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In "Fatherland" Phuong claims she knows immediately why her half-sister has taken the
In "Fatherland" Phuong claims she knows immediately why her half-sister has taken the
name Vivien: she has named herself after Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlett
O’Hara, the main character of Gone with the Wind , a 1939 American film about the Civil War
and their father’s favorite movie. Phuong theorizes in her “fertile imagination” (para. 4) that
Scarlett’s return to her ruined plantation was the inspiration for her sister Vivien’s return to
the land of her birth. She also considers the possibility that her father saw a parallel between
Redefining America
the American South and “her father’s defeated southern republic” (para. 4).
Carefully examine this poster for the movie. In what ways does it reflect Phuong’s
assumptions about her sister and her father? In what ways might this poster highlight the
potential shortcomings of Phuong’s comparison?

LMPC/Getty Images

plenipotentiary of the house, always took it that Phuong’s half sister would be coming for a
upon himself to open the mail. He sat on the two-week vacation, and that she hoped to stay
couch and slit the envelope carefully, using one with them.
of the few relics from his past he had managed “Vivien?” Mrs. Ly said, reading the name
to keep, a silver letter opener with an ivory signed at the bottom of the letter. “Is she too
handle. Flanking him were Phuong and her good to use the name you gave her?”
mother, while his two teenage sons, Hanh and But Phuong knew instantly why her sister
Phuc, sat on the armrests and craned their necks had taken upon herself a foreign name, and
to catch a glimpse of the words their father read whose name it must have been: Vivien Leigh,
out loud. The letter was even shorter than the star of Gone with the Wind, her father’s favorite
ones written by the ex-wife, merely announcing film, as he had once told her in passing. Phuong
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