Book Review by John J. Fitzgerald
The Unwanted: A Memoir
Kien Nguyen
New York and Boston: Little Brown, 2001
This is a compelling read. It held my attention and I finished it in two readings. Perhaps, because I am a Vietnam veteran, the book's theme held my attention. What happens to the people that we leave behind after an American invasion is repulsed and eventually comes to an end? Many of those who worked with and for the Americans will be viewed as collaborators. French women who dated German soldiers in Paris during WW2 were regarded as trash. What happens to the children of these women and their "foreign affairs", after the invader departs or flees? There have been a lot of these American invasions over the last century or so, and the story told here probably echoes in other lands. In a few years, we will probably get a similar tale based on Iraq.
Kien Nguyen seems to have written an honest tale. Parts of it do not ring true. Not all of the Communist officials are corrupt. Some of the corrupt officials in his tale are actually placed on trial by other Communist officials. He seems to have a very puritanical view of sexual relations and some of his sex scenes are quite sadistic. He does not treat a loving, young, girl friend very well. In fact the "hero," our narrator, is quite self-centered and depicts himself as the innocent victim of all of the activity swirling around him. He seems to dislike, if not hate, his mentally challenged sister. There are some scenes of torture that strain credibility, unless you buy the notion that the Vietnamese people are generally cruel. He has a scene where his cousins kick a dog to death. This strikes me as strange when they could have killed and cooked the animal. Captured "boat people" are first rescued and then "tortured" for no clear reason.
Escape from Hell, Vietnam, is the main goal of the story. The United States is described as the Heavenly City where all truth, goodness and beauty are thought to reside. It is also "air conditioned." The story is heavily shaped by ideology. Americans are good and Vietnamese are not good, for the most part.
The theme of the "Wizard of Oz" is part of this story. If Dorothy can just get to the Emerald City everything will be all right. Kien is our Vietnamese Dorothy.
He can't be happy, or even half happy, living in Vietnam. His real home is America! Dorothy would have settled for Kansas!
I read this book as the product of a South Vietnamese, Republic of Vietnam, "take" on the events of the Vietnam War. The narrator's family members were collaborationists and were quite well off and during their reign of power they treated their countrymen as simply their servants and their inferiors. The one strong character in the tale is the grand-father, and in the best Confucian tradition he is always wise and judicious. He was an officer in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and it was one of the most corrupt armies the world has ever seen. But he was a hero. (The narrator does not dwell on that fact of life.)
At times, I found myself thinking of Scarlet O'Hara in "Gone With The Wind." Fighting to maintain her ante-bellum lifestyle in a post Civil War Georgia, Scarlet feels no responsibility for slavery. She struggles to hold on to a world that no longer exists. Kien's mother is a lot like Scarlet and so is Kien. Narcissistic and egotistical, they have no sense of obligation to society and act surprised that the society that they reject, rejects them.
Aristocrats after the French Revolution of 1789 acted the same way. They hated the new regime and dreamed of the golden days of the "Ancien Regime."
At times the book seems a bit surreal. But then, the world of Kien is not quite real. He is a half-breed, part Caucasian-American and part Vietnamese. His identity is not anchored in either culture. Some of his narration reveals this when he prays to Buddha and then to God. His words contain some American slang and you have to wonder where he learned it. Was it from his mother?
The book seems to contain a measure of truth. The treatment of the children born of American fathers and Vietnamese women was not kind or humane. Children of colored Americans and Vietnamese women are treated the worst of all. Women get the worse treatment of all. Vietnam is a very sexist society.
The fact that the Vietnamese government allows Kien and his family to leave is not explained. It happens "out of the blue." (There is not much history in this memoir. During the period of the memoir, the big issue in the USA was where are our MIA's and our POW's? Sylvester Stallone was making his fantasy films about the war. The U.S. kept an embargo in place against Vietnam until the 1990's. The Vietnamese never received any of the promised compensation that Nixon/Kissinger promised in their peace treaty of 1973.) Nor is there any serious mention of the damage done to the country and the people of Vietnam by the American war effort. After the American Revolution, those who sided with the British, the "Tories" were regarded as traitors and many of them fled from the states back to England. They were not wanted by their neighbors. These were some of the original "boat people" of American history.
This book might do some harm. It contributes to the notion that the Americans (who invaded Vietnam) were the ones who suffered the most from the Vietnam War. It seems to support the Ronald Reagan claim that the war was a "Noble Cause." In American history, if you believe that the Confederate South's fight against the Union Army was a "Noble Cause," you will probably never get to a clear understanding of the American Civil War. There are some people who do not want us to come to a clear understanding of either the American Civil War or the War in Vietnam. They prefer that we endorse myth over history.
This memoir/book reads too much like a novel to be a significant contribution to history. I predict that it will soon be a Hollywood movie. Right up there with, "Gone With The Wind." It will make the same kind of lasting "contribution" to our understanding of the American past.
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See below for an idea of what Ronald Reagan considered the history of the Vietnam War to be.
Source: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/21882b.htm
Public Papers of Ronald Reagan
February 1982
The President's News Conference
February 18, 1982
- - - - - -opening statement- - - - - -
And now, Jim [Jim Gerstenzang, Associated Press], I can't think of anything else to say, so you can ask the first question.
El Salvador
Q. Thank you.
Mr. President, the Secretary of State has said that the United States will do whatever is necessary to head off a guerrilla victory in El Salvador and that the mood of the American people should not necessarily determine our course there. Do you agree with those statements, and under what conditions would you send combat troops to El Salvador?
The President. Well, once again, Jim, we get into an area -- there are all kinds of options -- economic, political, security, and so forth -- that can be used in situations of this kind. And as I've said so often, I just don't believe that you discuss those options or what you may or may not do in advance of doing any of those things -- except that I will say, lest there be some misunderstanding, there are no plans to send American combat troops into action anyplace in the world.
Q. If I could follow that up. Can you just envision any circumstances under which we would be sending U.S. combat troops to El Salvador?
The President. Well, maybe if they dropped a bomb on the White House, I might get mad.
- - - - - - other questions - - - - -
Lou [Lou Cannon, Washington Post]?
Nicaragua
Q. Mr. President, have you approved of covert activity to destabilize the present Government of Nicaragua?
The President. Well, no, we're supporting them. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm sorry. I was thinking El Salvador, because of the previous -- when you said that. Nicaragua. Here again, this is something upon which the national security interest -- I will not comment.
But let me say something about all of Central America right now, and questions on that subject. Next week I will be addressing the Organization of American States on that entire subject, and therefore, I'll save any answers to any questions on that subject.
Q. If I could follow up, do you approve or reject -- or do you care to state what your policy is as far as having American covert operations to destabilize any existing government without specific reference to Nicaragua?
The President. No, again I'm going to say this is like discussing the options. No comment on this.
Yes, George [George Skelton, Los Angeles Times].
El Salvador
Q. Mr. President, although you have no plans to send combat troops to El Salvador, plans can be developed quickly. I'd like to hear some expression of your commitment, if there is one, not to use American combat forces in El Salvador. And, again, just how far will your administration go to keep the Duarte government from falling?
The President. Well, George, your question again gets to that thing that I have always said I think has been wrong in the past, when our government has done it -- and I will not do it -- and that is to put down specific do's and don't's [sic] with regard to some situation that deals with not only security matters but even such things as trying to influence a situation such as the one in Poland. I think that to do so is just giving away things that reduce your leverage.
- - - - - - - - other questions - - - - - -
Now, Lesley [Lesley Stahl, CBS News], you were -- --
U.S. Foreign Covert Operations
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry, but I'd like to go back to Latin America and El Salvador for a minute.
In the 1960's the CIA came up with a secret plan to get us involved in Vietnam in a surreptitious, covert manner. Is it possible that you can tell us that there is no secret plan now devised by the CIA or any other agency in government to surreptitiously involve Americans in similar activities in Latin America? And can you also assure the American people that we will not go in there secretly without you and this Government giving us some pre-warning?
The President. Well, Lesley, you know there's a law by which things of this kind have to be cleared with congressional committees before anything is done.
But again, if I may point to something -- I'm not in total agreement with the premise about Vietnam. If I recall correctly, when France gave up Indochina as a colony, the leading nations of the world met in Geneva with regard to helping those colonies become independent nations. And since North and South Vietnam had been, previous to colonization, two separate countries, provisions were made that these two countries could, by a vote of all their people together, decide whether they wanted to be one country or not.
And there wasn't anything surreptitious about it, that when Ho Chi Minh refused to participate in such an election -- and there was provision that people of both countries could cross the border and live in the other country if they wanted to. And when they began leaving by the thousands and thousands from North Vietnam to live in South Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh closed the border and again violated that part of the agreement.
And openly, our country sent military advisers there to help a country which had been a colony have such things as a national security force, an army, you might say, or a military to defend itself. And they were doing this, if I recall correctly, also in civilian clothes, no weapons, until they began being blown up where they lived and walking down the street by people riding by on bicycles and throwing pipe-bombs at them. And then they were permitted to carry sidearms or wear uniforms.
But it was totally a program until John F. Kennedy -- when these attacks and forays became so great that John F. Kennedy authorized the sending in of a division of Marines. And that was the first move toward combat troops in Vietnam.
So, I don't think there's any parallel there between covert activities or anything -- --
Q. Will you tell me that there will not be secret plan that you will not tell the American people about?
The President. I can't answer your question for the same reason that I couldn't answer George's. I just can't answer on that.
There's a lady in the very back row.
- - - - - - - other questions - - - - -
And so it goes! |
Expedited Available
"Gone With The Wind for the Vietnam Conflict"
"An honest, straightforward account of a difficult childhood"