Dust Child

There is a long history of literature written in English about the war in Việt Nam that dates back to the earliest days of the conflict. Much of this work, geared toward Western audiences, centered the experiences of Americans during the war: Soldiers, as well as journalists and medical personnel, were at the heart of these narratives. Although post-traumatic stress disorder and an attempt to come to terms with the horrors of war are common threads within many texts written about the war in Việt Nam, authors for many years ignored the way that the war impacted Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

For instance, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, which details the author’s own experiences as a war correspondent in Việt Nam, is a canonical work of literature written about the war that is still taught in many college classrooms, as are Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato, each of which tells the story of young, American soldiers who undergo harrowing experiences while fighting in Việt Nam. Even Graham Greene’s seminal The Quiet American, which delves into the way that French colonial occupation of Việt Nam divided the country and set it up for the war, is told from the