Nha Ca. Mourning Headband for Hue: An Account of the Battle for Hue, Vietnam 1968. Translated with an Introduction by Olga Dror. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014, 378p.

Abstract

Mourning Headband for Hue: An Account of the Battle for Hue, Vietnam 1968 Nha Ca. Translated with an Introduction by Olga Dror Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014, 378p.Literary fiction has long provided some of the most evocative images of warfare, and the struggle for Vietnam is no exception. Indeed, many of the more lasting popular impressions of the Vietnam conflict have been shaped by successive iconic novels. The emergence of a Vietnam War literary canon has echoed trends in English-language scholarship on the war, with early classics like Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (1990) or Michael Herr's Dispatches (1978) sharing contemporaneous scholars' focus on American policies and experiences. A more recent historical interest in exploring the communist so-called other side of the conflict has seen such works increasingly accompanied on Vietnam War syllabi by translated Vietnamese novels like B?o Ninh's The Sorrow of War (1993) or Duong Thu Huong's Novel without a Name (1995). Notably under-represented in both English-language fiction and scholarship, however, are voices from the non-communist South. Indeed, for all the dozens of volumes published each year on the Vietnam War, there is still no basic political history of South Vietnam after American escalation in 1965.All of which makes Olga Dror's translation of Nha Ca's 1968 Mourning Headband for Hue such an important and welcome contribution. Combining memoir, journalism, vivid anecdotes, and incisive analysis, Nha Ca's novel illuminates non-partisan civilian experiences of the conflict, recounting the enormous suffering imposed by all warring parties on the city of Hu? during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The author's riveting and relentless account is propelled by her considerable literary skill. Adroit employment of modernist techniques, from multiple interwoven perspectives to a non-linear timeline, creates a deliberately jarring and disjointed narrative, animating the sense of uncertainty and utter panic among the city's desperate inhabitants. Adding to the intensity is the translator's use of the original 1969 edition, written when emotions and memories were more immediate and raw. Beyond merely an informative first-hand account of a critical if still relatively obscure episode in the Vietnam War, Mourning Headband for Hue is an impressive literary achievement, holding its own in the pantheon of classic wartime literature.Tran Thi Thu Vân, better known to readers by the pen name Nha Ca, is one of South Vietnam's more accomplished authors, acclaimed for her novels, poetry, and journalism. She contributed to a burgeoning Saigon print media scene, which flourished despite recurring if inept censorship, and whose insights are still largely neglected in English-language studies of the war. Mourning Headband for Hue, her most celebrated work, begins shortly before T?t, the Vietnamese lunar New Year, when Nha Ca returns to the Central Vietnamese city of Hu? to attend her father's funeral. Her homecoming is interrupted in the middle of the night by the first sounds of gunfire from approaching communist troops, and after a grenade detonates on the roof of her ancestral home, the family is forced to flee. What follows is a desperate, harrowing scramble for cover from both the advancing communists and the indiscriminate American firepower that accompanies their progress. Arriving at a nearby church, the family takes shelter with hundreds of starving, panicked refugees, including, unforgettably, a woman unable to acknowledge that child she cares for has died until after the stench grows overwhelming.When the church is engulfed in the crossfire, Nha Ca and her family make another narrow escape. Exhausted, hungry, and under constant fire, they traverse the city for sanctuary before approaching a nearby American airbase, where they finally find respite from the relentless bombardment at its source. Later, returning home to a city strewn with corpses, where the traditional white headbands worn by grieving Vietnamese have become ubiquitous, the author reflects on the futility of the violence: am surprised when I think why all the artillery from America, from Russia, from Czechoslovakia suddenly lands in the hands of North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese to pour down on a small city that is as good-natured as is the city of Hue . …