UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Encounters in Viet Nam

Book Jacket: "Earth and Water" by E. Shillue

Edith Shillue
Foreword by Kevin Bowen

An American woman reflects on her experiences as a teacher in Viet Nam

Born in the early 1960s and having no direct experience of the Viet Nam War, Edith Shillue arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in September 1993 from her native Massachusetts to begin work as a university lecturer in English and American history. This book is a lively rendering of her experiences there and in Nam Ha Province in northern Viet Nam, where she later taught in village schools.

Living and working with the Vietnamese, Shillue became acquainted with their language, history, and culture through circumstances that range from comic to heartbreaking. Her memoir provides the reader with sharp observation and thoughtful commentary, whether she is portraying her home life with a Vietnamese family, recounting the joys and frustrations of teaching at both the grade school and university levels, or journeying to the Mekong Delta, Hanoi, or the killing fields of Cambodia.

"This is a superb piece of work: thorough without being overburdened with detail, thoughtful without being ponderous, intelligent without a know-it-all tone, and best of all, delightful to read. Shillue's work is in the vanguard of the scant but growing body of intelligent writing on the people and culture of contemporary Viet Nam."

Larry Heinemann, author of Close Quarters and Paco's Story
"Shillue's account is rich in detail. She does a wonderful job of conveying what Saigon is like as the Vietnamese learn the ins and outs of the new market economy. She has a novelist's eye."

John C. Schafer, Humboldt State University

Edith Shillue is an associate of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Memoir / Asian Studies
256 pp.
LC 97-17136
$50.00s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-128-7
$24.95s paper, ISBN 1-55849-129-5
1997

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