal and embraces her true self.
Being a military wife involves more than just courtesies, customs, and regulations; it requires navigating a world that civilians may not understand.
The need to reconcile the horrors of war with the goodness of marriage and the military itself, working against the idea of a few bad apples.
Civilians often cannot truly understand the experiences of military spouses.

Being a military spouse is one of the last remaining bastions of old school wifedom and often requires presenting oneself as heroic while concealing personal struggles.
There's skepticism about simply "sucking it up" as a coping strategy and a need to acknowledge the challenges faced by both soldiers and their spouses.

Examples of auto/biographies include:
- 15 Years of War: How the Longest War in U.S. History Affected a Military Family in Love, Loss, and the Cost of Service by Kristine Schellhaas
- A Journal for Jordan by Dana Canedy
- American Wife by Taya Kyle

Auto/biography (a/b) signals the interrelatedness of autobiographical narrative and biography, while also acknowledging their differences.
The term designates a mode of the autobiographical that inserts biography/ies within an autobiography, or vice versa.
The author expresses a desire to be understood as an imperfect woman who loved her man but struggled to accept him as he was.
The author initially resisted the idea of being a military wife, but later recognized the bravery and resilience of military spouses.
The author felt like an "unofficial widow" due to not being legally married at the time of her partner's death, and therefore missed out on certain acknowledgments and honors.
A prayer for her son, Jordan, includes the hope that he will carry the knowledge that he has two parents guiding him through life, with his father's journal serving as a source of wisdom.

The military can expose individuals to killing and death, leading to flashbacks and trauma.
Exposure to chemical sprays during war can have lasting physical effects.
The military sometimes sanitizes a soldier's belongings to protect classified information or to alter potentially damaging narratives, such as destroying suicide notes or sexually explicit letters.

Guest lecture by Dr. Spychala.
Suggested preparation: Read excerpts from Kayla Williams’ Love My Rifle More Than You (2005) and Shoshana Johnson’s I’m Still Standing (2010).