Chats and Forums Books

This book is a mix of poetry, history, linguistic, and most importantly for me, some very moving stories about different peoples' personal experience of Vietnam. It is written by people who escaped from Vietnam after the war or their families. Some of the stories were just incredible in what the authors went through and survived. Others were wonderful insights into life in Vietnam during or after the war. Included are a few folk tales from typical Vietnamese culture that help give a view of the society. While the purely historical stories were not my favorite and the untranslated Vietnamese sections were lost on me, this book has some great writing and offers a window into an intriguing and influential culture.

Remembering Saigon was an interesting collection of stories and papers. It was truly engaging and extremely descriptive. However, the central theme of the book was not clear to me. Although, the preface did clearly state that the purpose is to document the lives, thoughts, accomplishments, etc of the war-torn Vietnam, it was not obvious from chapter to chapter how the descriptive stories shared anything in common. Lastly, a portion of this book is written in Vietnamese and may not be ideal for people who cannot read Vietnamese. I look forward to the next SACEI Forum, and also to a more detailed translation.