Vietnam Generation Volume 2 Number 1 GI Resistance: Soldiers and Veterans Article 11 Against the War 11-1990 Vietnam Generation Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 1 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation (1990) "Vietnam Generation Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 1," Vietnam Generation: Vol. 2 : No. 1 , Article 11. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol2/iss1/11 This Newsletter is brought to you for free and open access by La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vietnam Generation by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. V ietnam Generation Newsletter NOVEMbER 1990 VolUME 2 NllMbER 1 Na t IonaI AdvisoRy BoARd EdiTOR's N o t e s DAVID MARK NANCY ANISFIEI.D Australian National University Please note the new address of the Champlain College JOHN CLARK PRATT KEVIN BOWEN Colorado State University newsletter: William Joiner Center JOCK ILEYNOLDS University of Massachusetts Washington Project for the Arts Dan Duffy JEAN BEll IKE ELSHTAIN TOM RIDDELL Vanderbilt University Smith College 18 Center Road RICHARD FALK RUTH ROSEN Woodbridge, CT 06525 Cornell University UC Davis DAVID HUNT WILLIAM J. SEARLE 203-389-2559 William Joiner Center Eastern Illinois University FAX 203-389-6104 University of Massachusetts JAMES C. SCOTT PHILIP JASON Yale University US Naval Academy ROBERT SLABEY This issue of Vietnam Generation Newsletter WILLIAM KING University of Notre Dame (VGN) begins a process of spreading out University of Colorado NANCY WEIGERSMA MICHAEL KLEIN Fitchburg State College responsibility for Vietnam Generation’s (VG) University of Ulster CHRISTINE PELZER W1J1TE many activities. Kali Tal has been doing it all GABRIEL KOLKO University of Hawaii York University DAVID WILLSON since founding the journal, but now Dan Dulfy JACQUELINE LAWSON Green River Community College will edit the newsletter, calling on other VG University of Michigan at MARILYN B. YOUNG readers to supply as much copy as possible. Dearborn New York University The purpose of VGN continues to be to carry the letters and advertisements that do not belong C o n t e n t s in the book-format issues of the journal. The newsletter also serves to announce events, report on past events, call for contributors to EdiTOR's No te s........................................................... 1 publications, introduce scholars in the field, and Report on 1990 PojxjIar C uLture C onvention.......... 2 give brief notice to books received. VGN is also a vehicle for longer reviews, personal essays, and Book Review by DAvid C ortrIqIt t ............................ 5 poetry. We welcome pertinent contributions Events........................................................................6 from all readers. For booksellers and publishers, avertising rates for camera-ready copy are as Letters.......................................................................7 follows: ORQANiZATiONS ........................................................... 7 Half page: $60 PubliCATiON OppORTUNATl'ES ....................................... 7 Quarter Page: $45 Resources.................................................................. 8 Business card size: $25. ScIioLars iN tHe FiEld.................................................8 Our goal is to mail a new VGN every three Letters.......................................................................7 months, wrapped with each new volume of the journal. This issue, the first since August 1989. "Over Vietnam" - J ames PenIta....................................9 collects old business, cleaning the slate for more "Vietnam: GhosT of M em o ry" -A I an FarreIL.......... 10 timely issues to come. Books RECEivEd..................................................... 14 Our second issue, “A White Man’s War: Race SpEdAl A nnouncement............................................. 17 and Vietnam,” received a scathing, though predictable right wing attack from Douglas Pike VidEO RECEivEd......................................................... 17 in the last issue of his Indochina Chronology. Just in case any of you missed this gem. I’d like 1 to quote most of it for you here: “Ten assorted collection of papers and presentations on the academics wearing colored glasses take a myopic Vietnam war and Vietnam war era ever look at America’s race problem and the Vietnam assembled at a PCA meeting. Dr. Jackie Lawson, War. Most get it all wrong. The point to be made whose heroic and successful struggle to pull about American blacks in Vietnam is that here everything together for the Toronto meeting was a war in which, as with other minorities in succeeded brilliantly, was in large part earlier wars...the battlefield was the opportunity responsible for the quality of our Toronto to win their red badge of courage with which they experience, and we all extend our heartfelt could come home to claim their full rights as thanks and appreciation for her efforts. citizens. Blacks who soldiered in Vietnam were cheated out of this, ironically by their friends One of the subjects under discussion was the back at the liberal barricades.” possibility of making Jackie’s life easier by organizing with colleagues and presenting Pike, of course, carefully neglects to mention proposals for whole panels, or series of panels, that many of the articles in “A White Man's War" for the meeting next year in San Antonio. The were by black authors, and that the issue’s panels dealing with the canon of Vietnam war special editor. Dr. William King, is both a black literature—organized by Dr. Brad Christie this veteran and the Director of Black Studies at the year—were quite well attended, and the question University of Colorado at Boulder. To and answer periods demonstrated the audience’s acknowledge that black, and other minority lively interest in the questions raised by writers took part in the project would certainly speakers. At the caucus, many members voiced have made his insinuation that the folks who an interest in panels and workshops with a produced this issue were back-stabbing “liberals" format which varied from the usual four-papers- sound as ridiculous as it is in fact. His glib delivered-in-twenty-minules-each approach, and summation of black wartime “opportunity" is a Jackie welcomed proposals for such alternative clear indication of his tendency to dismiss the events. problems of race and Vietnam as unimportant, and his sensitivity to race issues is reflected in One of the most controversial subjects his offensive opening pun. discussed at the Caucus was the question of jurying papers, or continuing the policy of open We encourage those of our readers who admissions for all scholars who wish to present found merit in A While Man’s War to write to Dr. papers. The Vietnam Area is, by far, the largest Pike, Indochina Chronology. Institute of East section of the Popular Culture Association, and Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. we often need to schedule conflicting panels CA 94720. (Back in February 1988, I received a since our numbers exceed the time slots letter from Dr. Pike in which he requested an available. Some members raised the question of exchange of journal subscriptions and wrote, whether we ought to jury papers, and to reject “Wish you good luck in your new undertaking, some submissions in order to avoid such and if there is anything we can do for you here, conflicts. Others argued that the open let me know." I assume that he has withdrawn admissions policy of PCA was one of its best his olTer....) features, and that to reject some papers would require a set of formal acceptance and rejection policies which would need to be administered by R e p o r t on jUe 1990 some committee. No firm conclusion was reached, and it looks like open admissions P o p u lA R C u Itu r e stands. A sso c ia tio n C a u c u s , There was also a suggestion that the Vietnam Area form its own organization. Though we are T o r o n t o . not in any financial or administrative position to For those of you who missed the PCA meeting break away from the larger PCA, we are still loo large for that body to meet our specific needs. 1 in Toronto this year, I felt it important to include offered to associate the Vietnam Generation a summary of the meeting, and of the issues Newsletter with the Vietnam Area of PCA. and to raised in the special Vietnam Area caucus make this newsletter available, for a small fee to meetings. This was, without a doubt, the finest cover printing and mailing costs, to all members - 2- of the Vietnam Area of PCA. As a condition of country. They carried the mantle of Vietnamese associating the Newsletter with the Vietnam nationalism and were viewed as military heroes, Area, I asked for volunteers from among the Area having defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in members to serve as an informal committee 1954. They had also cooperated with the which would assist in producing the Newsletter Americans and the allied forces in evicting the by gathering information and writing reviews and Japanese in 1945. When Ho Chi Minh and the short articles. Volunteers included: Phil Jason, Viet Minh declared independence for Vietnam in Ellen Pinzur, Renny Christopher, Cindy Fuchs, September of 1954 (ironically employing the and several others. If you would like to words of our own American Declaration of participate in the production of the Newsletter Independence in their proclamation), they had please write to Vietnam Generation, and let me political control throughout the country, know. including in large areas of the South. The war in Vietnam was not a civil war between two separate states, as American Book R e v Ie w : N o t e s on a officials insisted, but an attempt first by the French and then the United States to deny Bniqhr Shiuiisq Lie (New victory to a successful national liberation movement led by communists. Of all the bright YoRk: RAisdoiw House, 1988) shining lies of the war, this was perhaps the David Cortright most blinding.