Vietnam Memoirs -- the Same

Vietnam Memoirs -- The Same Conflict, Seen Through Two Different Pairs of Eyes memoir is a literary document that, unlike an autobiography, attempts to provide a specific window into a period of the author's life, rather than simply document the life of an author from a first-person perspective and relate the events in a chronological and dispassionate fashion. By this definition, A Vietcong Memoir by Truong Nhu Tang and The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the life of a Vietnamese Family by Duong Van Mai Elliot are both memoirs. Tang's book chronicles the struggles of the communist Vietnamese fighters known as the National Liberation Front led by Ho Chi Minh while Elliot discusses the relationship of her own history, and the history of her near and distant family members, to the Vietnam War that eventually resulted in North Vietnamese communist control over the entire country.

Tang's book offers the reader the perspective of one of the war's most dedicated fighters. It helps to illustrate the profound emotional connection fighters in what Tang calls a war of liberation felt for the cause. In contrast, The Sacred Willow by Elliot offers the perspective of a woman who initially supported the South Vietnamese and the American's military involvement in her country. But despite the fact that they began the war supporting opposite sides, both authors experienced profound reversals in their political perspectives. Shortly before the Vietnamese nation was united, Tang became a Minister of Justice, and grew disillusioned with the political corruption of the newly united land. He eventually left his country, after fighting so long to free it from foreign control. He felt his dreams of a pure, liberated nation had been betrayed, and the new regime had fallen into "drug transactions, debauchery, and the buying and selling of power," much like the original, corrupt regime he loathed. (Tang 270) Tang settled into exile, ironically, in Paris, the city where he first became a dedicated communist in the service of Uncle Ho.

Elliot, educated in the United States at Georgetown University, and raised in a well-connected South Vietnamese family, initially opposed the communists. But after interviewing Vietnamese prisoners of war for an American think tank in Washington D.C., she became horrified at the effects the conflict was having on her nation. Furthermore, "neither they [the Rand Corporation] nor the American officials in Saigon could stop the mistreatment" of the prisoners and defectors. (Elliot 322) She could no longer feel certain that America had her nation's interests at heart.

It should be noted neither author's experience should be read as perfectly emblematic of an ordinary Vietnamese person's experience during the war. Tang met Ho Chi Minh when he was a student in Paris, and immediately became struck by the man's "personal strength and generosity." (Tang 11) Thus Tang was highly educated, familiar with foreign customs, and from a highly connected family, back in the days when Vietnam was a French colony, not unlike Elliot. He was also a highly placed figure in the military struggle of the North Vietnamese, rather than a common jungle guerrilla fighter. Tang personally knew the man whom he called Uncle Ho.

Nor should Elliot's experience should not be read as a 'perfect' embodiment of the anti-communist journey of an ordinary Vietnamese woman. Although younger than Tang, she was also descended from a highly influential family in South Vietnam, whose aristocratic roots extended even before French control. She had an older sister who later married a Communist, although her brothers supported the anti-communist fighters. Because her grandfather was a mandarin, or highly placed official, as was her father in the French colonial government, political debate was a part of her daily life. Socially and culturally both Elliot and Tang came from a higher echelon of society than the average Vietnamese person, and from families with a greater articulated political commitments, that extended beyond the family's personal concerns for its welfare.

Gender, in some ways may determine the difference of the narrative arc in these two memoirs. A male, Tang fought for the cause militarily, while Elliot married an American and traced her associations with the war through her family roots, rather than through her own political involvement alone. Tang shows the war in all of its brutality largely from his own perspective and the perspective of other fighters, while Elliot offers a filtered and more political perspective, as seen through the eyes of several generations of her own family, male and female. She thus gives a balanced and more ideologically uncertain view of the war, never coming to a conclusion whether it was right or wrong. Although disgusted with the aftermath, Tang concludes his memoir, certain that the war was necessary.

Because Elliot involves her family's collective struggles in her memoir more than Tang's partisan narrative, a more balanced and less prejudiced perspective emerges from Sacred Willows. Politics rather than a variety of conflicted personal and internal debates shape Tang's narrative, as opposed Elliot's more ambivalent view of the historical developments of the time. Elliot, even after she disavowed the American-backed leader of the South Vietnamese, never became a communist, and despaired when her brothers were placed in enforced reeducation camps at the war's close. One of the most striking scenes in Elliot's book is when she examines the irony of her sister's life, still living in Vietnam, uncompensated for her labor as a "volunteer" and forced to sell bread for no salary in the name of a government that is supposed to support common laborers. (Elliot 420) Ironically, for the interviews she conducted for Rand, Elliot notes Rand paid her a pittance by the local salary scale, as she was not technically an American citizen. (Elliot 320)

The most striking difference that emerges from the two accounts is how Tang's relationship to his comrades, like Uncle Ho, and the cause and nation he fought for, was just as emotionally intense as Elliot's towards her family members, even after he became an expatriate. Having given so much of his life to the cause, it proves difficult for him to give up his affection for his old life, and his memoir has the tone of self-justification for the Western audience, unlike Elliot's personal exploration of her family's divided and conflicted relationship with the political evolution of Vietnam. However, some surprising revelations, like the fact the North Vietnamese regarded the Soviets as potential colonizers seem to be backed with evidence from Tang's personal witness. Tang notes, contrary to conventional assumptions, Marxist indoctrination was de-emphasized and the preciousness of "independence" and "liberty" was stressed, in words strikingly similar to those of the American Declaration of Independence. (Tang 160)