Vietnam War

Prophecy (6/6/2010)

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

New York, New York

Forty years ago, Edwin Starr’s “War” was a Billboard Top 100 hit, an explicit denunciation of armed conflict. “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing,” he trilled. Karen Malpede’s Prophecy takes this sentiment as her starting point. Her latest play, an ambitious, layered look at the damage wrought by centuries of strife on the battlefield—and in the personal relationships that ensue once military action is over—is bold and dramatic. It’s also shrill.

Numerous stories unfold simultaneously. Jeremy Thrasher (Brendan Donaldson), recently back from fighting in Iraq, is studying acting at a well-respected New York conservatory. His teacher is former Broadway actor Sarah Golden (Kathleen Chalfant). A monologue Golden instructs Thrasher to deliver—the Tiresias speech from Sophocles’ Antigone unwittingly sends him into a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder-induced rage. Golden is shocked by the violence of his in-class outburst, and in short order not only has to help him deal with the trauma he has experienced, but also has to re-examine her own past, including a volatile relationship with Lucas Brightman, a former student who fought in Vietnam and later died. Golden and Brightman had been lovers and Thrasher’s struggles bring Golden face-to-face with a host of complicated recollections and emotions from the early 1970s.

At the same time, Golden and her husband of many decades, Alan (George Bartenieff), are having difficulties. As the director of a refugee aid organization, Alan is often busy “saving the world,” making Sarah feel as if her work as a teacher is frivolous. Also distressing, many years back Alan had an affair with his assistant, Hala (Najla Said). But it was not just lust that propelled Alan into bed with Hala. A Jew whose father saved hundreds from Hitler’s ovens, Alan felt a tremendous need to propagate, to do his bit to replace those lost to the Fuhrer’s genocide. Sadly, Alan and Sarah cannot reproduce; Sarah became infertile following an illegal abortion performed years before, prior to Roe v. Wade. After taking up with Hala, Alan’s dream was realized—after one miscarriage, Hala carried to term and delivered a daughter, Mariam, who she reared in Lebanon.

Out of sight is apparently out of mind and Sarah and Alan rarely talk about either Hala or the child anymore. In fact, Alan doesn’t meet Mariam (Najla Said) until years later when, as an adult, she lands on his doorstep and threatens to blow him to smithereens with a bomb she says is hidden in her purse.

And that’s not all: Turns out Sarah’s boss, Dean Charles Muffler, [Peter Francis James] was Lucas Brightman’s commanding officer in Vietnam and his possible role in Brightman’s death lurks over the two-act production. What’s more, Thrasher’s PTSD triggers long-buried feelings in Muffler and he is once again tormented by memories of serving in the country.

These themes give Prophecy incredible, palpable intensity. Despite this, Prophecy weaves a cloth of far too many threads. The similarities between U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq are noteworthy, but on top of themes including marital fidelity, the desire to reproduce, the meaning of friendship, the Holocaust, successful mentoring, how best to assist refugees, the threat of terrorism, and the lasting impact of war on both those who fight and those who are fought against, it’s too much.

Still, Prophecy delivers an urgent message. Like Edwin Starr’s “War,” it reminds us that nothing good comes from military combat. “They say we must fight to keep our freedom,” Starr sang. “But Lord knows there’s got to be a better way.”

Indeed.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, June 11th 2010

Entangling Alliances: Foreign War Brides and American Soldiers in the Twentieth Century

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Susan Zeiger

New York University Press

When men are shipped out to foreign locations to engage in wartime activities, it seems inevitable that they will become romantically and sexually involved with foreign women. In Entangling Alliances, Susan Zeiger explores this phenomenon, examining governmental, military, and societal responses to American soldiers’ desires for sex, companionship, and marriage while engaged in combat overseas. She argues that the changing ways Americans treated war brides over the course of the twentieth century demonstrates shifting American sensibilities regarding foreign policy, race, and gender. More than anything, because war brides involved an exchange of women across cultural and national boundaries, American discourse about war brides was ultimately about what constituted American manhood, men’s relationships with women, and the role of the nation in its relationship to other countries.

During World War I, the military preached sexual abstinence while devising methods to keep American soldiers and local women apart, in particular African-American soldiers and white European women. The army’s response to marriage requests vacillated until an official policy was handed down that marriage was a personal, not military, question. Meanwhile, domestic policy concerns in the U.S. triumphed over an internationally-oriented political outlook; xenophobia for newcomers was inevitable and Americans wondered if these foreign women could become good American wives. Though many predicted the demise of these marriages, evidence reveals that the majority made it.

In World War II, military policy differed depending on location. It encouraged marriage in Great Britain and Australia, both Allied countries with similar cultural backgrounds to white middle-class America. Likewise, American society welcomed these brides, suggesting that American women should emulate their domesticity and loyalty to husbands. Alternatively, the military encouraged prostitution, rather than marriage, in both Italy and the Philippines, while American society viewed these war brides as less desirable immigrants. Zeiger argues that both policies—encouraging prostitution or marriage—“shared... the intention to preserve and extend male control over women.” She also points out that though many of these local women showed independence and an assertion of personal freedom by going out with American men, sometimes against their family’s wishes, their stories “end with marriage and dependence.”

Race played a huge role in war bride stories post-WWII and throughout the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Congressional policy actively limited brides from Asian countries, outright barring Japanese spouses for several years, while all interracial couples faced social discrimination and, occasionally, found that their marriages were not legal when they moved from one state to another.

Zeiger argues that the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam saw the “demise” of the war bride as a phenomenon considered and debated by the American public. The military did not provide transport to war brides the way they did in WWI and WWII, and it actively encouraged prostitution rather than marriage, extending its WWII policy of creating red-light districts where prostitutes were regularly examined by medical officials and given “safe” ratings to prevent the spread of venereal disease. Korean and Vietnamese wives were not written about widely in the American press and they have not written about their post-war experiences in America, the way war brides from earlier eras have done. They have been, Zeiger writes, “all but invisible in American culture.”

Demographic information suggests that these Asian war brides tend to be isolated, even in comparison to other Asian immigrants though they have sponsored family members to come to the U.S., unlike earlier war brides. Though Asian war brides were an untold story, there was a lot of media attention paid to the mixed-race children left behind in Vietnam and, sometimes airlifted out and brought to the U.S. Zeiger argues that the story of Amerasian children, and the efforts to bring them to the U.S. allowed Americans to re-conceptualize the war, seeing both Amerasian children and American soldiers as victims in the story. “The American nation becomes father and, also, paradoxically, child. Vietnam, the mother, the war bride, is not part of this reconciliation.”

Entangling Alliances is a compelling read, illuminating twentieth century social struggles encountered by men and women on both domestic and foreign soil over questions of gender, race, and nationality. Though Zeiger argues that the war bride phenomenon died out with the Korean and Vietnam wars, clearly, soldiers still took wives and fathered children with Korean and Vietnamese women. More recently, stories of male American soldiers marrying Iraqi women have been exploited in the media. Because Zeiger only covers the period from WWI up through the Vietnam War, she leaves a perplexing question unexplored: What has happened with female soldiers and local men in the conflicts that the U.S. has engaged in the last twenty years? Have female soldiers, like male soldiers, engaged in romantic and sexual conquests with non-U.S. citizens? I suspect their experience has been radically different than their male counterparts.

Written by: Jessica Powers, June 5th 2010

The Lotus Eaters

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Tatjana Soli

St. Martin's Press

When I read a book that keeps me enthralled to the final page, that is so absorbing I have to tear myself away from it, I find myself amazed (and envious) that anyone can be so gifted. That’s how I felt after reading The Lotus Eaters.

Having attended my share of writing seminars, I realize you can’t really soar as a writer until you have truly mastered the craft; however, some writers seem to have talent that defies reason. A few paragraphs into this novel, I realized Tatjana Soli's powerful prose would haunt me.

I rarely read war novels, but the plot of this one intrigued me. The main protagonist is Helen Adams, a young American photojournalist covering the Vietnam War, and in Helen, Soli created a character that is complex, courageous, and real—yet flawed at the same time. Both Helen’s father and brother were in the military, and her brother lost his life in a Special Forces operation in Vietnam. Helen always felt excluded by the camaraderie between her father and brother, and she is plagued by the sense of having something to prove. This lingering demon has driven her to being in the midst of this historic point and place in time, and Helen is willing to risk almost anything to get a defining, iconic photo. Many of the characters in this novel are addicted to war, like a drug that must repeatedly enter their bloodstream.

Within hours of arriving in Vietnam, Helen meets Sam, a legendary war photographer, and Linh, a Vietnamese photographer and translator. Sam becomes a mentor and guide to Helen, who quickly learns that women are not welcome in the macho world of war. Linh helps her to navigate the murky landscape of a dangerous country that is shifting on a regular basis. Helen's human interest assignments also shift as her willingness to take risks proves her mettle as a serious photojournalist.

Soli's prose is gripping, moving, and unflinchingly places you in the middle of the action. I had to stop reading from time to time because the story affected me in a way that was hard to shake off. Told through the multiple viewpoints of Helen, Sam and Linh, we get a 360-degree view of the nightmare that is war and the bond these individuals developed with each other.

I was deflated and relieved when I turned the final page of The Lotus Eaters. It was unlike any other book I’ve read recently: beautiful and somewhat unsettling. If you want to know how to write a great novel, ask Tatjana Solis.

Written by: Gita Tewari, March 22nd 2010

The Things We Do To Make It Home

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Beverly Gologorsky

Seven Stories Press

When Beverly Gologorsky’s powerfully written and beautiful novel, The Things We Do To Make It Home, was first released in 1999, most U.S. residents weren’t thinking about war. The Vietnam conflict had ended decades earlier, the Cold War was over, and for at least a fraction of a minute, world peace seemed possible. Then 9-11 happened, and a world without armed conflict became the stuff of pipe dreams. In short order the U.S. was involved in two wars, fighting what many see as losing battles against terrorism.

This makes the re-release of Gologorsky’s novel especially important. Unlike war stories that focus only on the soldiers’ experiences, The Things We Do To Make It Home includes the lovers and children of numerous warriors—people who have no choice but to grapple with the physical and psychological aftereffects of military life when their loved ones return to civilian life. It’s gripping material, poetically rendered. And, while Gologorsky’s protagonists are exclusively male Vietnam vets, the scenes she conjures will undoubtedly resonate with the family and friends of soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the same time, the novel is somewhat enigmatic, offering crisply written and evocative snapshots of post-war life. Much is left to the imagination as Gologorsky conjures reunions and zooms in on the everyday struggles of those trying to re-integrate into late twentieth century New York. In chronicling their experiences, Gologorsky zeroes in on a handful of men whose looming presence forms an austere and ever-present backdrop in the lives of those left behind. As they struggle to plug back into the society they left as eighteen-year-old teens, their confusion and angst never recede from center stage. Now full-fledged adults, their children have grown up without them and the women they once dated or married have become self-sufficient. Small wonder that many see drinking and drugging as their only respite from both present-day realities and memories of serving their country.

At no point does Gologorsky offer judgments about the efficacy of the Vietnam War. Instead, in eight chapters, we meet characters like Sarajo, who at age sixteen wants nothing to do with her now-homeless dad, but who finds herself inexplicably drawn to a photography teacher who spends his days photographing un-domiciled veterans. It’s like a case study in a psychology text, but far more wrenching. We also meet tough-as-nails Lucy, a financially successful professional, whose bravado is fractured by an encounter with one of her disabled husband’s down-on-his-luck GI buddies. Similarly, the saga of Rod, Emma, and their two daughters—the only intact family in the book—adds heft to the emotional sweep that Gologorsky presents.

In a Reader’s Guide to the book, included as an Afterword, Gologorsky describes her goals in writing The Things We Do To Make It Home and says she hopes the novel will make readers appreciate “the travails of women” and give them “a sense of their incredible strength—that is, how much these women give and do; also, the importance of respecting, honoring, and remembering all women whose lives are similar.” The Things We Do To Make It Home does this and then some. It’s a book that sticks with you, literally bringing home the realities of war and vividly conveying the human toll of violence and aggression.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, January 3rd 2010

On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam

admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:02:00 +0000

By Joyce Hoffman

Da Capo Press

Joyce Hoffman read a book about journalists who reported on American involvement in Vietnam in the sixties and wondered to herself, “Where are the women?” Considering that she holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, a job teaching journalism to college students, and pens a biweekly op-ed column about journalism accuracy and fairness issues, it was not unlikely that she would write the book that would answer that question. On Their Own offers a thoroughly researched account of fifteen women who played vital, if varying, roles in the reporting of the Vietnam War.

For myself, when I studied the media industry in college, I became so disenchanted with the corporate system of information dissemination in the United States that instead of packing the tailored black suit in my closet upon graduation, I grabbed a rucksack and waited tables for awhile. But journalism still fascinates me, and for that reason, I wish that I had read this book in school. Many of these women simply bought a plane ticket and showed up in Saigon, determined to find their own stories. They believed that if they did their job well, they would be published by many of the male editors who told them they couldn’t do it in the first place, as they indeed were.

As a pleasure read, On Their Own can be a bit dense with historical detail that sometimes stifles the narrative of each experience; however, this detail makes the book richer for any student of the history of journalism. I had a hard time getting started with it, but I soon realized that my difficulty was because the first 100 pages deal mainly with more socially conservative women who believed in the United State’s right to be in Vietnam and felt that the people there needed to be Westernized for their own good - talented and outspoken reporters, but not women I wanted to spend much time with. Once I got into chapter three, I found stories that were not only adventurous, but personally inspiring.

Frankie Fitzgerald’s story is one that any aspiring and socially conscious non-fiction writer should become acquainted with. Daughter of the CIA’s director of operations, she spent years in Vietnam, on her own, writing with a sense of purpose. Convinced that the war was immoral and wrong, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. “She once asked a Vietnamese associate what he thought would happen if the United States withdrew. He told her: ‘Don’t ask us that. It’s none of your business. We just want you to leave.’”

Reporting on a war requires much more than death tolls and fire fight descriptions. Today, it seems obvious that different perspectives on the impact of war on societies engaged in it add invaluable relevance to that body of journalism. We are still faced with government influence and spin. The more people are reporting on events, the better we can understand them and use that knowledge to avoid mistakes in the future. Right?

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, October 13th 2008