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...
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)
The message of Tang's memoir emerges clearly and eloquently, that the war was indeed a war of liberation, from the point-of-view of the ordinary Vietnamese, but that the ideals that motivated the forces of liberation became corrupted when the revolutionary regime came to power. The target audience is of the memoir is likely those who would still debate the war's necessity and the extent of Soviet influence in motivating the original struggle. Elliot's memoir emerges out of a more personal need to chronicle the experiences of her family during a difficult time, and to show how in a war there are no winners, no matter what side one becomes affiliated with, over its duration. Wartime Vietnam may have been about a revolution of independence, as chronicled by Tang, but no matter how justified the cause, this does not detract from the carnage that was created as it was waged, and the misery of its aftermath.
Works Cited
Elliot, Duong Van Mai. The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family. London, Oxford University Press, 2000.
Tang, Truong Nhu. A Vietcong Memoir. New York: Vintage, 1986.
