Download or read book The Rebirth of Hope written by Sau Le Hudecek and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in a demilitarized zone during the Vietnam War to a Vietnamese mother and American soldier, Sau Le arrived in the United States as a young woman with only twenty dollars in her pocket. Though bullied and abused since childhood, she nevertheless came to her new homeland armed with a commitment to build a decent life for herself, her infant son, and her traumatized mother. This is the story of how she overcame every conceivable hurdle—including significant culture shock, a language barrier, serious illness, heartbreak, and betrayal—to become a landlord, successful business owner, joyous wife and mom and a woman blessed with generous, loyal friends. She describes an arduous journey, both literal and figurative, from a place of terror and utter despair to a life she created that’s overflowing with prosperity, patriotism, and love. And ultimately, it’s the story of hope, something Sau thought she’d lost long ago in the minefields of Vietnam. In telling her story, Sau Le aims to uplift those who worry that their dreams cannot be realized. Her goal is also to remind everyone born on American soil that this is the greatest country on earth, and that anything in this land is possible for those willing to put dedication, faith, and passion to work.
Download or read book Leaving Vietnam written by Sarah S. Kilborne and published by Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of a boy and his father who endure danger and difficulties when they escape by boat from Vietnam, spend days at sea, and then months in refugee camps before making their way to the United States.
Download or read book Tours of Vietnam written by Scott Laderman and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-16 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Tours of Vietnam, Scott Laderman demonstrates how tourist literature has shaped Americans’ understanding of Vietnam and projections of United States power since the mid-twentieth century. Laderman analyzes portrayals of Vietnam’s land, history, culture, economy, and people in travel narratives, U.S. military guides, and tourist guidebooks, pamphlets, and brochures. Whether implying that Vietnamese women were in need of saving by “manly” American military power or celebrating the neoliberal reforms Vietnam implemented in the 1980s, ostensibly neutral guides have repeatedly represented events, particularly those related to the Vietnam War, in ways that favor the global ambitions of the United States. Tracing a history of ideological assertions embedded in travel discourse, Laderman analyzes the use of tourism in the Republic of Vietnam as a form of Cold War cultural diplomacy by a fledgling state that, according to one pamphlet published by the Vietnamese tourism authorities, was joining the “family of free nations.” He chronicles the evolution of the Defense Department pocket guides to Vietnam, the first of which, published in 1963, promoted military service in Southeast Asia by touting the exciting opportunities offered by Vietnam to sightsee, swim, hunt, and water-ski. Laderman points out that, despite historians’ ongoing and well-documented uncertainty about the facts of the 1968 “Hue Massacre” during the National Liberation Front’s occupation of the former imperial capital, the incident often appears in English-language guidebooks as a settled narrative of revolutionary Vietnamese atrocity. And turning to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, he notes that, while most contemporary accounts concede that the United States perpetrated gruesome acts of violence in Vietnam, many tourists and travel writers still dismiss the museum’s display of that record as little more than “propaganda.”
Download or read book Vietnamerica written by GB Tran and published by Ballantine Group. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A superb new graphic memoir in which an inspired artist/storyteller reveals the road that brought his family to where they are today: Vietnamerica GB Tran is a young Vietnamese American artist who grew up distant from (and largely indifferent to) his family’s history. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past—and to focus on their children’s future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father’s remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America—a foreign land they couldn’t even imagine—where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation. In telling his family’s story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention—and of the gift of the American immigrants’ dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection—and a new graphic-memoir classic.
Download or read book A Sense of Duty written by Quang Pham and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 2010-04-20 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir by a former Vietnamese refugee who became a U.S. Marine, Quang Pham’s A Sense of Duty is an affecting story of fate, hope, and the aftermath of the most divisive war the United States has ever fought. This heartfelt salute to the spirit of America is also the account of the author’s reunion with his long-absent father, Hoa Pham, himself a devoted officer who saw combat firsthand as a South Vietnamese fighter pilot. Hoa’s revelations about his wartime experience leave Quang even more conflicted about his service in the Marines in the first Gulf War, and after years of struggling to reconnect with each other and the homeland they left behind, the two set out on a final, profound quest—to make sense of the war in Vietnam. Tracing Quang Pham’s uniquely spirited yet agonizing journey from his experiences as an uprooted refugee to his becoming a combat aviator, A Sense of Duty reveals the turmoil of a family torn apart and reunited by the fortunes of war. It is an American journey like no other.
Download or read book Two Lands One Heart written by Jeremy Schmidt and published by Walker & Company. This book was released on 1995 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of a seven-year-old boy and his journey to Vietnam, his mother's childhood home
Download or read book Journey to South Vietnam written by John Williams and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a different perspective on the Vietnam conflict. Journey to South Vietnam is a story of real life events, including my career in the military services—the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and the United States Air Force (USAF). These compelling and life-altering experiences seemed to defy the imagination. I was also searching for my god. I volunteered for South Vietnam when the United States was in turmoil and the military was not respected by the media
Download or read book Nothing Is Impossible written by Ted Osius and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today Vietnam is one of America’s strongest international partners, with a thriving economy and a population that welcomes American visitors. How that relationship was formed is a twenty-year story of daring diplomacy and a careful thawing of tensions between the two countries after a lengthy war that cost nearly 60,000 American and more than two million Vietnamese lives. Ted Osius, former ambassador during the Obama administration, offers a vivid account, starting in the 1990s, of the various forms of diplomacy that made this reconciliation possible. He considers the leaders who put aside past traumas to work on creating a brighter future, including senators John McCain and John Kerry, two Vietnam veterans and ideological opponents who set aside their differences for a greater cause, and Pete Peterson—the former POW who became the first U.S. ambassador to a new Vietnam. Osius also draws upon his own experiences working first-hand with various Vietnamese leaders and traveling the country on bicycle to spotlight the ordinary Vietnamese people who have helped bring about their nation’s extraordinary renaissance. With a foreword by former Secretary of State John Kerry, Nothing Is Impossible tells an inspiring story of how international diplomacy can create a better world.
Download or read book Ghosts of War in Vietnam written by Heonik Kwon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fascinating study of the Vietnamese experience and memory of the Vietnam War through the lens of popular imaginings about the wandering souls of the war dead. These ghosts of war play an important part in postwar Vietnamese historical narrative and imagination and Heonik Kwon explores the intimate ritual ties with these unsettled identities which still survive in Vietnam today as well as the actions of those who hope to liberate these hidden but vital historical presences from their uprooted social existence. Taking a unique approach to the cultural history of war, he introduces gripping stories about spirits claiming social justice and about his own efforts to wrestle with the physical and spiritual presence of ghosts. Although these actions are fantastical, this book shows how examining their stories can illuminate critical issues of war and collective memory in Vietnam and the modern world more generally.
Download or read book Vietnam written by Văn Huy Nguyễn and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-05-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, accessible portrait of contemporary Vietnam through texts and complementary photographs that dispute the stereotypic images we have of this dynamic and diverse country.
Download or read book Vietnam and America written by Marvin E. Gettleman and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No single event since World War II has marked this country s foreign policy and national image as deeply as did the war in Vietnam. Vietnam and America is a complete history of the war, as documented in essays by leading experts and in original source material. With generous selections from the documentary records, the book dispels distortions and illuminates in depth the many facets of the war, from Vietnam s history before the war, to Washington s insider policy making, to troop perspectives, to the impact back on the home front. In essays introducing each major stage of the war, the editors elucidate the issues, foreign policy choices, and consequences of U.S. involvement. Substantial headnotes put each document in historical perspective. This comprehensive anthology is an invaluable reference for anyone who wants to understand the Vietnam War."
Download or read book The Best We Could Do written by Thi Bui and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National bestseller 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui’s story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent—the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Do brings to life Thi Bui’s journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.
Download or read book A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain written by Robert Olen Butler and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-03-11 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: “Uncannily perceptive stories written by an American from the viewpoint of Vietnamese citizens transplanted to Louisiana” (People). A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is Robert Olen Butler’s Pulitzer Prize–winning collection of lyrical and poignant stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its enduring impact on the Vietnamese. Written in a soaring prose, Butler’s haunting and powerful stories blend Vietnamese folklore and contemporary American realities, creating a vibrant panorama that is epic in its scope. This new edition includes two previously uncollected stories—“Missing” and “Salem”—that brilliantly complete the collection’s narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam to explore the experiences of a former Vietcong soldier and an American MIA. “Deeply affecting . . . A brilliant collection of stories about storytellers whose recited folklore radiates as implicit prayer . . . One of the strongest collections I’ve read in ages.” —Ann Beattie
Download or read book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places written by Le Ly Hayslip and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most important books of Vietnamese American and Vietnam War literature...Moving, powerful.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer In these pages, Le Ly Hayslip—just twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her tiny village of Ky La—shows us the Vietnam War as she lived it. Initially pressed into service by the Vietcong, Le Ly was captured and imprisoned by government forces. She found sanctuary at last with an American contractor and ultimately fled to the United States. Almost twenty years after her escape, Le Ly found herself inexorably drawn back to the devastated country and loved ones she’d left behind, and returned to Vietnam in 1986. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, creating an extraordinary portrait of the nation, then and now—and of one courageous woman who held fast to her faith in humanity. First published in 1989, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places was hailed as an instant classic. Now, some two decades later, this indispensable memoir continues to be one of our most important accounts of a conflict we must never forget.
Download or read book Abandoning Vietnam written by James H. Willbanks and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon both archival research and his own military experiences in Vietnam, Willbanks focuses on military operations from 1969 through 1975. He begins by analyzing the events that led to a change in U.S. strategy in 1969 and the subsequent initiation of Vietnamization. He then critiques the implementation of that policy and the combat performance of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which finally collapsed in 1975.
Download or read book Understanding Vietnam written by Neil L. Jamieson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese—both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.
Download or read book Red Earth written by Philip H. Red Eagle and published by Holy Cow Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the late summer of 1990 I fell into depression. By the time the Gulf War broke out, in the winter of 1991, I was well on my way to a breakdown. By the summer, with the help of my buddy Ed Orr, I was in a therapy program at the Vets Center in uptown Seattle." Red Eagle's extraordinary book deals directly with Native American experience of the Vietnam war and offers a healing and redemptive force in the face of violence and its aftermath.
