MIM Notes 208                   April 15, 2000

Review: The Vietnam War in American Stories, Songs, and Poems 
Edited by H. Bruce Franklin

Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996, 343 pp.

reviewed by MC206

This anthology does not concentrate on the mountain of 
jingoistic pulp aimed at teenage boys during and after the 
Vietnam war like "The Green Berets," "Special Forces Trooper," 
or "Women of the Green Berets." Nor does it concentrate on 
allegorical pro-imperialist works like "The Ugly American." 
Instead, it concentrates on literature which, to quote the 
editor, springs from the discovery, "usually through painful 
experience, of insights far too valuable to be lost or 
forgotten."

Soldiers, nurses, and journalists who spent time in Vietnam 
during the war wrote most of the works in this volume. Simple, 
moving, and strong themes run through many selections: The 
contradiction between Amerika's "just cause" rhetoric and the 
brutal reality of a genocidal war; the recognition that the 
Vietnamese men and wimmin killed by Amerikan soldiers were not 
faceless "gooks" but real people; and the pain of seeing close 
Amerikan friends die meaningless deaths for an evil cause, to 
name a few. 

Some of the authors are anti-war activists, some are not, and 
a few pro-war authors are also represented (but that's as it 
should be, since we should learn to know our enemy). The 
anthology demonstrates that art can be topical and relevant, 
appeal directly to the broad masses, and yet have high 
aesthetic standards. Ultimately, it shows that middle forces 
can play an important role in the cultural ferment which makes 
a broad anti-imperialist movement possible. And it illustrates 
the tragedy that so many Amerikans had to travel through the 
imperialist military on before joining the struggle against 
imperialism, as Franklin did.

Amerikans who wish to write anti-imperialist literature should 
thoroughly work with, and critically think through the 
writings on the Vietnam War, and this book is a good place to 
start. Those who do not wish to write creatively themselves 
can study how losing a war of aggression can increase the 
contradictions within an oppressor nation and create allies 
for the international proletariat.