On a recent extended road trip, we occupied many hours listening to two
books that brought back vivid memories of the 1960s and feelings about our
experiences with and in Vietnam (1966-68) during what is referred to by
Americans as the Vietnam war and by Vietnamese as the American war in their
country. The first was the current best-selling novel, The Women by
Kristen Hannah. The other was Dust
Child by Vietnamese author, Nguyen Phan Que Mai.
After reading a book, I read reviews online, usually looking at the
Goodreads site. An indication of the
popularity of The Women is that it currently has over 60,000 reviews,
and over 70% are fives, on a five-star scale.
I read only a sample, and I wished I would have found a review by a woman
who actually had an experience as a nurse in operating rooms in a Military
hospital in Vietnam during the war- but didn’t see one.
Dust Child is also well reviewed and liked by
reviewers. It presents a different perspective – taking a look at the often-fraught relationships
between Vietnamese women and American soldiers during the war. The novel
follows both the perspective of that generation – trying to find a better
future – and that of the servicemembers being forced, decades later, to
confront their past decisions and betrayals.
We are familiar with both authors, having previously read Nguyen Phan
Que Mai’s best-selling novel, The Mountains Sing, a suspenseful and
moving saga about a Vietnamese family in North Vietnam torn apart by the
various paths its members took during the war and struggling for reconciliation
after the war. I think it’s the best novel
I’ve read depicting the war from a Vietnamese perspective, though Le Ly
Hayslip’s memoir, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, is equally
riveting and based on her real-life experiences during the war and afterward in
the US. We have read several of Hannah’s
novels, - notably one of them, The Great Alone, also has echoes of the
effects of the Vietnam war on the human psyche, featuring a returned POW who
was prone to bouts of anger (PTSD?) and moves his family to a remote part of
Alaska.
The Women brings a well-deserved focus to
the contributions of women,
specifically military nurses, in Vietnam during the war. The story follows a young woman, 21-year-old Frankie who
misses her brother after he heads off to Vietnam with the navy and is challenged
by the notion that “women can be heroes, too”. Her father and mother don’t agree. She enlists with the Army since that is the
only branch that will get her over there quickly. Part one is full of war and all the chaos and human
tragedy that it entails, especially in the operating room where Frankie is
assigned to an evac hospital at Pleiku, in the central highlands near much
intense combat.
According to a Vietnam Women’s
Memorial Foundation statement, approximately 10,000 American military women
were stationed in Vietnam during the war, and we know from experience that numerous
other women served as physicians, social workers and medical personnel,
including my wife, Judy, a nurse. The churches in the US sent many nurses to
work in the Vietnam Christian Service program with which we worked. One of them, Gloria Anne Redlin, died from gunshots
fired by South Vietnamese soldiers in a dreadful fog of war incident at a
checkpoint, an accident of war that should not have happened. (see my blog post
August, 2023)
Kristen Hanna has a tendency to
be overly dramatic, and not being a nurse herself, got a few aspects of RN
training and nursing wrong (according to my nurse wife). Hannah was born in 1960, so obviously doesn’t
have the visceral lived experience of what it was like in the US or in Vietnam during
the timeframe of the novel, though she did good research and read a lot of
books by people who did.
The story of Frankie, both
in-country as a nurse and during the difficult re-entry back home after two
terms of service includes multiple heartbreaking experiences. Just when you think something good might
happen, it doesn’t. The tragedies just keep piling up. We read many instances of gapping wounds, triage
of wounded soldiers, rocket attacks, as well as romantic encounters (she chose
badly each time), about wanting her father’s approval (It was hard to listen to
her father disrespect her time and time again) and about how cold her mother was.
We read about her drunken pill popping over and over – but the point is to show
how difficult to was to return to the US and the awful reception veterans got
when they came back home many with PTSD. And how hard it was for her (and them)
to get the help they needed.
Personal memories contradict some of the authors
descriptions. For example, when Frankie
arrives at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon as a frightened young novice, she
sees pedicyclo drivers and children playing in the street as she steps
off the plane. I can assure you that
would not have been seen in that heavily guarded fortress like military
base. And she describes flying in and
out of locations like Tan Son Nhut, or Pleiku, and other locations– every time
with the pop – pop – pop of rifle fire from Vietcong soldiers on the
ground. I flew many times on planes and
helicopters out of and into those same towns and cities, even Dak To near the
Ho Chi Minh trail, during my stint as program director of Vietnam Christian
Service, and never once had that experience.
However, I am sure it was very usual that helicopters were fired on in
zones of live combat. Just no need to
dramatize and depict every moment as full of danger.
The ”women” angle of the story has to do with the
friendships Frankie made with co-workers Ethel and Barb – supporting
relationships to last a lifetime as they each know what the other has lived
through. When she sees the futility of
the war and joins the anti-war protests she has these sisters as soul mates. She tries to look for support elsewhere (VA
and others) but she gets turned away for being a woman and not having actually
been in combat. In the end she finds a
new purpose and the story takes a somewhat surprising turn toward what she
resolves to do and where she ends up living (one of my favorite places).
Of course, this story is told
from an American nurse’s experience and perspective, but I would prefer to have
had the Vietnamese people humanized and personalized a bit more. Not one Vietnamese person was given a name,
but there is an emotional encounter with an orphan that impacted Frankie.
In contrast Dust
Child tells a story from the point-of-view of three main Vietnamese characters,
alternating between two periods in Vietnam: the war years and the present day.
In 1969, sisters Trang and Quynh migrate to Saigon from their village and work
"bar girls" in Saigon, hoping to earn money to support their poor,
ailing parents.
Through the sister’s stories, the novel
details how a sex worker industry sprang up around the U.S. military presence,
one that easily coaxed young women into its clutches. Jumping to modern-day
Vietnam, the novel simultaneously tells the story of Phong, a 40-something
Amerasian who is desperate to find his American father in order to give his
wife and children a better life in the United States. He knows he is Amerasian because he is black,
but the US embassy will not grant him a visa.
It is estimated
that American soldiers left behind more than 20,000 of their children — born to Vietnamese women who
lived as laborers or sex workers near military bases. Some veterans came back
for their kids, but most did not. These
children, scorned and living on the margins of society are called Amerasians,
or worse, cast aside and labeled in Vietnamese "the dust of life." (Book review By Tom Horgen Minneapolis Star Tribune, March
24, 2023)
These are people whose circumstances have
forced them to live and survive from one fragile moment to the next. Thrown
into the mix is another protagonist, Dan, a sixtyish white American veteran
who's recently traveled back to Vietnam to find out what happened to his lover
and their child.
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai works wonders taking readers deep
inside this under covered part of the war's history.
I recommend both
books. I would give The Women
four stars and Dust Child five!
Personal Note:
Judy and I experienced
the Vietnam war up close and actively participated in the tumultuous sixties. So, now having lived well into the 21st
century, I am reflecting on how there is a sense in which the volatile and
polarized America in which we currently live can find its roots and be tracked
back to the conflicted and polarized 1960s.
Issues of race, political violence, abortion, anti-war protests, and
inequality are still being worked out today and so much needs to be done. I
found inspiration then in the anti-war, civil rights and environmental movements,
in young people engaged in service, in the slow progress towards more gender
and income equality, in this fragile political system we have in America, and I
still feel that hope today, even in this uncertain time.
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