Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives

If you are a Vietnamese American and immigrated to America before you turned 10 years old, this book is a must have. Ever wonder why your parents offered only terse replies (e.g., why do you want to talk about such bad times?) when you asked them about the war and the boat ride? Or why your older siblings (who prolly have thicker accents than you when you speak English) just don't understand why you are more Americanized than them? Trust me, once you read it you'll come to understand your family and other Vietnamese people much more fully.

Fourteen different Vietnamese describe their lives and experiences in Vietnam and the United States. The narrators include soldiers, a Buddhist nun, a Catholic Priest, teachers, merchants, and a poet. They tell their stories in a 400 page book covering a period from 1906 to 1985. This is a virtual history of the tortured country and people of Vietnam. Most of the oral histories describe experiences during the war with the Americans, life under the communists, escapes from the country, and resettlement in the United States. Interspaced among the oral histories are intelligent essays by the editor who labored long and hard to understand the experiences of his Vietnamese informants and to put them in a comprehensible academic framework. "Hearts of Sorrow" is an apt title for the tone of most of these accounts. There are a number of books about Vietnamese refugees in the United States. This is one of the best.

This is the story of 14 Vietnamese who had escaped Vietnam after the end of the war and came to reside in the USA. The author had spent a long time interviewing them and penning down their stories.After the war, these people were ready to "accommodate to the communist life style" when they realized they were harassed then thrown into concentration camps where they had to endure punishment and revenge for years and years. Even after release from the camps, they were watched closed, lost their human rights and were returned to jails at the slightest infraction. Unable to live under this suffucating environment, they escaped abroad.An ex-colonel detailed his incarceration in a northern camp where 12 inmates out of 500 died of dysentery (a curable form of intractable diarrhea) and others hunted for and ate mice and crickets "raw" in order to survive. He was then transferred to a Nghe An camp where he was forced to collect human wastes with his bare hands to be used as fertilizers and was not allowed to wash his hands before having supper. After one week of such treatment, all inmates in his company gave up resistance.This is a fascinating book, which although published in 1989 remains an important contribution to the Vietnamese American literature and folklore.