Seeing Vietnam

In November 1992, shortly after the U.S. government lifted travel restrictions, Travel & Leisure magazine sent Susan Brownmiller to Vietnam on a tourist visa. "You take a lot of baggage when you go to Vietnam," her piece began. "One small suitcase, one carry-on, and two thousand pounds of disjunctive emotions napalmed into your brain from a televised war that won't go away.". The inspired match between author and subject continued after the article's publication as Brownmiller immersed herself in Vietnamese history and current events, rekindling an interest that began in the 1960s. Seeing Vietnam is the result, a traveler's journey in the grand tradition of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene - part reportage, part impassioned memoir, part serendipitous adventure, all delivered with the acuity, wit, and political sophistication we have come to expect from her. As Brownmiller does the twist in a Hanoi disco, gorges on garlic-fried crab (while passing up the crunchy fried songbirds), bargains for hand-painted ceramics, joins a class in tai chi for older women, drinks tea with the Buddhist monks of Hue, sits crosslegged with the Bru Van Kieu near the ghostly remains of a military base, gives an impromptu English lesson to university students, is offered a pygmy slow loris on a Saigon street, and chats with representatives of some of the larger multinationals in her hotel lobby, the reader shares her intense engagement, her delight in each new encounter, and the emotional catharsis of seeing - and making friends with - a people and a country we have fought but never known.