Non-political Accounts of Vietnamese War Experience in English?

Janet Alison Hoskins jhoskins at usc.edu

Mon Jan 26 08:33:29 PST 2015

Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel The Sympathizer will not be available for sale until April 2015:

http://www.groveatlantic.com/?title=The+Sympathizer

http://vietnguyen.info/2014/advance-praise-the-sympathizer

As someone who was fortunate enough to be able to read an advance copy, I certainly agree that it portrays both the possibility and the contradictions of attempts at reconciliation after the Vietnam War. Roughly the last third of the book is also set in Vietnam, and it gives the most complex, darkly comic but also deeply human, portrait of a people and a nation at war with themselves that I have read.

Janet Hoskins

Professor of Anthropology and Religion

University of Southern California

From: Charles Waugh <charles.waugh at usu.edu<mailto:charles.waugh at usu.edu>>

Date: Monday, January 26, 2015 at 6:45

To: "Fox, Diane" <dnfox at holycross.edu<mailto:dnfox at holycross.edu>>, "Group, Vietnam Studies" <vsg at u.washington.edu<mailto:vsg at u.washington.edu>>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] non-political accounts of Vietnamese experience of war available in English?

Hi Diane,

Viet Thanh Nguyen's new novel, The Sympathizer, certainly addresses that exclusion, and fits your need for a first person story that shows complexity and humanity. But only its first chapter takes place in Vietnam during the American War; the rest is set in California (plus a short bit in the Philippines).

It's worth checking out.

All the best,

Charles

On 1/25/15 1:03 PM, Fox, Diane wrote:

Another writer in a volume I am contributing to points out that in 50 years of American novel writing about the VN war, "humanizing depictions of Vietnamese people, whether from the north or south" are excluded, as are most women, except for Vietnamese prostitutes or American nurses.

This has got me thinking about--well, not so much novels, or collections of short stories, but of extended narratives told in the first person.

I'd be grateful for examples that show complexity, humanity (difficult word, loaded for some, but let it stand for now) -- whether or not they come from American war novels.

I'm interested in books that tell the human experience of living through the 30 years of fighting in Viet Nam, not in books that engage, except tangentially, in political argument.

The first few that come to my mind are these... again, grateful for additions:

Sacred Willow

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places

Dang Thuy Tram's diary (Last Night I Dreamed of Peace)

Dr. Le Cao Dai's Central Highlands--a north Vietnamese journal of life on the HCM trail, 1965-1973

thanks for suggestions,

Diane

Diane Fox

College of the Holy Cross