Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart (Hardcover)

by Susan Brownmiller (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Brownmiller, best known for feminist writings ( Against Our Will; Femininity ), first visited Vietnam in 1992 after travel restrictions for ordinary Americans were lifted. This is not a work of political pilgrimage. The author was instead on a magazine assignment to explore the country from a tourist's point of view. Traveling from Hanoi to the Mekong Delta, Brownmiller praises Vietnam's literacy rates while noting widespead malnourishment and the massive failure of large-scale state enterprises. She notes the continuing differences between north and south and the ecological damage caused by the war, integrating these observations into lengthy discussions of hotels, meals and plumbing, and accounts of people met and sights seen. As a travel writer, Brownmiller approaches her subjects with an ingenuous freshness that suggests the 1920s' grand-tour classic Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. Vietnam's scars, however, are still raw enough to lend an unsettling irony to such vignettes as her description of $200 spent on a dinner for four in Hanoi.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this book, which suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, Brownmiller (Against Our Will, LJ 10/1/75) explores Hanoi, Danang, Hue, the former DMZ, Saigon, the Mekong Delta, and other places in Vietnam. It is part travelog, part memoir, part history of Vietnam-and Brownmiller doesn't always pull it off. "Nothing dampens the spirit more than a lecture when the true joy of unscripted discovery lies in wait around the corner," she writes. But she is guilty of that sin herself, interrupting her adventures to give a history of the Vietnamese alphabet and discuss the faults of the Communist regime. But often her technique works, making the book thought-provoking and rich in detail: her visit to the Vinh Moc tunnels is that much more interesting because she establishes their historical-and emotional-contexts. For general readers.
--Chuck Malenfant, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 228 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (May 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060190493
• ISBN-13: 978-0060190491
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,961,129 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Seeing Vietnam..., October 19, 1998

By A Customer

This is one of the worst travel accounts of Vietnam I've ever read. The author's insensitivity is shown through her writing, which has an unfeeling tone of detached sarcasm and condescension. For an example, and there are too many to quote, of her visit to China Beach she writes: "I descend a few steps to the beach, chased by a pack of urchins hawking peanut candy. On a clear day maybe the emerald waters and distant mountains really do rival Waikiki. I've got grey pounding surf and a scene out of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer. (How did she die? Oh, didn't you hear? She was devoured by urchins at China Beach.)" When she shows emotion or a hint of compassionate understanding, it is too often out of place and affected. For example, when asked if she likes Hanoi by a girl who acts as a translator to a group of woman tai chi practitioners, she replies: " 'Tell them I like Hanoi very much. Hanoi is a beautiful city, with beautiful parks. Tell them--' What was it I wanted to tell them? 'Tell them . . . ' Oh Jesus, god. 'Tell them I'm very sorry for what my country did to your country.' And I burst into tears." Of Hue's restoration efforts aided by UNESCO, she writes: "Hue deserves all the international aid it can get, and it seems heartless to quarrel with UNESCO's well-meaning gesture, but the restoration struck me as a great waste of money in the context of Vietnam's human needs." A few sentences later she writes: "I happen to love ruins. I can spend days ruminating happily among ancient stones and glyphs, trying to comprehend the mysteries of lost civilizations, but the more I was of Hue's nineteenth century ruins, the less impressive I found them. They simply weren't old enough to inspire flights of fancy or admiration." Is she implying that we should allow what remains of old Hue to crumble with time so that some day its state of ruin will match its antiquity as a city? And only should we then put money into restoration, which all ruins (that she loves so much) around the world have required? With the same affected "humanism", she writes: "They [the tombs of Hue] make me unhappy, Tra. All this ostentatious display of wealth that was robbed from the people." She is all too eager to share with the American public her recently-acquired enlightening knowledge of Vietnam's history and culture, for more than half of her writing consists of tidbits of historical facts and trivia that sound as if they were picked out of travel guides. Contrary to her intention of using these "insightful" tidbits of background information to help the public better understand Vietnam, they only serve to distance the reader, who is left with no better an insightful picture of Vietnam than if he/she were to read a travel guide, which nonetheless is more pragmatically useful. The title is deceiving, for there is nothing in the book emotionally expressive of "Seeing Vietnam through Encounters of the Road and Heart." The author could have written this book without leaving the comforts of New York, for she had already had preconceptions of the country before arriving. The book only confirms her entrenched views,cultural insensitivities and generalizations.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Seeing Vietnam, October 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Seeing Vietnam: Encounters of the Road and Heart (Paperback)

This is one of the worst travel accounts of Vietnam I've ever read. The author's insensitivity is shown through her writing, which has an unfeeling tone of detached sarcasm and condescension. For an example, and there are too many to quote, of her visit to China Beach she writes:"I descend a few steps to the beach, chased by a pack of urchins hawking peanut candy. On a clear day maybe the emerald waters and distant mountains really do rival Waikiki. I've got grey pounding surf and a scene out of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer. (How did she die? Oh, didn't you hear? She was devoured by urchins at China Beach.)" When she shows emotion or a hint of compassionate understanding, it is too often out of place and affected. For example,when asked if she likes Hanoi by a girl who acts as a translator to a group of woman tai chi practitioners, she replies: " 'Tell them I like Hanoi very much. Hanoi is a beautiful city, with beautiful parks. Tell them--' What was it I wanted to tell them? 'Tell them . . . ' Oh Jesus,god. 'Tell them I'm very sorry for what my country did to your country.' And I burst into tears." Of Hue's restoration efforts aided by UNESCO, she writes: "Hue deserves all the international aid it can get, and it seems heartless to quarrel with UNESCO's well-meaning gesture, but the restoration struck me as a great waste of money in the context of Vietnam's human needs." A few sentences later she writes: "I happen to love ruins. I can spend days ruminating happily among ancient stones and glyphs, trying to comprehend the mysteries of lost civilizations, but the more I was of Hue's nineteenth century ruins, the less impressive I found them. They simply weren't old enough to inspire flights of fancy or admiration." Is she implying that we should allow what remains of old Hue to crumble with time so that some day its state of ruin will match its antiquity as a city? And only should we then put money into restoration, which all ruins (that she loves so much)around the world have required? With the same affected "humanism",she writes: "They [the tombs of Hue] make me unhappy, Tra. All this ostentatious display of wealth that was robbed from the people." She is all too eager to share with the American public her recently-acquired enlightening knowledge of Vietnam's history and culture, for more than half of her writing consists of tidbits of historical facts and trivia that sound as if they were picked out of travel guides. Contrary to her intention of using these "insightful" tidbits of background information to help the public better understand Vietnam, they only serve to distance the reader, who is left with no better an insightful picture of Vietnam than if he/she were to read a travel guide, which nonetheless is more pragmatically useful. The title is deceiving, for there is nothing in the book emotionally expressive of "Seeing Vietnam through Encounters of the Road and Heart." The author could have written this book without leaving the comforts of New York, for she had already had preconceptions of the country before arriving. The book only confirms her entrenched views,cultural insensitivities and generalizations.