Customer Reviews

Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam

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I am currently going to college and I took a course on the Vietnam crisis and war, and Even the Women Must Fight was one of the last books that we read. After reading books that focused mainly or even completely on the American experience in Vietnam, it was extrmely interesting to read about how the Vietnamese saw and dealt with the war. The thousands of civilians who added such strength to the North Vietnamese war effort were people who had been described in all of the sources we read as 'coolie' laborers--people conscripted by the govenment to do necessary work. To read the accounts of women who fought in the war, or risked their lives to maintain the Ho Chi Minh trail simply added a new dimension to my understanding of the Vietnamese side, and indeed of the entire war itself.

Finally, a book documenting women's experiences on the Vietnam War and women fighters at that! For years, we have been reading materials and watching movies on the Vietnam War from a pre-dominantly American point of view. Although written by an American, the book originated from the extraordinary women of Vietnam and is a channel for silent voices to finally speak out. This book presents a very real and perhaps disturbing account of the hardships that the women in Vietnam have gone through in order to save their homeland. The accounts are heart-breaking and serves as a stark reminder of the horrors of war but more importantly, highlights the bravery and courage of the Vietnamese women who have been stereotyped as Miss Saigons. The book provides detailed interviews with survivors of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and how sacrifices are not rewarded by the state. Appreciate the book for its honesty and the difficulties that the author went through to get the survivors to open their hearts to her, an American, a former enemy. A refreshing read.

As a college student studying the America's war with Vietnam, I was struck by the determination and nationalism that the Vietnamese displayed in their battles against foreign occupation. Seeking to further my study and learn more about the perspectives of the Vietnamese I turned to Turner's book Even the Women Must Fight. The information that I found in the book I could not have found anywhere else. Turner's extensive interviews and personal memoirs from women who fought in the Viet Cong opened up a previously unreported accounts of what Vietnamese women accomplished in their war with America. These women's successes are truly amazing and much deserving of a book documenting their vital contributions.

This book is a well-written and straightforward account of women who fought on the side of the North Vietnamese in the "American War," and what happened to them when they attempted to return to peacetime life. Most of the stories come from the women themselves, and are reported in their words.

I found the book particularly affecting, because it presented some difficult truths for me as a nurse on the American side. It is always revealing to know your enemy; in my case, the supposed enemy in this book could be my mirror image. And if the similarities are fascinating, the differences are wrenching: these women fought on their own soil, to protect it from soldiers from half a world away who, for reasons that were far from clear, dropped bombs and chemicals on them. When the war was over, and I went home to marry and raise a family, these women found that their service had, in many cases, made it impossible for them to marry and have children--a cultural imperative that in large part determined their worth in the eyes of their country. Certainly, the war created physical and psychological problems for women who served on the US side--PTSD, birth defects in children due to chemical exposure, and a raft of health conditions that still persist for us in our fifties and sixties. But for the Vietnamese women warriors, the effects were far more direct. They lived, and still live, on soil salted with Agent Orange. Most of them suffered from malaria. They lost potential mates in the war, or by leaving them behind when they went to serve--not for one year, as was our case, but for many. They faced the very immediate possibility that their children, if they could have them, would be severely deformed. And there has been little enough social support under their new government for THEM, let alone their handicapped children.

The women in this book are fascinating individuals shaped by their unique experiences, and Turner and Hao do an excellent job of interviewing and presenting them. They are brave, resilient survivors of a war they should never have had to fight, and they are still fighting for their place in the country they defended. *Even the Women Must Fight* ranks with such classics as *When Heaven and Earth Changed Places* and *The Sorrow of War* as an unflinching and empathic window into the damage war wreaks on the land where it is fought and the people there who fight it.

Susan O'Neill, author
Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

Karen Turner's book is a well researched, interesting and compassionate discussion of women who made up the backbone of Viet Nam's fighting forces. She does not overwhelm the reader with intellectual theory and in doing so she brings us closer to a source of history ignored and overlooked for decades. It's difficult to write about and interview former soldiers who continue to suffer the effects of such enormous violence, but Turner does it with great insight and awareness. This is the perfect book for history students or university faculty who want to hear the voices of Viet Nam's strongest fighters.

As the author illustrates, most military history is just from the male perspective. We think, therefore, that women have a minor support role behind the scenes. This book shows us not only the role Vietnamese women played in the war, but it also illustrates how the people as a whole responded to the war. We learn a bit about Vietnamese history, and sadly, we learn that post-war recovery efforts have largely ignored the sacrifice made by many women.

The author walks us through the lives of some of the women in the war. We learn of doctors working on the front lines, a movie actress who worked to educate the people about the war, as well as women who worked on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and manned the anti-aircraft guns.

The book also discusses the youth movement to help support the war effort and highlights the ever-present poor who are pulled into war because they can't afford to avoid it.

I found the book very enlightening and would recommend it to any military history reader.

I am surprised by all the five-star reviews of this book. Turner managed to convince me that this is an important and underreported side of the war, but we must still await the definitive work on the subject. This simply isn't it. It is full of interesting anecdotes, but was peculiarly unhelpful for me in putting my lecture notes together. It relies mostly on interviews done in the mid-1990s, but beyond these interesting stories there is not much hard information here. (How many women were at Dien Bien Phu? Who knows?) Turner's interjection of herself as a "character" should have been edited out a long time ago.

Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnamprovides a superb insight into my former enemy's home front. Having served as S-5 (Civil Affairs Officer) to the 1/10 Cavalry Squadron in the Central Highlands, later as Advisory Team Leader to the Montagnard 748 Regional Forces Company north of Kontum, and finally, to the Regional Forces Battalion at Trung Lap, in the so-called "Iron Triangle", I could only marvel how the NVA and the VC could maintain their morale. Unfortunately, I had to witness the killing of a Chinese Advisor to a small NVA unit north of Kontum, not by me, but by the NVA anti-arcraft unit he was advising. He died, only ten feet in front of me, not by the RF men who were with me, but shot in the back by the men he was advising.