Even the women must fight : memories of war from North Vietnam

Even the Women Must Fight "Karen Turner and Phan Thanh Hao have brought scholarship and compassion to a long-neglected aspect of the Vietnam War--the contributions of Vietnamese women to the independence struggle of their nation and the terrible price they paid for their courage and patriotism."--Neil Sheehan, author of A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. A searing chronicle of wartime experiences, Even the Women Must Fight probes the cultural legacy of North Vietnam's American War. Unflinching in its portrayal of hardship, valor, and personal sacrifice, this wrenching account is nothing short of a revelation, banishing in one bold stroke the familiar image of Vietnamese women as passive onlookers, war brides, prostitutes, or helpless refugees. "Karen Turner has given us a book that will change our understanding of the Vietnam War--and of Vietnam today. I found it enthralling." --Cynthia Enloe, author of The Morning After: * Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War. "A first-rate book that will add substantially to our understanding of the human tragedy associated with one of the most bloody conflicts in recent history."--Robert Brigham, Professor of History, Vassar College. The active participation of Vietnamese women after 1965 tipped the balance between victory and defeat. It is estimated that the total number of women in the regular army of North Vietnam, the militia and local forces, and professional volunteer teams was somewhere near two hundred thousand. Women with training and education operated underground communications networks, staffed and directed jungle clinics, and recorded the war as journalists. Others ran jungle liaison stations and ammunition depots, led and served in combat platoons, made coffins and burial cloths, and collected and buried the dead. Local militiawomen learned to shoot at American planes from factory rooftops and village fields, carried supplies, and treated the wounded - all the while maintaining agricultural and industrial production at prewar levels. Karen Gottschang Turner traveled to Vietnam over a period of three years, researching, recording, and, above all, listening as the women warriors she encountered poured out extraordinary oral histories. By including military accounts, private writings, and the literature of Vietnam's American War, Turner provides a context for the words of those who lived it. Through oral history, private letters and diaries, and poetry, Karen Turner explores the crucial role North Vietnamese women played as valiant soldiers, the personal sacrifice and loss they suffered, and the enduring political and social influences their war roles have come to exert on their own lives and the lives of their daughters ANY ACCOUNTING OF THE AMERICAN WAR in Vietnam that leaves out Vietnamese women tells only half the story. The first fully documented examination of the role Vietnamese women played in the war in Vietnam.