Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam

A genuine eye-opener …a book that will change our understanding of the Vietnam War-and of Vietnam today …Enthralling. -Cynthia Enloe, author of The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War. A searing account of Vietnamese women’s wartime experiences probes the cultural legacies of the American war. The standard history of North Vietnam’s war with the United States is informed, on both sides, almost exclusively by the accounts of men. The familiar portrait of the Vietnamese woman as passive onlooker-war bride, prostitute, or helpless refugee-dominates the scholarship, films, and novels on the subject; nowhere have we seen evidence of women’s active roles in the war that has defined both 20th-century America and Vietnam. This book provides the first portrait of the fighting women of Vietnam who emerged from a long historical and mythical tradition of the woman warrior. Through Vietnamese oral history, private writings, literature, and military accounts, Karen G. Turner explores the crucial role North Vietnamese women played as valiant soldiers, the personal sacrifice they suffered, and the enduring political and social influence their war roles have come to exert on their lives. KAREN G. TURNER Ph.D. (Worcester, Massachusetts) is an associate professor of East Asian History at Holy Cross College and a senior research fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. PHAN THANH HAO (Hanoi, Vietnam) is a journalist, writer, and former diplomat.