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Angel Child Dragon Child Analysis

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Previously published children’s literature on the Viet Nam/American War struggled with depicting war’s horrors while avoiding traumatizing young readers. Some books simplified the historical and political context of the war and presented a message of hope and friendship, resulting in the representation of the Vietnamese as victims in need of American assistance. This gesture is nowhere more exemplified than in Angel Child, Dragon Child (1989), story by Michele Maria Surat and pictures by Vo-Dinh Mai. In this picture book, the protagonist Ut and her sisters are in the States without their mother. The children are ridiculed by other students for the way they speak and dress. One day, after a snowball fight, Ut and a boy named Raymond are sent to detention, where Raymond learns about Ut’s mother, who does not have enough money to come to the States. …show more content…

Originally published in 1977, The Little Weaver of Thái-Yên Village is a bilingual text written in Vietnamese by Trần Khánh Tuyết and translated into English by Tuyết and her husband, Christopher N. H. Jenkins. It tells the story of Hiền, another orphan who, like Kim, is taken to the States; in this case, for an operation to treat the injury she suffered in the explosion that also killed her mother and grandmother. The book’s goal is similar to those of Always with You and Angel Child, Dragon Child. According to the back cover, this work of children’s literature is intended to help young Americans “better understand the Vietnamese War and the dilemma facing more than 100,000 refugee children who came to North America at the end of the war.” As a work that fosters understanding between American and Vietnamese children, The Little Weaver of Thái-Yên Village does not shy away from portraying war’s savagery, probably to the dismay of some parents and school

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“The Sacred Willow” portrays four generations of a Vietnamese family that stretches from the traditional mandarin culture of northern Vietnam, the French occupation, the Vietnamese war, to life in the US. A main portion of this book is centered around the narrator Mai’s father Duong Thieu Chi and his struggle of working in the government while raising a family during the time of French Occupation. Throughout Mai’s accounts, her father’s internal conflict between good and bad as well as modern and traditional are highlighted to symbolize the 20th century Vietnamese sentiments towards their country and their call for independence. The books begins by Mai retelling her great grandfather and grandfathers’ lives which are important because it gives reasoning to explain how the French occupation drastically changed her father, Duong Thieu Chi’s life, career, and decisions.

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War is the graveyard of innocence for boys who become men through the loss of humanity. The book “Fallen Angels,” by Walter Dean Myers, is a story about Richard Perry, a young man who mistakenly joins the Vietnam War to avoid the shame of not going to college. As the book goes on Perry discovers his mistake and in the process, not only loses his innocence, but also his humanity. Wars will always be the dark parts of our history and no war is devoid of horrors that can strip anyone of everything they are, and in war soldiers must use coping mechanisms to deal with these very apparent horrors.

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This heart wrenching story is told by the cousins Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, and Benjamin Ajak with the help of Judy A. Bernstein. It depicts the struggles and the survival of the Lost Boys during the war in Sudan. These three young men share the hardships they faced in Sudan during the war and the hardships they encountered in America. The novel is split into four parts, each part telling a different part of their journeys. Part one, The Village of Juol, illustrates they early childhood these boys had in Sudan.

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In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.

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