BOOK RECOMMENDATION

Vietnam’s History Told Through Four Generations of a Family

The Sacred Willow By Duong Van Mai Elliott

An Epic History Through Four Generations

This memoir is epic. As author Duong Van Mai Elliott traces her family history from the late eighteenth century to the current era, we learn about Vietnam’s complicated history. Her research is meticulous and her writing is descriptive and compelling. It is a huge, heavy book, a little over 500 pages. It is highly recommended if you are at all interested in Vietnamese history, colonialism, communism, socialism, war, and refugees. And the impact of the humans who experienced this. It is almost too much for a brain to process. But, I try.

Vietnam on My Brain

Because I was raised on Guam, was a teenager during the Vietnam War, had friends who fought there, remember cries of “the war is over,” in the halls of my high school, I have an awareness of Vietnam that I carried with me throughout my life. I was too young to be part of the anti-war movement on college campuses, so there was a lack of depth to this awareness. I have traveled there three times recently. The first one was because the airfare was very cheap from Guam, where I was living at the time. But after…