Amazon.com Review
When Nick Ut photographed 9-year-old Kim Phuc running down a road, her body aflame with napalm, he turned a terrified girl into a living symbol of the Vietnam War's horror. Even after the war, the North Vietnamese government made the severely scarred Kim a reluctant poster girl for American atrocities. Although her parents, once relatively prosperous South Vietnamese peasants, were reduced to dire poverty when the state took over her mother's noodle shop, Kim was allowed to receive further medical treatment in Germany, to visit the Soviet Union, and to attend the University of Havana. These privileges did not assuage her spiritual turmoil: Why had she been singled out for fame when so many others suffered and died? Searching for answers, Kim converted to Christianity and in 1992 defected with her husband to Canada, where they now live with their two sons. Canadian author Denise Chong's sensitive biography, which doubles as a fascinating social history of Vietnam during and after the war, captures Kim as a complex woman of powerful religious faith: "It was the fire of bombs that burned my body. It was the skill of doctors that mended my skin. But it took the power of God's love to heal my heart."
--Wendy Smith
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
All you have to do is say "the girl in the picture" and any American who was politically aware during the Vietnam War will conjure up the image of a little Vietnamese girl running down the road, her naked body scorched by napalm, her face contorted in pain. That photograph, taken of a girl named Kim Phuc on June 8, 1972, by Nick Ut of the Associated Press, remains a haunting image of the American war in Vietnam. Canadian writer Chong (The Concubine's Children) now tells Phuc's story in this instructive authorized biography. Tracing Phuc's life both before and after she was nearly killed (at age nine) by a South Vietnamese air force napalm strike gone wrong, Chong unblinkingly presents graphic depictions of the horrors that the war visited on innocent civilians. She finds, however, amidst these tragedies, a redemptive story in Phuc's life, which, thankfully, has a happy ending. Through the heroic efforts of Nick Ut, British correspondent Christopher Wain and others, the girl was taken to an excellent hospital in Saigon. Through 17 operations (in 24 months), an international team of doctors saved her life. Later, after communist authorities mercilessly used her for propaganda purposes, she fled Vietnam. Today, she and her husband are Christians, living in Ontario with their two sons. Although Phuc's entire back remains deeply scarred (keeping her in near constant pain), she works as an unpaid goodwill ambassador for UNESCO and runs her own foundation for child victims of war. Chong's biography, though overly detailed at times, is a well-rendered and affecting life story. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
