After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Grace Paley (Foreword) "Hands up, American!..." (more)
Key Phrases: yoked baskets, senior uncle, nape knot, Second Harvest, Viet Nam, Uncle Dutiful (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As an administrator for the Friends Service Committee in Quang Ngai Province, Borton (Sensing the Enemy: An American Among the Boat People of Vietnam) was one of the few Americans to work in both South and North Vietnam during the war. Much later, 1987-1993, she lived in Vietnamese villages, including a former Viet Cong base where women played a prominent role during the war. Her beautifully modulated memoir is less about the war itself than about the unique character of the village women: their formalized social interaction, use of traditional medicine, food-gathering and preparation and the Buddhist beliefs that guide their behavior. Borton's gently compelling narrative follows the rhythm of the seasons and weather patterns and records the jarring advent of Western-style consumerism with the appearance of jeans, tennis shoes, motorcycles and VCRs. Describing her life in Hanoi ("Vietnam's largest village"), where in 1990 she opened a Quaker Service office, she conveys her great affection for its hurly-burly pace. The author conversed with Vietnamese women fluently in their own language and thus is able to present fuller portraits than could be found elsewhere in English. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Lady Borton worked in South Vietnam from 1969 to 1971 with civilian amputee victims of the war. She also went to North Vietnam, worked with the Vietnamese boat people in a refugee camp in Malaysia after the war, made several trips to Vietnam in the late 1980s, and today is field director of Quaker Service-Vietnam in Hanoi. Her previous book, Sensing the Enemy: An American Woman Among the Boat People of Vietnam (1984), was a compassionate account of her earlier work with the Vietnamese. This book is an even more compelling sketch of her later years in Vietnam, largely among ordinary peasants, especially the women. It is a testament to the ingenuity, tenacity, and indomitable spirit of the Vietnamese people, who suffered over 40 years of wars, and it offers a rare Western glimpse into their culture and soul. No matter what one's views on the war, this is a sensitive, insightful vignette.
Joe Dunn, Converse Coll., Spartanburg, S.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha Globe (October 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568361610
• ISBN-13: 978-1568361611
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #414,425 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Deeper Look, February 4, 2009

By	Dennis R. Koehn - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Lady Borton lives with the Vietnamese people and tells their story with empathy and insight. She reveals the face of the enemy that the French and the Americans never saw during the liberation struggles to oppose colonial oppression. This book sheds light on the American failure to understand the hearts and minds of this nation of artists and poets.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Long Winded But Essential, July 13, 2001

By	Ping Lim (Christchurch) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From her experience living together with the common people, Lady Borton is able to reveal to us the main reason why the Americans failed to win the war in Vietnam. In fact, the war is already lost even before it began. Vietnamese is those special breed of people that's enormously proud of their country & should Americans have learnt about Vietnamese history, then, they would have to think twice before deciding to chip in efforts in assisting the French, & subsequently, to fight against communism. It so happened that after interviewing the common people, they were not fighting the Americans for communism but they simply wanted to win the right to enjoy their lives, to live as a free person with their own people. We also learnt of women's significant contribution towards the cause. Along the way, they lost their loved ones, & many became victims to chemical warfare conducted by the Americans. Surprisingly, many Vietnamese don't have ill-feelings against Americans because they always regarded the American Government differently from the Americans. The book also gives us a glimpse of their cultures (celebration of Tet & New Year), difference beween North & South Vietnam. To make the reading more interesting, there were pictures taken of the author with her new found friends ie. villagers, drawing of villages layouts, map of Vietnam, outline of Vietnam history, description of Vietnamese terms, relevant poems to start every & each chapters written by Vietnamese nationalists & poets. I don't find the book particularly captivating to read as it's quite long winded describing every little details about domestic chores. For those that yearn to feel the essence of villagers' life, perhaps, it's worth the while. Still, this doesn't deter the author's goal of reconciling between the States & Vietnam, & thus, the title of the book, After Sorrow.

30 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Leftist propaganda, mostly lies., March 25, 1999

By	James Chaffee (Cedar Park, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a pernicious piece of leftist propaganda. The most obvious lie is that the author is politically neutral. Other pieces of nonsense litter the book from the preface and early chapters on. For example, on page five the author states that the United States embargo kept information about AIDS out of Vietnam. This is such an utter lie that it is embarrassing. It is well known that the Vietnamese government itself kept this information out of the country through its highly efficient censorship of news and information. Government censorship is still being used to edit out information regarding internal problems, including drug abuse. A better perspective on the absurdity of the Vietnamese medical establishment, which readily received medical supplies from the U.S. during the embargo, can be obtained by reading Brothers in Arms by William Broyles, Jr. This book was recommended to me by my guide while I was there.

In Grace Paley's preface to the book, it is stated that the United States defended "Quang Tri with almost total destruction". Along with a strange notion of geography (on the other side of what river is Quang Ngai, which is in fact south of Danang!), it is not mentioned that the actual destruction of Quang Tri was a result of the violation of the Paris accords by the Armies of the North in 1972. In fact, the stretch of Highway 1 around Quang Tri and Dong Ha, originally called the Street Without Joy by the French, has been renamed the Street of Terror by the locals. This is because of the 30,000 or so civilians, fleeing Dong Ha and the invading North Vietnamese Army, who were intenionally slaughtered by North Vietnamese artillery. Those terrified civilians remembered the 5,000 or more men, women and children who were massacred by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese during their occupation of Hue in the 1968 Tet offensive. Many of those massacred in Hue were buried alive.

I have returned to Vietnam recently and can say that it is difficult to find anyone who is now proud of having served with the Viet Cong. In fact, from Hoi An to the DMZ the Marines are heroes. The Hanoi Government is an extremely corrupt police state that is killing its citizens and its economy, and is uniformly hated in both the North and the South, which essentially remain two countries, just as they were before the war.

It's obvious that the reason the current regime allowed this woman to live in a former Viet Cong village is the same as the reason that they allowed the Marxist Tom Hayden and such notables as Jane Fonda to travel in their country, namely for propaganda purposes. However, the true colors of the revolution, which purged any nationalist (non-Marixt) elements after the war, have been shown in recent times, even though the news media of the United States still does not publish the stories of oppression and political and religious persecution in that country. It is apparent that the reason Lady Jane wrote this misleading account was to try to reconcile the embarrassing truth told by the fleeing boat people with her own belief in the beneficent Marxist government that conquered the South. My own experience is that the country is full of people who are struggling to leave, mostly without success.

I could introduce Paley and Lady Jane to a woman who lived outside Dong Ha all through the war, still living there, who would tell a different story if she was not afraid of reprisals against herself and her family. And I know a former boat person from Quang Ngai, living in the United States, who would also tell a different story.

In truth, this book is a piece of propaganda meant to cover the embarrassment of a leftist who helped victimize the South Vietnamese people by supporting a brutal Stalinist regime in one of the lost battles of the Cold War. Unfortunately, those people are still suffering with the result of that failure on our part.

If you want to revisit and marvel at the nonsense spewed out about the wonderful Communists during the 60s and 70s, then read this book in that spirit, but if you want some truth read the more balanced account of a revisit by William Broyes, Jr. mentioned above.