I volunteered to go to Vietnam, but as a conscientious objector to war. . . . While most of these events took place in the midst of the war, this is not exactly a story about the war, but a story of rescue. Most of the children I helped save--scalped, burned, blasted, or shot when I found them--are now adults, parents or even grandparents themselves. . . . And while many of my funny, wise, reckless, young American friends of those days are dead, what they did and what they learned is not. It is as if all of us were being watched, all of us journeying under a brilliant blue sky that is the...
I volunteered to go to Vietnam, but as a conscientious objector to war. . . . While most of these events took place in the midst of the war, this is n...
While serving as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, John Balaban cared for war-wounded children. The poems which he which he wrote out of that experience are among the finest in American literature and are included here along with three decades of other highly-praised, award-winning poetry.
While serving as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, John Balaban cared for war-wounded children. The poems which he which he wrote out o...
"Sometimes books really do change the world... This one will set in motion a project that may transform Vietnamese culture.""Utne Reader"
Ho Xuan Huongwhose name translates as "Spring Essence"is one of the most important and popular poets in Vietnam. A concubine, she became renowned for her poetic skills, writing subtly risque poems which used double entendre and sexual innuendo as a vehicle for social, religious, and political commentary.
The publication of "Spring Essence" is a major historical and cultural event. It features a "tri-graphic"...
Featured on NPR's "Fresh Air"
"Sometimes books really do change the world... This one will set in motion a project that may transform Vietnamese ...
During the Vietnam war, John Balaban traveled the Vietnamese countryside alone, taping, transcribing, and translating oral folk poems known as "ca dao." No one had ever done this before, and it was Balaban s belief that his project would help end the war.
The young American poet walked up to farmers, fishermen, seamstresses, and monks and said, "Sing me your favorite poem," and they did. "Folk poetry is so much a part of everybody s life, my request didn t seem like such a strange proposition," Balaban writes.
The resulting collection the first in any Western -language became a...
During the Vietnam war, John Balaban traveled the Vietnamese countryside alone, taping, transcribing, and translating oral folk poems known as "ca ...
Since relations between the U.S. and Vietnam have normalized, many more people are traveling to this exotic country, previously closed to a generation of Western visitors. Vietnam provides one of the first chances for Americans to know the Vietnamese outside the context of war. Vietnamese have been telling stories for thousands of years, in poetry and in song, in Chinese script and then in Vietnamese nom, and more recently, in novels and short stories. These 17 stories, from contemporary Vietnamese writers living in Vietnam and abroad, take the literary traveler to extraordinary...
Since relations between the U.S. and Vietnam have normalized, many more people are traveling to this exotic country, previously closed to a generation...
This collection of twelve short stories and one essay by Vietnamese writers reveals the tragic legacy of Agent Orange and raises troubling moral questions about the physical, spiritual, and environmental consequences of war.
Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed approximately twenty million gallons of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on Vietnam and Laos, exposing combatants and civilians from both sides to the deadly contaminant dioxin. Many of the exposed, and later their children, suffered from ailments including diabetes, cancer, and birth defects.
This...
This collection of twelve short stories and one essay by Vietnamese writers reveals the tragic legacy of Agent Orange and raises troubling moral qu...
This collection of twelve short stories and one essay by Vietnamese writers reveals the tragic legacy of Agent Orange and raises troubling moral questions about the physical, spiritual, and environmental consequences of war.
Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed approximately twenty million gallons of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on Vietnam and Laos, exposing combatants and civilians from both sides to the deadly contaminant dioxin. Many of the exposed, and later their children, suffered from ailments including diabetes, cancer, and birth defects.
This...
This collection of twelve short stories and one essay by Vietnamese writers reveals the tragic legacy of Agent Orange and raises troubling moral qu...
