Remembering, Remembrance, Re-Memory

An Intergenerational Conversation

Authors

  • Yến Lê Espiritu University of California, San Diego
  • Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi University of California, Los Angeles

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/cl.vi261.199777

Abstract

In conversation with Y-Dang Troeung’s meditation, in Landbridge, on the unacknowledged loss of her mother’s brothers, this intergenerational dialogue reflects on refugee grief, not as a private or depoliticized sentiment, but as a resource for confronting the conditions under which certain lives are considered more grievable than others. For Yến, the public execution of her beloved cậu hai (oldest maternal uncle) was both a private loss and a public remembrance. For Evyn, the death of her ông hai (granduncle), whom she never met, profoundly shaped her understanding of family, loss, and the politics of remembering. The piece asks: Who owns the dead, and to what end? Who uses the dead, and how? What is the relationship between private grief, public memory, and intergenerational inheritance? How can the next generation commemorate the loss of their elders while forging new pathways and posing new questions about our current moment and beyond?

Author Biographies

Yến Lê Espiritu, University of California, San Diego

Originally from Việt Nam, Yến Lê Espiritu is Distinguished Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She has published extensively on Asian American communities, critical immigration and refugee studies, and US colonialism and wars in Asia. A founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective (CRSC), Espiritu is the lead author of Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies (U of California P, 2022), written collaboratively by CRSC members. 

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi, University of California, Los Angeles

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA (Tovaangar). Her work engages critical refugee studies, comparative ethnic studies, and transpacific studies. She is the author of Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (U of California P, 2022) and co-editor with Vinh Nguyen of The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (Routledge, 2023). She is currently working on a second book project which revisits Gramsci’s “southern question” by constellating the southern spaces of South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South. 

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Published

Dec. 17, 2025 (UTC)

How to Cite

Espiritu, Yến Lê, and Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi. “Remembering, Remembrance, Re-Memory: An Intergenerational Conversation”. Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review, no. 261, Dec. 2025, pp. 64-73, doi:10.14288/cl.vi261.199777.

Issue

No. 261 (2025): Swirling into a Field of Life: Works in Conversation with Y-Dang Troeung

Section

[worlds]