Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn recording the histories and putting them to print, Patricia Norland succeeded in capturing an important slice of history and the very personal story of exemplary women.
* Foreign Service Journal *
To put it mildly, these stories are gripping.
* Green Left *
This is a well-written, incredibly valuable book. Highly recommended.
* Choice *
[Norland] gives [these women] a platform to talk directly to the reader[,] thereby revealing the women's double and even multiple lives, full of contradiction and inner conflicts caused by the complexity and long duration of the war years. The Saigon Sisters is a substantial collection of thoughts, memories, moments of pain and joy in individual lives.
* Asian Review of Books *
The literature on the war in Vietnam includes hundreds of first-person sources by men on all sides in the conflict, but fewer than a dozen books about women are in print. Thus this collection of oral history interviews by Norland (formerly, US Department of State) is an important contribution.
* Choice *
It is quite easy, and motivating as well, to imagine a course on Vietnamese history after World War II that includes only work by women and with The Saigon Sisters as a pivotal work connecting them all. As Norland's powerful oral-history recounting of the lives of this 'band of sisters' demonstrates, friendship and independence required vigilance but endured despite decades of war.
* Pacific Affairs *
To read a good group biography is to come out with a different level of appreciation for the ways, trivial and tremendous, that humans influence one another... Norland tells the stories of nine [Vietnamese women] who chose to stay, and who, after spending their childhoods secretly dreaming of Vietnamese independence, found surprising ways into the resistance.
* The Atlantic *
Table of Contents1. Thanh: "Our Hearts Beating for the Cause"
2. Trang: "Living a Contradiction"
3. Minh: "Generation at a Crossroads"
4. Le An: "The University of Life"
5. Sen: "A Question of Habit"
6. Tuyen: "A Chance to Succeed"
7. Lien An: "Deep Down, We Remain Vietnamese"
8. Xuan: "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality Were Not for Our People"
9. Oahn: "I Did Not Become a Refugee"
10. Tranh: "We Are, After All, Human Beings"
11. Trang: "Prepared for Any Sacrifice or Risk"
12. Minh: "I Led Two Lives"
13. Le An: "The Theme of Our Work... Was Revolution"
14. Sen: "Working for the People, Not a Particular Party"
15. Tuyen: "Everyone Was Wrong"
16. Lien An: "We Understood What We Had to Do"
17. Xuan: "We Could Not Stay Indifferent"
18. Oanh: "French Are Very Nice in France and Very Colonialist in the Colonies"
19. Reuniting
Epilogue
