The Vietnam Veteran Father: Reconfiguring Hegemonic Discourses of Masculine Subjectivity

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Alexandra Kerry made the following statement: “To every little girl her father is a hero. It’s taken some getting used to, that my father actually is one. And not just in the obvious ways.” To children of Vietnam Veterans (COVV) such as Alexandra Kerry, their fathers embody not only the traumas of war but also its heroism, teaching them about freedom, peace, and the meaning of sacrifice. Alexandra considers her father a hero not just in the obvious ways that a woman might idolize her father, but in ways that reach into the myths America holds about war. Yet, she does not do this by talking about her father’s heroics in Vietnam. Instead, she tells about his heroics as a father. In her speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where she introduced her father, Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry, she described the hero who is her father by invoking a story about his willingness to jump into a lake to save her sister’s hamster. She explained that “when he loves you as he loves me and my sister and his family, as he loves the men who fought beside him—there is no sacrifice too great.” By elaborating on their fathers’ strengths and sacrifices as a father, the men and women in this chapter, like Alexandra Kerry in her speech, work at the discursive intersection of the ideal Father and socially marginalized Vietnam Veteran.