Synopses & Reviews
Moving beyond past histories of Viet Nam that have focused on nationalist struggle, this volume brings together work by scholars who are re-examining centuries of Vietnamese history. Crossing borders and exploring ambiguities, the essays in
Viet Nam: Borderless Histories draw on international archives and bring a range of inventive analytical approaches to the global, regional, national, and local narratives of Vietnamese history. Among the topics explored are the extraordinary diversity between north and south, lowland and highland, Viet and minority, and between colonial, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and dynastic influences. The result is an exciting new approach to Southeast Asia's past that uncovers the complex and rich history of Viet Nam.
“A wonderful introduction to the exciting work that a new generation of scholars is engaging in.”—Liam C. Kelley, International Journal of Asian Studies
Review
andquot;A classic. . . . No American should be able to read [this book] without weeping at his country's arrogance.andquot;andmdash;Anthony Lewis, New York Times
Review
andquot;[In Laos,] where a right-wing government installed by the CIA faced a rebellion, one of the most beautiful areas in the world, the Plain of Jars, was being destroyed by bombing. This was not reported by the government or the press, but an American who lived in Laos, Fred Branfman, who told the story in his book Voices from the Plain of Jars.andquot;andmdash;Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States
Review
andquot;Today, the significance of this book's message has, if anything, increased. As Fred Branfman predicted with uncommon prescience, the massive U.S. bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War marked the advent of a new kind of warfareandmdash;automated, aerial, and secretandmdash;that is just now emerging as the dominant means of projecting U.S. power worldwide.andquot;andmdash;Alfred W. McCoy, author of Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
Review
andquot;In this small, shattering book we hearandmdash;as we are so rarely able to doandmdash;the voices of Asian peasants describing what we can barely begin to imagine.andquot;andmdash;Gloria Emerson, New York Review of Books
Synopsis
Women, Autobiography, Theory is the first comprehensive guide to the burgeoning field of women s autobiography, drawing into one volume the most significant theoretical discussions on women s life writing of the last two decades.
The authoritative introduction by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson surveys writing about women s lives from the women s movement of the late 1960s to the present. It also relates theoretical positions in women s autobiography studies to postmodern, poststructuralist, postcolonial, and feminist analyses.
The essays from thirty-nine prominent critics and writers include many considered classics in this field. They explore narratives across the centuries and from around the globe, including testimonios, diaries, memoirs, letters, trauma accounts, prison narratives, coming-out stories, coming-of-age stories, and spiritual autobiographies. A list of more than two hundred women s autobiographies and a comprehensive bibliography of critical scholarship in women s autobiography provide invaluable information for scholars, teachers, and readers.
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Synopsis
An award-winning study of the economic expansion of Lower Burma into the world’s largest exporter of rice is available again, now in paperback with a new preface.
Synopsis
In the decades following its annexation to the Indian Empire in 1852, Lower Burma (the Irrawaddy-Sittang delta region) was transformed from an underdeveloped and sparsely populated backwater of the Konbaung Empire into the world’s largest exporter of rice. This seminal and far-reaching work focuses on two major aspects of that transformation: the growth of the agrarian sector of the rice industry of Lower Burma and the history of the plural society that evolved largely in response to rapid economic expansion.
Synopsis
During the Vietnam War the United States government waged a massive, secret air war in neighboring Laos. Two million tons of bombs were dropped on one million people. Fred Branfman, an educational advisor living in Laos at the time, interviewed over 1,000 Laotian survivors. Shocked by what he heard and saw, he urged them to record their experiences in essays, poems, and pictures.
Voices from the Plain of Jars was the result of that effort.
and#160;and#160; and#160;When first published in 1972, this book was instrumental in exposing the bombing. In this expanded edition, Branfman follows the story forward in time, describing the hardships that Laotians faced after the war when they returned to find their farm fields littered with cluster munitionsandmdash;explosives that continue to maim and kill today.
About the Author
"A significant contribution to the efforts to move beyond a national history of Vietnam. Many intriguing stories of the marginal and ambiguous subjects in the place we call Vietnam today."Thongchai Winichakul, University of WisconsinMadison"Vitally important not only for Vietnamese studies, but also for broader efforts in Southeast Asian studies to recover the pluralities and fluidities of the past."Mark Philip Bradley, Northwestern University“Shows that crossing both physical and ideological borders is necessary to get at the truth of this fascinating country. . . . Highly recommended.”—
Choice
Table of Contents
Foreword: Reflections on History's Largest Air War, by Alfred W. McCoy
Textual Note
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Introduction: Laos and the Advent of Automated War
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What sadness!
Have pity on the victims of the war!
May the life of a former nurse from Xieng Khouang pass away without returning again
Why did the planes drop bombs on us?
The day does not exist when we will forget
Three jets came together dropping bombs
He and his wife died together in the rice fields because of the airplanes
And so we sang with brave hearts
Then the F-105 warplanes strafed and dropped rockets and 150 kg bombs on the village and people without stopping
A bomb fell about fifteen meters from where my father was plowing
Then they bombed our village; hitting houses, the pagoda, the school; devastating our rice fields; and killing the cows and buffalo
We lived in holes all the time
In the forest, I would go from one hiding place to another
They died like animals die in the forest
This is my house, built of lumber twenty-six years ago. It was struck by the airplanes.
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Epilogue: After the War Ended, 1975andndash;Present
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Appendix:
Complete Text and Supporting Documents of USIS Refugee Survey as Obtained by Congressman McCloskey
A Survey of Civilian Casualties among Refugees from the Plain of Jars, Laos, by Walter M. Haney