[Marxism] More on The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

[Brian Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Dang Thuy Tram recorded thoughts on the war, her patients,  
> relationship and friendship woes, criticism of the Communist Party  
> and eulogies for her captured and deceased friends. In her last  
> entry on June 20, 1970, she wrote:
>
> "No, I am not a child: I am grown up and already strong in the face  
> of hardships, but at this minute why do I want so much a mother's  
> hand to care for me, or really the hand of a close friend, or just  
> that of a person I know who is all right? Please come to me and  
> hold my hand when I am so lonely. Love me and give me strength to  
> travel all the hard sections of the road ahead ..."
>
> Two days later, she was killed by an American unit passing through  
> Duc Pho. To view more of the diaries, visit www.texastech.edu/ 
> tramdiaries.


Although the reviewer says that Dr Dang Thuy Tram's Diary resembles  
The Diary of Anne Frank, there is a great difference. This is closer  
to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which still stirs readers [Check Amazon.com for  
readers' comments]. Although fiction, Uncle Tom's Cabin was a story  
of action, emotion, and struggle against slavery. It affected all  
elements of society, including previously indifferent or conservative  
Northern whites. When President Lincoln met its author, Harriet  
Beecher Stowe, he is reported to have remarked "So this is the little  
lady who made this big war."

Society has moved on. Literacy and political/religious/social  
organization will provide openings today that were impossible in  
earlier times.

It will be interesting to see what political and social effect this  
book will have when it is translated into Arabic and Farsi. Once  
published in Arabic in Egypt, it would quickly spread to other Middle  
Eastern nations, as well as to Arab speaking residents of Europe and  
the United States.

This story cuts across shibboleths of numerous societies. Westerners,  
who may overlook some of the socialist and nationalist aspects of the  
story, will still immediately identify with the passion and courage  
of "the enemy" -- an enemy who is young, female, a caregiver, in  
love, and dies for her cause.

Individuals in conservative societies, both male and female, will be  
similarly stirred. At the same time, they will get an insight into  
the freedom and passion of someone who resists the U.S. colossus that  
has invaded her native land.

Identification with the heroine is bound to follow. Those who love  
their country and people will also have to look at the constraints  
that their traditional society places on both women and men in struggle.

In the long run, this may be its greatest impact. Stowe, the author  
of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was a leading feminist. The struggle against  
slavery and for women's freedom, continued after the Civil War in the  
women's movement and in the lives of thousands of women and men who  
travelled to the South to aid and educate the freed African Americans.

You will find more information by googling for "Dang Thuy Tram" and  
diary.

Brian Shannon






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