Autumn Cloud: From Vietnam War Widow to American Activist (Capital Life) [Paperback]

Jackie Bong Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 2002 | Series: Capital Life

Autumn Cloud is the story of Jackie Bong Wright’s family from the French colonial period, through the Vietnam War, to the present. Born in 1940, at the beginning of World War II, Ms. Wright stands at the center of the modern Indochinese drama, which started in the last century, and has yet to be fully played out. While the Vietnam War is deeply ingrained in a generation of Americans, its history for us is often one-sided - flavored with blame, corrupt generals and politicians, drugs, the Viet Cong and Saigon bar girls. In telling her family’s story, she is also telling the story of countless Vietnamese families, ordinary people who struggled to make a success of their lives amidst chaos and upheaval. Ms. Wright moves from a girlhood on a Cambodian rubber plantation to school in Paris, marries a leading political dissident who is later murdered, escapes to America in 1975 with her children, and makes a new life, with a new American husband.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Le Thi Thu Van, whose first name translates as Autumn Cloud, was born in 1940 in Cambodia, where her affluent Vietnamese parents lived. She and her large family, like millions of other southern Vietnamese, were profoundly affected by the wars and civil unrest that buffeted Southeast Asia for most of the next four decades: the Japanese occupation during World War II; the First Indochina War from 1945 to 1954, which ended with the humiliating French defeat at Dien Bien Phu; and the American war, which began incrementally in the mid-'50s, peaked in the late-'60s and ended ingloriously with the Communist victory in 1975. Le Thi Thu Van's family suffered in many ways during these momentous events. The family fortune was lost; one sister abandoned the family to devote her life to the Communist revolution; a brother was killed in the American war; another brother did not survive the Communist postwar "re-education" camps. The author married a reform-minded South Vietnamese politician; he was assassinated, probably by the Vietcong. She was left with three young children. Le Thi Thu Van tells three stories in this smoothly written autobiography: her own, her family's and Vietnam's. The most effective sections are the straightforward depictions of the many and varied events of the author's life and her explanations of Vietnamese society and culture. The least successful are the sketchy historical sections and the author's staunchly anti-Communist analyses of the reasons behind the American defeat. Overall, though, the author shows very well how Le Thi Thu Van went from "being an innocent girl to a sophisticated wife, an unexpected widow, and finally a professional woman," known on three continents as Jackie Bong Wright.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Jackie shows Vietnam is not a one-word note, but many notes – indeed melodies." -- Jennie Ilustre, Asian Fortune

"The premise and telling of her story is beautifully written in clear and symbolic prose." -- Hillary Condon, Midland Reporter-Telegram

"Wright’s voice speaks to countless Vietnamese..." -- Connecticut Post

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Capital Books (November 20, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931868204
• ISBN-13: 978-1931868204
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,015,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Autumn Cloud: The Tale of an Unrelenting Woman, September 2, 2001

By 

Benjamin C. Works "Defense Analyst" (Arlington, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Autumn Cloud: From Vietnam War Widow to American Activist (Capital Life) (Hardcover)

Not all Vietnam War students are in the mode to explore the social side of the history of conflict. But it is there and it is important; especially as we look at issues of intelligence, propaganda messages and what sectors of a society under pressure we want to influence or encourage.

Autumn Cloud is a very personal memoir of an exceptional lady of the Vietnamese middle classes, Le Thi Thu Van, now Jackie Bong-Wright. Jackie was born early in WW2 on a Cambodian rubber plantation in 1940 and escaped from Saigon in April 1975, finally settling in the Washington DC area.

This is the story of a frail but unrelenting woman, who has made her presence felt.

Jackie grew up in the middle of the French Indochinese war and describes in considerable detail, how the middle classes worked to give their children modern western education, even as war ate into their financial resources. Bad as the French were as colonial masters, it had a plan for development, and stuck with it after the peace of 1954. Jackie, herself, went from an elite Catholic boarding school to university in Paris, followed by further schooling in England and back home, in Saigon.

Her first husband, Nguyen Van Bong was a celebrated constitutional lawyer and reformer, was assassinated in 1971, when word leaked he was to be named the next prime minister of a Vietnam that was clearly winning its struggle against the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese Army. At the time, he was head of the National Institute of Administration, training candidates to staff a competent national bureaucracy. He had also launched a political party in a constitutional and reformist spirit. Bong had just made his political party, the National Progressive Movement, a major national force for reform. It was a 1963 speech by Bong, "Political Parties and the Opposition," that helped precipitate the unrest leading to the coup against the autocratic Diem brothers. Communist victory depended on Bong's death and Nixon's Watergate morass.

Jackie was the ninth of 10 children. Her younger brother died heroically in the South Vietnamese Army, early in the war. An older brother died in a Communist re-education camp after over four years of suffering. Two sisters bought into the Vietcong myths of the National Liberation Front.

This is a perceptive woman's memoir, not a heavily footnoted history. Therein lies its strength as a testimony and as an insight into the Vietnamese view of what went on during and after America's Vietnam War. That is why it is worthy reading for many readers. Once you have read her book, you will look at other societies America is engaged with in a different light. And it is important for Americans to understand how to go about looking at the cores of these societies, the middle class men and women who are the backbone of commerce and government. You can understand the Vietnam war without this book, but you'll understand it a whole lot more if you take the trouble to read "Autumn Cloud."

But this is a woman's memoir, so it is a bit different read. I suggest less patient readers of war turn to chapter 4, on page 134 and read to the end, first. The many insights into the Vietnam war and its politics are valuable perspective on why things worked out in the tragic ways they did. Having read about the years 1963-present --including how the Vietnamese exiles resurrected themselves among us, here in the US-- then go back and absorb the difficulties of life under the Japanese and French. Just about every Hollywood cliché about the war is dispelled.

Jackie got her three small children to the US and became an organizing force for rebuilding the Vietnamese middle class communities in America. Here she married State Department officer, Lacy Wright (who had worked under John Paul Vann), and ultimately produced this insightful memoir.

This is a woman's story, not the usual commando stuff. But it is full of the humanity of war, and when we lose sight of that humanity, we lose wars.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most revealing look into the 'everday' life of a heroine, September 25, 2001

By 

renda ruckman (st. louis, mo USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Autumn Cloud: From Vietnam War Widow to American Activist (Capital Life) (Hardcover)

Autumn Cloud.....what can I say except clichés: enlightening; motivational; inspirational; powerful; dynamic; poignant. Easy reading because it is so well written. Yet the author explains so much history and culture of the people of Vietnam as she weaves her story. And her story is certainly unique to Americans who live in a free democracy, taking their lives for granted and forgetting that so many others must live daily in war zones and/or under the domination of another country.

I think she has helped me to understand the Vietnam War a little better and to certainly see that war from another perspective. Her own resolve and determination, integrity and character that shaped her life, and those of others, is an inspiration to each and every one of us, and should motivate us. That we might also perform daily to our best ability and reach out helping others as heroically as the author.

Certainly a revealing book and insight into a fascinating and amazing woman and her family, with their valor and human failings. A definite must to read at any time, but I think particularly now in light of the September 11, 2001 disaster and attack on America. We, as a country, are now at war and we, as a people, need to be as valiant and steadfast as the author.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible!, January 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Autumn Cloud: From Vietnam War Widow to American Activist (Capital Life) (Hardcover)

This book is a treasure. We are given an incredible accounting of Vietnam before, during, and after the war--an accounting I have not found in other books. Ms. Bong-Wright's story is itself noteworthy. She is a triumphant lady, who is dedicated to bringing justice and grace to the world. Her activism and diplomacy have made permanent marks in post-war Vietnam and countries throughout the world. We are lucky to have such an individual among us.

The book itself is well-written and will keep you engaged to the end. She writes honestly and openly about the events of her life and is able to apply an elegent tone to the harshest events in her past. There are life-lessons in this book that we should all take to heart.