The Vietnamese on Vietnam and America...

“Hearts of Sorrow” is an oral history of the travails of Vietnamese emigres in America, told through the words of 14 refugees. The author, an anthropology professor at San Jose State University, includes as subjects many residents of Santa Clara County, where one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States is located.

Obviously a sympathetic observer, he devotes much of the opening chapters to debunking common “misconceptions” about refugees, such as alleged high welfare dependency, special treatment on the part of government authorities and extensive gang activities.

The main body of the text comprises five parts in roughly chronological order, covering narrators’ recollections of childhood, war (anti-French resistance and occupation by the Japanese in World War II, with surprisingly little space devoted to the U.S. intervention), the aftermath of “liberation,” their escapes from Vietnam and finally the American experience.

In his quest for “ordinary” narrators, the author studiously avoids “leaders, generals and other famous Vietnamese.” He assembles men and women generally drawn from what middle class existed in Vietnam before the end of the war in 1975. They are young and old, Catholics and Buddhists, Northerners and Southerners in a variety of occupations, including a former ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) colonel, a Buddhist nun, a schoolteacher, an automobile mechanic and others.

Least known, and therefore of greatest interest, are experiences of Southerners under the repression following “liberation.” Also notable are the recollections of an ethnic Chinese elder, which provide a rich portrait of life under Communist rule in the North, coping with the bombing of Hanoi, and expulsion from Vietnam following the war with China. This elderly man’s final comments on American government, lobbyists, division of power among the branches, patriotism and the proper balance between freedom and social obligations show a surprisingly complete understanding of American governance.

As a primer about what the author calls “the end of an era, a world lost, a way of life that exists now only in memory,” “Hearts of Sorrow” vividly records ancient Vietnamese traditions and customs. Such ceremonies as family gatherings to honor departed relatives on the anniversaries of their deaths and celebrations of the Lunar New Year are described in rich detail.

As far as “documenting what (the narrators) consider their successes and failures,” the stories recount mostly failures in their American experience. No doctors, lawyers, executives, entrepreneurs, valedictorians or Ivy League graduates will be found here. Frustrations range from racial discrimination and the difficulty of earning a living to children neglecting parents and ignoring their counsel in choosing a mate.

Gestures of kindness also are recorded, such as a church’s offer to build a new house for a family of refugees. A former fisherman prizes his independence as a vegetable vendor despite meager earnings. Yet the positive notes seem few and far between.

A professional scholar, the author sprinkles the text with many references to other books and articles, yet his lack of background in Vietnamese culture and language does show. An example would be the explanation for why Southerners call their first child “Number Two”--plausible, yes, but no substitute for the standard explanation taught every Vietnamese schoolboy for at least a generation.

Because many translators are used, “Hearts of Sorrow’s” translations are sometimes inconsistent (for instance, “village person” and “man of the countryside”--both presumably nha que in Vietnamese) or incorrect (“Buddhist canon”; more accurately “psalms”). A Vietnamese speaker, however, would recognize with fondness the many proverbs and colorful expressions translated word by word (“wet jackfruit”--a whiner, or “direct train”--sending someone to his death).

“Fallen Leaves” starts in Cu Chi, famous long after the war for its tunnels dug by Communist guerrillas, the subject of recent books by American veterans and now a tourist attraction. Following the prologue, the book takes us through the life of a Vietnamese woman, from her birth in 1940 to the fall of Saigon in 1975, with a short epilogue in 1982. While the historical events of this period are well discussed in “Hearts of Sorrow,” “Fallen Leaves” offers the reader a more continuous story from a single viewpoint.

The book takes a surprisingly dim view of American intervention, considering that the author prospers from doing business with the 25th Division, romances U.S. soldiers, elopes to Las Vegas for a divorce from her Vietnamese husband, and marries an American officer who turns out not to be Prince Charming after all. The text emphasizes the brutality, corruption, prostitution and drug problems that accompanied the “arrogant and rude” Americans’ presence.

Co-authors Edith Kreisler and Sandra Christenson clearly had a hand in inserting a wealth of information setting the historical context at strategic intervals in the narrative--for example, the reference to American interest in “containment of international Communism” and the arrival in Saigon of one “Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, USAF, working for the CIA.” One wishes that they had prevailed on Nguyen Thi Thu-Lam to use the full names of friends, brothers-in-law and relatives so that their implied significance as political actors could be corroborated.

As publications of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale Center for Int’l. & Area Studies, “Fallen Leaves” and “To Be Made Over,” discussed below, share a meticulous care in spelling Vietnamese words. With its acute and circumflex accents, tildes and other diacriticals often used in combination, exact spelling can be a challenge even for the native speaker. In addition to fiction and poetry, the council also publishes research monographs and sponsors a speaker series on a variety of topics concerning Southeast Asia.

Yet “Fallen Leaves” is less successful with the few French phrases that do appear. Apologie would hardly be the preferred rendering for apology in French. More disturbing perhaps are the occasional typographical errors in the English text. The author also speaks to Americans, friends, business associates and husband alike, exclusively in pidgin English, which appears in no other context.

“Fallen Leaves” is an exceedingly poetic image in Vietnamese. Not only does the title form a nice symmetry with the author’s name, which means “forest in autumn,” but a common expression uses these very words in combination with “returning to your roots.” This memoir presumably served as an opportunity for the author to reflect on her roots. It is a complete story of the war years, with a wealth of Vietnamese proverbs and expressions, and illustrations of customs, but one should not read the political interpretations without skepticism, as the author discusses in a cursory fashion many events of which she had no personal knowledge.

“To Be Made Over” is an anthology that lives up well to its subtitle, “Tales of Socialist Reeducation in Vietnam.” While Nhat Tien, alone among the many authors, was a noted writer before the fall of Saigon, one can sense even through the translation the wistful, ironic prose that is the hallmark of contemporary Vietnamese literature. The translation is of high quality overall, but occasionally one is reminded of the headmistress in “Lolita” observing to Dr. Humbert that foreigners often create interesting combinations in the English language (witness “lachrymatory theatrics”).

The stories range from an old couple’s volunteering to pull the plow to atone for their son’s desertion (“In the Footsteps of a Water Buffalo”) to a cadre scheming to extract bribes from political prisoners (“City Life”). First, the cadre is surprised beyond belief by his cousin’s lavish life in a captured mansion in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Returning to the isolated prison camp where he is stationed, he laboriously plots his approach to an accomplice and his selection of a victim. Alas, he has picked a young man no longer rich nor with a family to return to. In this story, the author takes us through the plot at a deliberate pace, successively exploring greed, shame, fear and suspicion through the story of the cadre. This is but one example of how the entire anthology’s many vivid descriptions make the reader wonder whether he is reading fact or fiction.

While an audience of native Vietnamese would follow the stories from “To Be Made Over” with little difficulty, the translation fails to provide sufficient background information for the younger Vietnamese or the English-speaking reader. The latter would not recognize Mrs. Ngo Ba Thanh as a prominent opponent of sundry South Vietnamese regimes, or understand that the distinctive accent “which inverts I’s and N’s” is the hallmark of the southern edge of North Vietnam.

Still, for its dry, ironic wit, and its uncanny ring of truth, this is the one book among the three that should not be missed.