I am having a hard time deciding on a rating with this book. At times it was a slog and I didn’t want to pick the book up. At times I was up at 1am reading the book as the pace picked up. But overall it is an important book and offers a view we don’t hear from often in history, the South Vietnamese. I believe I saw in other reviews people mentioning how we had a Vietnam Memorial, but for Americans only until recently.

“April 30 is annually known as Black April, or "Tháng Tý Ðen," and is a day to lament and reflect upon the fall of Saigon and of South Vietnam, which took place April 30, 1975. As many as 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and nearly 60,000 American soldiers died during the Vietnam War. Approved through a resolution of the City Council in 2019, Westminster (California) became the first city globally to recognize Black April Memorial Week in recognition of the Fall of South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese Communists.” https://www.westminster-ca.gov/government/city-channel-wtv/black-april

Many excerpts from the book are poignant commentary on war and the refugee/immigrant experience.

“Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others?”

“…deeply familiar with the nature, nuances, and internal differences of white people, as was every nonwhite person who had lived here a good number of years. We ate their food, we watched their movies, we observed their lives and psyche via television and every day contact, we learned their language, we absorbed their subtle clues, we laughed at their jokes, even when at our expense, we humbly accepted their condescension, we eavesdropped on their conversations in supermarkets and the dentist’s office, and we protected them by not speaking our own language in their presence, which unnerved them. We were the greatest anthropologists ever of the American people, which the American people never knew because our field notes were written in our own language in letters and postcards dispatched to our countries of origin, where our relatives read our reports with hilarity, confusion, and awe.”

“I was in close quarters with some representative specimens of the most dangerous creature in the history of the world, the white man in a suit.”

“After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.”

“They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just.”

“What was is like to live in a time when one’s fate was not war, when one was not led by the craven and corrupt, when one’s country was not a basket case kept alive only through the intravenous drip of American Aid?”