Status
Available
Publication
New York : Harmony Books, c2007.
Description
At the age of 24, in 1968, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered as a doctor in a Viet Cong battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces. Her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war's ceaseless fury. The American officer who discovered the diary was under orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, "Don't burn this one--it has fire in it already." 35 years later, it was returned home.--From publisher description.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
Like The Diary of Ann Frank the back-story of this book is perhaps as interesting as the book itself. Thuy was a young North Vietnamese doctor who went to the front (walking the Ho Chi Minh trail for three months to get there) in 1966. She served in Quang Ngai province, where My Lai is located.
When
"...people lived in caves or in tunnels that also served as bunkers for the guerillas. Many of the hamlets had been burned or bulldozed to deny the guerillas shelter; the fields were pockmarked with craters and the nearby forests were defoliated." (From the introduction written by Frances Fitzgerald).
Thuy's diary ends abruptly in June 1970, when she was killed by American troops. The diaries were found by an American soldier whose task it was to go through captured documents to see if there was anything of military significance. His interpreter told him not to burn the diary: "It has fire in it already." Against all regulations, the American soldier kept the diary and brought it back home after the war. 35 years later, the soldier found Thuy's surviving family in Hanoi, and returned the diaries to her mother and sisters. The diaries were published in North Vietnam and became a huge bestseller.
The diaries themselves are a combination of the mundane and horrific, naivite and wisdom, innocence and cynicism. While Thuy shouldered huge responsibilities and a leadership role, she was also like Ann Frank, still a young woman with dreams and plans for the future. While her descriptions of the war are not graphic, the war is ever-present--the thunder of the bombers and the scramble to the shelters, interactions with the villagers and feeling their pain when their homes are destroyed, the babies, children and other civilians who were wounded and who she tried to save, the barreness of the exfoliated forests.
It was easy for Thuy to demonize the Americans and those Vietnamese soldiers fighting on behalf of South Vietnam, and some may find this aspect of the book jarring. I nevertheless highly recommend the book. Although it's sometimes may seem a little boring or childish it is always compelling. I would also note that it made a very interesting read in conjunction with Novel Without a Name.
I had a bunch of quotes from the book I was going to include here, but unfortunately I have long since returned the book to the library.
When
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the diary begins in April, 1968 (previous volumes were lost or destroyed) she was 25 years old and the chief physician at a field clinic that served civilians as well as Viet Cong soldiers. By August, 1967 the district where the hospital was located had become a "free-fire zone" where:"...people lived in caves or in tunnels that also served as bunkers for the guerillas. Many of the hamlets had been burned or bulldozed to deny the guerillas shelter; the fields were pockmarked with craters and the nearby forests were defoliated." (From the introduction written by Frances Fitzgerald).
Thuy's diary ends abruptly in June 1970, when she was killed by American troops. The diaries were found by an American soldier whose task it was to go through captured documents to see if there was anything of military significance. His interpreter told him not to burn the diary: "It has fire in it already." Against all regulations, the American soldier kept the diary and brought it back home after the war. 35 years later, the soldier found Thuy's surviving family in Hanoi, and returned the diaries to her mother and sisters. The diaries were published in North Vietnam and became a huge bestseller.
The diaries themselves are a combination of the mundane and horrific, naivite and wisdom, innocence and cynicism. While Thuy shouldered huge responsibilities and a leadership role, she was also like Ann Frank, still a young woman with dreams and plans for the future. While her descriptions of the war are not graphic, the war is ever-present--the thunder of the bombers and the scramble to the shelters, interactions with the villagers and feeling their pain when their homes are destroyed, the babies, children and other civilians who were wounded and who she tried to save, the barreness of the exfoliated forests.
It was easy for Thuy to demonize the Americans and those Vietnamese soldiers fighting on behalf of South Vietnam, and some may find this aspect of the book jarring. I nevertheless highly recommend the book. Although it's sometimes may seem a little boring or childish it is always compelling. I would also note that it made a very interesting read in conjunction with Novel Without a Name.
I had a bunch of quotes from the book I was going to include here, but unfortunately I have long since returned the book to the library.
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LibraryThing member cbl_tn
Dang Thuy Tram was a North Vietnamese doctor during the Vietnamese war. She kept diaries during the war. Thuy was killed in the conflict, and her diary was discovered by someone serving in American military intelligence. According to protocol, he should have destroyed the diary after determining
The diary wasn't what I expected to read. That's no fault of the author's. She didn't keep the diary for my benefit, but for her own. I had hoped it would contain more about her medical work and the conditions and challenges she faced. However, the emphasis of her diary entries is mainly personal. She has a lot to say about her relationships, mostly with young men she granted the status of younger brothers. In the earlier entries, she talks about her frustration that she had not yet been accepted as a Communist Party member. She is bothered by perceived criticism and jealousy. She is also troubled by a rift in her romance with a man she refers to as “M.”
Although she was 25 when she began this diary in 1968, Thuy came across to me as somewhat naive. I'm not sure her feelings for at least one of the young men she called “brother” were as platonic as she tried to convince herself they were. I'm not sure her younger brothers' feelings for her were as platonic as she thought they were, either. I think this could have been cause for the jealousy and criticism she experienced.
I think I would have gleaned more from this book if I knew more about the Vietnam War before I read it. The extensive footnotes helped some, but not enough. I was a child during the war, and I've never wanted to revisit the memories I have of the television news reels of the combat, the images of flag-draped coffins returning to the U.S., and images of angry protestors. One of my uncles served in Vietnam, and I remember praying for his safety every night at bedtime. It was a little startling to read of Thuy's hatred of the enemy/Americans. I know there are U.S. veterans who felt that way about the North Vietnamese, but they're not among my family and close friends.
I think this book is best suited for readers with prior knowledge of the causes of the war and the military operations. This review is based on an advance reading copy loaned to me by a friend.
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that it had no intelligence value, but instead he kept it. 30 years later, a copy of the diary was returned to Thuy's mother in Vietnam, where it was published. It was also translated into English for publication in the U.S.The diary wasn't what I expected to read. That's no fault of the author's. She didn't keep the diary for my benefit, but for her own. I had hoped it would contain more about her medical work and the conditions and challenges she faced. However, the emphasis of her diary entries is mainly personal. She has a lot to say about her relationships, mostly with young men she granted the status of younger brothers. In the earlier entries, she talks about her frustration that she had not yet been accepted as a Communist Party member. She is bothered by perceived criticism and jealousy. She is also troubled by a rift in her romance with a man she refers to as “M.”
Although she was 25 when she began this diary in 1968, Thuy came across to me as somewhat naive. I'm not sure her feelings for at least one of the young men she called “brother” were as platonic as she tried to convince herself they were. I'm not sure her younger brothers' feelings for her were as platonic as she thought they were, either. I think this could have been cause for the jealousy and criticism she experienced.
I think I would have gleaned more from this book if I knew more about the Vietnam War before I read it. The extensive footnotes helped some, but not enough. I was a child during the war, and I've never wanted to revisit the memories I have of the television news reels of the combat, the images of flag-draped coffins returning to the U.S., and images of angry protestors. One of my uncles served in Vietnam, and I remember praying for his safety every night at bedtime. It was a little startling to read of Thuy's hatred of the enemy/Americans. I know there are U.S. veterans who felt that way about the North Vietnamese, but they're not among my family and close friends.
I think this book is best suited for readers with prior knowledge of the causes of the war and the military operations. This review is based on an advance reading copy loaned to me by a friend.
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LibraryThing member Cathebrown
A touching account of a self-described "health-care revolutionist." Tram's diary bears her soul as she describes her longing for her beloved, her commitment to medicine and the love of her country. The book provides a point of view other than the American perspective.
LibraryThing member thornton37814
Dang Thuy Tram was a female North Vietnamese doctor who served in a clinic in South Vietnam during the conflict. This is an English translation of a diary she kept. She met her death in June 1970 at the hands of American soldiers. Some of the soldiers kept her diary and eventually got it back in
It is interesting to read Thuy's thoughts and feelings as she treats the wounded and experiences the proximity of war. Thuy's observations are almost poetic at times in the imagery she uses to record her feelings. Her dislike for the American "bandits" is frequently mentioned. It certainly presents a side of the Vietnamese conflict which is often overlooked. Thuy loses family, friends, and patients because of the war. One cannot help but sympathize with her plight as the war draws closer and closer to her clinic.
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the hands of her family. It was published in Vietnam. This is its first "official" English translation.It is interesting to read Thuy's thoughts and feelings as she treats the wounded and experiences the proximity of war. Thuy's observations are almost poetic at times in the imagery she uses to record her feelings. Her dislike for the American "bandits" is frequently mentioned. It certainly presents a side of the Vietnamese conflict which is often overlooked. Thuy loses family, friends, and patients because of the war. One cannot help but sympathize with her plight as the war draws closer and closer to her clinic.
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LibraryThing member kelleykl
Much like poetry, I find that I can only read a little of this book at a time. The journal of Dang Thuy Tram is both beautiful and heart wrenching. For only seriously interested in Vietnam or the Vietnam War, this book is an invaluable primary resource. However, without a specific "plot," so to
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speak, to move it forward it will have limited appeal. Still, I think it deserved a place on public library shelves. Show Less
LibraryThing member Heduanna
I've always avoided the Vietnam War as a topic (my Dad's a history buff who almost wound up serving in Vietnam, and it always seemed wiser to avoid the conversation). Learned a lot from this, especially, I think, since I read it after Stockdale's Vietnam Experience). Totally different perspective.
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I don't think we'd have gotten along if we were somehow to have met, me being a bourgeois North American and her being a, well, admittedly also bourgeois, but dedicated Communist. And she was: there's mention, in the earlier parts of the diary, about her concern about how the local Communist party is being run, but never any hint of treason, or of any doubt about Communism in general or Ho Chi Minh in particular. I admire her idealism, and can't help but think that the time she was writing was more or less when Martin Luther King was saying that someone who has not yet found a cause for which they'd be willing to die has not yet started to live. She had her cause, and she lived, breathed & died for it. Part of me envies her. Show Less
LibraryThing member John
Dang Thuy Tram: Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
Mike picked up this book (and a couple of others) during the family trip to Vietnam in December. He had to work at it to find Vietnamese authors available in English. I couldn't find any when we were in Hanoi in 2012.
Dang Thuy Tram was a doctor who
The diaries were unique in presenting for the first time in Vietnam, honest descriptions of the hopes and fears, successes and failures, doubts and commitments of the war against the American "devils" who continued a long line of invasion and war in Vietnamese history. Thuy was a Communist and Vietnamese nationalist and she wanted very much to join the Communist Party to demonstrate her commitment. However, she did not shy from criticism and often commented on self-serving, career-climbing people who put personal advancement paramount, even in the Party.
The universal appeal of the diaries is that they were written by a young woman at the beginning of her professional, adult life, making her way in an incredibly difficult and dangerous world, longing for love and companionship in the midst of the grief of war and destruction. She was disappointed in love. She knew great sadness and self-doubt. She wavered with the loss of friends and colleagues and good friends, but she never gave up belief in the ultimate victory of the North and that the sacrifices were worthwhile to free her country. Thuy certainly did not want to die that sunny morning in June, 1970, but if she could have looked back, she would have accepted the sacrifice and been proud of her role. She was one person among millions in a titanic struggle, but on the personal level, especially as a doctor, she touched many lives, and through the diaries, she has touched many more.
Mike picked up this book (and a couple of others) during the family trip to Vietnam in December. He had to work at it to find Vietnamese authors available in English. I couldn't find any when we were in Hanoi in 2012.
Dang Thuy Tram was a doctor who
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volunteered at the age of twenty-four to work in a Vietcong battlefield hospital. She died at twenty-eight, walking down a jungle trail with three others, ambushed by American soldiers. The diary ended up with an American lawyer, Fred Whitehurst, working in military intelligence in the area. His job was to look through captured documents and destroy those of no military value. He almost threw the diaries in a fire, but his translator suggested that they had value and should be kept. Fred took the diaries back to the States. He and his brother, Rob, became obsessed with the dairies and the idea of returning them to Thuy's family in Vietnam. They found the family and everyone met in 2005. Thuy's mother and three of her sisters were still alive. The diaries were published in July, 2005 and within 18 months had sold 430,00 copies in a country where few books sell more than 5,000. The diaries were unique in presenting for the first time in Vietnam, honest descriptions of the hopes and fears, successes and failures, doubts and commitments of the war against the American "devils" who continued a long line of invasion and war in Vietnamese history. Thuy was a Communist and Vietnamese nationalist and she wanted very much to join the Communist Party to demonstrate her commitment. However, she did not shy from criticism and often commented on self-serving, career-climbing people who put personal advancement paramount, even in the Party.
The universal appeal of the diaries is that they were written by a young woman at the beginning of her professional, adult life, making her way in an incredibly difficult and dangerous world, longing for love and companionship in the midst of the grief of war and destruction. She was disappointed in love. She knew great sadness and self-doubt. She wavered with the loss of friends and colleagues and good friends, but she never gave up belief in the ultimate victory of the North and that the sacrifices were worthwhile to free her country. Thuy certainly did not want to die that sunny morning in June, 1970, but if she could have looked back, she would have accepted the sacrifice and been proud of her role. She was one person among millions in a titanic struggle, but on the personal level, especially as a doctor, she touched many lives, and through the diaries, she has touched many more.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
Vietnamese