Vietnam Generation Volume 1 Number 3 Gender and the War: Men, Women and Article 4 Vietnam 10-1989 "I Never Really Became a Woman Veteran Until…I Saw the Wall": A Review of Oral Histories and Personal Narratives by Women Veterans of the War Renny Christopher Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Christopher, Renny (1989) ""I Never Really Became a Woman Veteran Until…I Saw the Wall": A Review of Oral Histories and Personal Narratives by Women Veterans of the War," Vietnam Generation: Vol. 1 : No. 3 , Article 4. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol1/iss3/4 This Article 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]. "I Never R eaU y B e c a m e a W o m an V eteran UNTil...l Saw t He WaU":1 a Review of OraI Histories ancJ Personal Narratives by Women Veterans of tHe Vietnam War RENNy ChRiSTOphER In the oral history collections A Piece of My Heart (Keith Walker, 1985), In the Combat Zone (Kathryn Marshall, 1987), and Nurses in Vietnam: The Forgotten Veterans (Dan Freedman and Jacqueline Rhoads, 1987), and in Lynda Van Devanter’s groundbreaking personal narrative Home Before Morning (1983), women who served in the Vietnam war speak out about their experiences. All these works are recent; women veterans of the war held their silence for many years, in part for reasons similar to those of male veterans, and in part because they often did not feel that they were legitimate veterans.