Uprootedthenovel

Tung was a small, grey-haired man sitting in the corner of his living room. Between us a squall of children, grandchildren and extended members of his large family cooked, bantered and played. His round face was impassive but serene. A benevolent moon in a cloud-cluttered sky. To my foreign mind it was a distant and unreadable exterior. In meeting his family for the first time, I had brought my own baggage from the UK. Anxiety for the international, inter-generational grillin

Don't talk about religion or politics. Well, I've done plenty on politics so it's religion's turn. I guess I'll have to save the easy one, death, for another post. First of all, my disclosure that I am a Christian, is important as I tried to portray the church's role in Vietnam fairly and without positive or negative bias. There is plenty to render on both sides of the equation. It is however, important to recognize that the many failures of Catholicism and the church leaders

On March 8th 1965, the first American combat troops landed on a beach outside of Danang. It was only the most prominent of a thousand tiny steps that had been leading American soldiers closer to full involvement. My first exposure to the Vietnam War was the films that unpicked the American soldiers' experience. The subject became a sub-genre of its own in the 1980's, as a generation of film-makers each released their own depiction. These films were mostly tales of individual