Audio edition is excellent | Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

The other side of the river.... | Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram | Dang Thuy Tram

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	• Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram Dang Thuy Tram Three Rivers Press, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Cultural Understanding

The story behind this story is more germane to me.
It shows the common thread of conscience and patriotism that cultures & mankind share.
Neil Alexander a photographer/film maker is working on a documentary that adds a whole new dimension to this story.
[...]

Audio edition is excellent

Kim Mai Guest gives an authentic presentation of Tram's diary, making the book very accessible. I especially like hearing the names of places and people pronounced accurately and hearing the depth of feeling in the author's voice.

The other side of the river....

...to use Blasé Pascal's phrase, relating to his rhetorical question concerning his right to kill another man, just because he lived on that opposite bank. Dang Thuy Tram's diaries are an important addition to that small group of Vietnamese books concerning the American War which have appeared in English, and include Bao Ninh's "The Sorrow of War," and Duong Thu Huong's "Novel Without a Name."

Alain-Fournier was another great writer whose life was cut far too short by war during the very early months of World War I. Both he and Thuy died at the same age, 27. Alain-Fournier's literary reputation was established prior to his death, Thuy's has finally come, posthumously. The strength of her diary is the immediacy and authenticity of the comments. She was quite optimistic at the beginning, but with the mounting casualties in her unit, and the relentless bombardment from the Americans, she turns more pessimistic, and foreshadows her own death. For those portions I would have given her a 5-star rating, but the frequent interjection of that leaden communist rhetoric, and the vague treatment of the personnel struggles within her unit, and the party, I decided to give only a 4-star rating, preferring both of the books above. Also, there were the issues that were only briefly discussed, and were of essential interest - her medical work. There was never an adequate description of her clinic, and the availability of medical supplies. Malaria, and what the GI's called "jungle rot," (fungal infections) were unmentioned yet must have been a significant portion of her work. She mentions in passing the poison that was Agent Orange, but again gives no real description of the effect it had on her unit.

Tim O'Brien, probably the greatest American novelist to come out of this tragic war, was in the infamous Americal Division, in Quang Ngai province, the unit that Thuy repeatedly called "the American bandits." He might have actually have been on one of the patrols that she had to face. The Americal's bases were on the lowlands, near the coast, and the mountains loomed to the West, where Thuy lived, and were a constant source of fascination and beauty - the light was never quite the same on those mountains. One of O'Brien's novels, "Going After Cacciato" explored the fantasy of one soldier finally having had enough, and deciding to walk away from the war, through those mountains, all the way to Europe. I shared that fascination with those mountains, during the same time Thuy was in them, and even had the same fantasy about walking away from the war. I was in a tank unit that spent four months, in late '68, in the next province south, Binh Dinh. One of our jobs was the road "security" of Highway 1, and on several days, we would sit, overlooking the South China Sea, at the boundary between Quang Ngai and Binh Dinh province, only 2 to 5 miles from Thuy's clinic in the hills.

Thuy spoke many times of her desire for revenge against the invaders of her country. An honest and understandable emotion from those who suffered years of misery, and the loss of so many friends. This emotion was shared by her compatriots, and has now been dissipated as they welcome American tourists to their country. I would have loved to have discussed this transformation with her in a tea house in her beloved Hanoi.

Finally, how many more diaries like this are currently being produced in Iraq?

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Extraordinary Book!

In October 2008 I listened to a program on NPR, "To the Best of Our Knowledge" about women in war. One of the audio articles was an interview with the U.S. soldier who saved Dang Thuy Tram's diary from being destroyed and who was instrumental in having the diary translated and published as "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace".
As a U.S. Navy veteran of the Vietnam War I am aware that I am one of the enemy Thuy hated with such passion, and someone who was in part responsible for the painful life she and her comrades experienced. This book brings a different perspective than most books on the Vietnam War, and portrays America as aggressive invaders of the country she loved. Thuy vividly describes the violence, anguish, dedication to duty and cause, and sadness associated with war. Happiness isn't included in the book, and the book does not have a happy ending. However, it is an honest and thought provoking study of the Vietnam War and the human affects of any war.
Peace.

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Highly touted bestseller in Vietnam but not the same in the U.S.

Dang Thuy Tram's chronicle, in its English materialization, is perhaps the only Vietnam-related book to touch all sides of that tragedy. It was difficult to keep the incredible passage of her pages, the back story, in the background of this much-anticipated war diary.

In March 2005, just prior to the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, two Vietnam veteran brothers gave a nondescript and scarcely attended talk at Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center. Their presentation was about a diary penned by a Viet Cong doctor that had been kept for 35 years by ex-Army intelligence officer Fred Whitehurst, one of the brothers. His Vietnamese interpreter had advised him to spare the war booty, "Fred, you can't burn this, it already has a fire in it."

Thuy's first entries began in 1968, just after the Tet Offensive. "Operated on one case of appendicitis with inadequate anesthesia. I had only a few meager vials of Novocaine to give the soldier, but he never groaned once during the entire procedure. He even smiled to encourage me."

Unless readers can lay out the original diary next to its English brethren and are fluent in both languages, it will be difficult to determine whether the latter resembles the writing of Thuy or of the publisher's dramatic editing. The narrative is thick but raw, and only spared by entries of exuberance and jubilation by Thuy amid her combat tour to treat and support wounded Communist soldiers. "Oh, Thuy! Overcome these pains in your heart. Be joyful...You cannot live with sentiments alone, you stubborn girl? Furthermore, unless one is a Vietnam veteran, the battlefield context of time and place will be hard to comprehend. Footnotes appear on nearly every other page.

The English translation of Thuy's diary, ironically enough, was done by a former boat person who had fled Communist Vietnam in the late 1970s. He had to enlist the help of his father, a reeducated former South Vietnamese. Last but not least, there is a long introduction--a drawn-out overview of the war--by an antiwar Pulitzer-prize winning journalist.

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?Remarkable. . . . A gift from a heroine who was killed at twenty-seven but whose voice has survived to remind us of the humanity and decency that endure amid?and despite?the horror and chaos of war.?
?Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine

Brutally honest and rich in detail, this posthumously published diary of a twenty-seven-year-old Vietcong woman doctor, saved from destruction by an American soldier, gives us fresh insight into the lives of those fighting on the other side of the Vietnam War. It is a story of the struggle for one?s ideals amid the despair and grief of war, but most of all, it is a story of hope in the most dire circumstances.

?As much a drama of feelings as a drama of war.?
?Seth Mydans, New York Times

?A book to be read by and included in any course on the literature of the war. . . . A major contribution.?
?Chicago Tribune

?An illuminating picture of what life was like among the enemy guerrillas, especially in the medical community.?
?The VVA Veteran, official publication of Vietnam Veterans of America

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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