One-Sided!!!
Dear Bella So after my article on Agent Orange Day Was published in the campus newspaper Professor Lang Came up to me at Fatemeh’s Cafe and said “Why do you only talk about How the…
Category: Vietnam
On Susan Sontag, Trip to Hanoi
Journal, July 2005 Susan Sontag spent two weeks in North Vietnam in 1968, and wrote 90 pages about her experiences. (Perhaps I will cull from those notebooks I kept in Gaza and the West Bank…
Beyond the Support the Troops Syndrome
I recently read a collection of essays in Brenda M. Boyle’s The Vietnam War: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature. Academics explored authors like Bao Ninh (The Sorrow of War), Michael Herr (Dispatches), Duong…
The Ultimate in Jewish Nightmares
I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” It was a pleasure…
“People Know My Lai”
Cal wrote to Carla Nguyen and me in an email: “People know My Lai (Or they think they do) People over 60 or so Remember the name Calley But what about the others? I don’t…
Share the Wealth with Virginia Druhe: Vietnam 40 Years after the American War
This past April, Virginia Druhe went on a Veterans for Peace delegation to Vietnam. She will share about the vibrant society of Vietnam through the eyes of U.S. veterans working to repair ongoing destruction resulting…
Minutes
1. The factory inspectors had to confront the problem of how the working day might be defined in practice. At what times should laborers get to work? Is the start-up time inside the factory or…
Children of Vietnam
On Betty Lifton and Tom Fox, Children of Vietnam, 1972 The writer of children’s stories and a former IVS volunteer and journalist had to do something. So they compiled this Mev Puleo-ish book of stories and…
“Every Man Should Have His war”
One of the best books I’ve ever read is by Gloria Emerson, Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses and Ruins from a Long War. A major themes in the book is how the Vietnam War affected Americans (or…
Seeing is Believing
1. Two years later, when I went to the United States to explain the suffering of the Vietnamese people and to plead for peace in Vietnam, I saw a woman on television carrying a wounded baby…