Kaitlan Bui '22 studies English Literature, with interests in cross-cultural dialogue and history. She seeks to understand how we might use literature to engage in ongoing social work, and literary analysis to interact with the lives we read and write about. Kaitlan serves as Editor-in-Chief of Cornerstone Magazine and has been published with Post-, diaCRITICS, and a variety of literary journals. She is currently working on a book project about the life of her great aunt, who was born in Vietnam in the 1930s.

Project: 

As a Royce Fellow, Kaitlan will advance work on her senior thesis, which explores the metaphors and mnemonic inheritances of the “Vietnam War.” She is interested in how imagination is used as an active tool to reclaim historical authority, particularly of displaced Vietnamese refugees. Her Royce project aims to extend this conversation beyond university walls by involving young Vietnamese Americans from Orange County, California. Kaitlan will lead a Summer Workshop Group of twelve Vietnamese American high school students and/or recent graduates in weekly discussions about war, memory, identity, and personal history. Together, they will read Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, piecing together knowledge of capital-H History with lowercase-h family history. In this way, the group will ultimately construct their own archive of the past.

Advisor: Mary-Kim Arnold, Erin Aoyama