Peer-reviewed article

From dust to flesh: mapping the path of restorative justice through a transcorporeal reading of Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's <i>Dust Child</i>.

Jovitha JJ, Gohain D · 16 Jun 2026

Abstract

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's Dust Child (2023) provides a transgenerational narrative of the Vietnam civil war repercussions in the context of restorative justice, offering a critical discussion of how first-person accounts serve as a sociological tool for storytelling, testimony, and reconciliation within post-war Vietnam. Methodologically situated within a sociology of literature framework, this research article utilizes a multi-layered theoretical approach combining Rob Nixon's Slow Violence, Stacy Alaimo's Transcorporeality, and John Braithwaite's Restorative Justice, supplemented by frameworks of Trauma and Testimonial Witnessing. Through this lens, the study evaluates the bodily trauma of Phong, an Amerasian child, Dan, an American Veteran, and war-survivors Trang and Quỳnh, revealing how the novel depicts embodied and ecological trauma as a site of collective social and moral accountability. The textual results demonstrate that slow violence persists across bodies, landscapes, and generations while actively challenging the historical silence surrounding chemical warfare. Ultimately, this article discusses how narrating intergenerational trauma through intimate personal testimonies positions storytelling as a vital sociological process of acknowledgment, ethical witnessing, and restorative reconciliation in contemporary post-war Vietnam.