Genealogy Books - The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family

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Summary: Captivating book
Comment: This is a Vietnamese version of the "American Quilt" or even, "Magnolia". It told the story of a
Vietnamese family spanning 4 generations. When I was a child growing up in the South East Asia
region, I read & heard about the boat people from Vietnam every single day. I used to wonder why
should they abandon their homeland & why should they take such a major risk. I also saw pictures &
video clippings of a Vietnamese girl running naked from her village after a napalm attack, the mob
gathered around the US Embassy hoping to catch the last flights out from Saigon, South Vietnamese
Police Chief that shot point blank range towards a captured Viet Cong at the public place, a
Buddhist monk burnt himself to death in protest of the South Vietnam Government, & so forth. I
couldn't relate to those incidents then but this book enabled me to do so now. The stories of the
author's family members came slowly but effectively thru tying them up with the historical
happenings of that particular moment. Because her family was vast, & that they all shared different
beliefs, we got to see Vietnam from different perspectives. Even though some reviewers reckoned
that the book was rather one-sided, it still is a captivating to read, obviously a labour of love
for the author. I definitely broadened up my knowledge about Vietnam & no longer stereotyped them
as victims of the unscrupulous wars as depicted by Oliver Stone's movies or even Acropolyse Now.
Rather, being their enterprising selves, they would always sought ways to sustain or improve their
predicaments no matter which parts of this world that they are residing in. Highly recommended & an
experience that's not to be missed.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Vast fascinating saga, but limited outlook
Comment: This book is indeed what most critics say that it is: an ambitious, sprawling saga, paralleling the
life and history of one family with the history of Vietnam in the last 130 years. And it does make
fascinating reading. However, one other critic rightly made the point that this history is limited
to the upper-middle-class, with very little on the rest - the farmers, the urban working class, the
fighting soldiers, the intelligentsia. To which I will add: the view Mai Elliott gives of the
sweeping events her family lived through was in fact rather comprehensive as long as it took place
in the North, where she was born. Once the family moved South to Saigon, they pretty much kept to
themselves and were out of the loop as far as decision-making was concerned (whereas ther father
had been Governor of Haiphong and right there in the thick of things in the North). Being myself a
Southerner Vietnamese, I do admit that, in general, the refugees from the North were not made
warmly welcome. But some did reach out and eventually made friends, which the Duong family does not
seem to have done. When they were still high officials in the North, the Duongs were influential
and knew almost every aspect of what was going on. Once in the South, they were pretty much out of
the loop, and Mai falls back on sweeping generalizations based on prejudices and hearsay, like "the
Southern landowners were absently landlords who lived it up in Saigon, leaving their lands to
caretakers". Being myself from a landowning family, I can vouch that that was far from true. Same
thing about the South Vietnamese armed forces and the contempt in which they were supposedly held
by their American allies. Would Tiger Woods' father have named him after a South Vietnamese Ranger
if he despised him and his companions as cowards? She also fails to note that, very often, a South
Vietnamese military operation would fail because Americans would not listen to their SVN
counterparts, thinking they knew better. And Mai was so busy interviewing VC prisoners of war and
trying to understand them that she never took the time to find out what the South Vietnamese
working class, farmers, and fighting men, were like. Or why they stuck with a "corrupt" and
"tyrannical" government, not to mention nasty imperialist Americans without rising up and going to
the other side. Her account of the fall of Saigon and its aftermath is told solely from the point
of view of her relatives who stayed there, or other former Northern refugees, and from a strictly
"bleeding-heart liberal" perspective. General Loan is stigmatized when he shot a VC in public (he
had heard that very day that the VCs had massacred a whole bunch of his relatives), but widespread
cases of the so-called Liberation Army summarily shooting thieves in the street is related without
so much as a metaphorically raised eybrow. There is no mention whatsoever of the South Vietnamese
underground resistance that went on for over 10 years after Saigon fell, and only a grudging,
one-sentence acknowledgement of "acts of heroism" by the South Vietnamese army and people. Her
extensive bibliography is limited to North Vietnamese and American books, magazines and papers when
she could have gained a different insight from books or articles by South Vietnamese or French
writers and journalists, among others "The Vietnamese Gulag" by a South Vietnamese who stayed on
after the "liberation" to help rebuild the country. I still recommend the book as an interesting
work, giving a perspective that Americans in general have not seen - the "Vietnam War" viewed from
the point of view of a Vietnamese family. But for that, Le Ly Hayslip's "When Heaven and Earth
Changed Places" was closer to the people - and Mai Elliott's point of view is only that of a small
part of Vietnam. But do read it anyway. You will still gain facts and insights you did not get
before.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Great way to learn about Vietnam
Comment: I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about Vietnam. Well-written, the
book is a history of how one family lived in Vietnam over several generations. The reader will
learn the conflicts (politcal, cultural, and military) that each generation faced and how they
responded to them to survive.

What is also interesting in this fine book, is that Mai Elliot
showed how important it was to the Vietnamese that the Japanese (for a time) ruled the French in
Vietnam during World War II. It showed that the French could be defeated and raised the morale of
those Vietnamese who wanted to drive the French out of Vietnam. Not many other books highlight
this particular role of the Japanese on Vietnamese history in the second half of the 20th
Century.

Overall, this book will give beginning and advanced students of Vietnam both a
relatively unbiased and informative view of Vietnam over the years. Furthermore, parts of the book
are an adventure and demonstrate the hardships that many in Vietnam had to endure for so many
years regardless of social status and education. Mai Elliot has made a solid contribution to the
literature on Vietnam. One of the best Vietnam books out there.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Beginner's guide to Vietnamese History
Comment: After having recently started to work in Vietnam, I wanted to get a feel of the Vietnamese history
spanning this century. Not interested in a text-book style carricature, I purchased this book to get
an overview of the events that shaped the emergence of modern Vietnam. Mai Duong's narrative is
comprehensive, successfully covering the macro events of the colonialism, subsequent communist
revolution, and its ultimate collapse, and the emergence of the modern Vietnam. The book succeeds
in giving an impression of the circumstances that normal households went through, allowing the
reader to feel and be part of the true-life story within. Must-read for people wanting to get an
overview on the current Vietnamese history - with a social angle.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A family history that also tells the history of Vietnam.
Comment: The Sacred Willow is an excellent family biography and historical analysis of the origins of, and
events surrounding, the Vietnam War. If you have shied away from histories of Vietnam as you
are not interested in military history, I would highly recommend this work. This book is a
social, rather than a military, history. Tracing the history of Vietnam from the era of the
mandarins, through the French colonialization, through the communist insurgency, to the fall of
Saigon and beyond, the author writes a history of her own family and in so doing, beautifully and
subtly details the complexities and nuances of the origins of the Vietnam conflict and America's
participation therein. The author's use of spare and straightforward prose enables the reader
to look beyond the sheer horror of the war and its aftermath and reach a level of understanding as
to how this tragic conflict could have occured.

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