QUESTIONS FOR THE READINGS

[PLEASE NOTE: These questions are being provided in advance so that you may be thinking about some of the broad issues the authors address. You should not read the books only to be able to answer the below questions. You must consider, and you will be responsible for, issues in the books not covered by these questions.]


Duong Van Mai Elliott, The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Why did the urban middle class fear the revolutionaries’ victory in southern Vietnam? How did the revolutionaries confound their expectations? What does this suggest about the nature of the Saigon government’s claims before 1975?

In what ways were the hopes of many revolutionaries dashed by the postwar government? In what ways did the government deal with those it considered insufficiently imbued with revolutionary ideology? What issues alienated many Vietnamese from the postwar government? How did different Vietnamese respond to these frustrations?

How did Vietnamese adjust to living outside of Vietnam? What problems did they encounter? How did they confront them?


W. D. Ehrhart, Passing Time: Memoir of a Vietnam Veteran Against the War, Second Edition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).

What were Ehrhart’s views of the war in Vietnam before serving in Southeast Asia? How did his views change after he served? What caused him to change his views? Why did he feel he was lied to by the United States government? How did he respond to the Pentagon Papers?

What did Ehrhart think about his treatment by civilians after returning from the war? When he was harassed, why did he receive this treatment?

How did Ehrhart express his views of the war? How did other veterans express their views of the war? How does this reinforce or conflict with contemporary popular memory of returning veterans?


Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

Why did Jerry Lembcke decide to write his book? How did the political context of the 1991 Persian Gulf war shape his approach to the topic?

What evidence (or absence of evidence) does Lembcke rely on to argue that the “spitting image” is a myth?

What role does Lembcke ascribe to popular culture in forming Americans’ beliefs about returning veterans?

Do you find Lembcke’s arguments persuasive? Why or why not?