Last week, DTiNews introduced an article written by Laura Lam, an overseas Vietnamese who wrote a book about the war in Viet Nam. We are now delighted to present her second story, which deals with how she came up with the book.

The revelation of my father’s intelligence network in the Mekong Delta came as a shock to me. I was deeply shaken. After several decades of silence, misunderstanding and resentment, Father was finally understood and appreciated. I now understood why the war against the Americans was fought, and how the Vietnamese had won that war. Overwhelming with my own guilt for taking side with the Americans during the war, I felt compelled to write the book, to correct the outsiders’ views of my country.

For preparation, I started reading books about Viet Nam written by non-Vietnamese authors. I quit after going through 177 books. Their biased viewpoints and attitudes disturbed me. I also resent the fact that Western writers had condensed the name of my country “Viet Nam” into a single word “Vietnam”. Vietnamese language doesn’t contain a combination of two separate words. Did they do this in order to dominate us? Some authors even condensed the name Dien Bien Phu to Dienbienphu, and Cach Mang Thang Tam to Cachmangthangtam. Why didn’t they reduce the name United States to “Unitedstates”?

My father gave me a list of history books written by Vietnamese historians, military personnel, and war witnesses. Relevant facts from diaries of French soldiers at Dien Bien Phu and letters written by American soldiers were also included in my reading. I came to a conclusion that the Vietnamese were fighting to reclaim their rights to self-determination and self-rule. Once, during my interview with Colonel Ho Thi Bi, she said she couldn’t think of another country where people could match the strength of the Vietnamese in defending their homeland.

I made a trip to Luong Tam village, my birthplace, to interview the surviving relatives on my mother’s side. While there, I observed the severe poverty and the suffering of young children, and I thought of setting up a children charity. However, I was in the middle of writing the memoir and had to postpone the charity plan until the book was published. In 2008, when I set up the Viet Nam Village Children Fund, I decided to donate all the book royalties to the charity.

I chose the name Late Blossom to reflect my life circumstances during the years of growing up. The affects of wars had frozen my own development and progress. This name also reflects the history of my country. Viet Nam had endured repeated invasions by the major powers. Like a suffering flower bud, it was able to bloom only after the country’s reunification. Late Blossom presents the Vietnamese view of the conflicts and the significant roles of women in the wars of liberation.

Before its publication, a senior American diplomat with Viet Nam experience, Desaix Anderson, decided to endorse the book. He wrote,

“A haunting account of a young, indomitable Vietnamese woman’s life and love that describes the two intertwining wars coexisting in Viet Nam – the American war against Communism and the Civil war between those supporting the Americans and the South Vietnamese regime and the ‘nationalists’ supporting Ho Chi Minh’s struggle to regain independence and freedom for Viet Nam.”

Anderson had been appointed by Bill Clinton in 1995 to negotiate for the ending of the US Embargo against Viet Nam. He was made Charge d’Affaires in Ha Noi from 1995 to 1997. He also taught courses at Princeton University and recently retired.

Note: The book has been well reviewed by European and American readers and is available on Amazon.com. Recently it was translated into French.