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Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam
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$24.95
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Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781558494428
ISBN: 1558494421
Label: University of Massachusetts Press
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2004-04
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Studio: University of Massachusetts Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of an Army nurse; In this powerful story collection - the first such work of fiction by a woman who served in Vietnam - Susan O'Neill offers a remarkable view of the war from a female perspective. All the nurses who served there had a common bond: to attend to the wounded. While men were sent to protect America's interests at any cost, nurses were trained to save the lives of anyone - soldier or citizen, ally or enemy - who was brought through the hospital doors. It was an important distinction in a place where killing was sometimes the only objective. And since they were so vastly outnumbered, women inevitably became objects of both reverence and sexual desire. For American nurses in Vietnam, and the men among whom they worked and lived, a common defense against the steady onslaught of dead and dying, wounded and maimed, was a feigned indifference - the irony of the powerless. With the assistance of alcohol, drugs, and casual sex, "Don't mean nothing" became their mantra, a means of coping with the other war - the war against total mental breakdown. Each or these tales offers new and profound insight into the ways the war in Vietnam forever
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Comment: A really wonderful collection of stories that demonstrates O'Neill's gift of observation, irony and allegory concerning a neglected and under-exposed aspect of the Vietnam War. I highly recommend it both for its excellent craftsmanship and its contribution to our under understanding of that war.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great
Comment: For some reason I didn't think this was going to be a very good book when I selected it. Boy was I wrong, it's a great book. My husband who is not a reader, unless its something to do with sports, is reading it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: sincere and deeply felt
Comment: Sue O'Neill brings home all the craziness of being in a war. This collection gives a firsthand account of just what it was like to be there and reveals the humanity on a new level. I especially recommend it for the children of vets whose mothers or father may have never come home or never have talked about the war.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite Army Nurses
Comment: Sue O'Neill along with Mary Reynolds Powell (A World Of Hurt) and Sharon Grant Wildwind (Dreams That Blister Sleep) is one of a rare breed of women who not only flew 10,000 miles into a war zone to support an Army whose average age was 19 (in WW II it was 26), she also had the strength and the vision to write about her experiences.
Don't Mean Nothing is an essential Nam book, along with the late Lynda Van Devanter's Home Before Morning. While I don't accept that the war was literally unwinnable, I totally agree that the way it was being fought, with no sense of a Win Scenario at any time, resulted in a mindless and sickening waste of human life - on both sides.
President Johnson, the simpleton who put more than 500,000 US troops in harm's way, yet never defined a Win Scenario or Exit Strategy, once boasted that the Air Force "couldn't even bomb an outhouse" without his approval. Similarly, the target selection for the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign in which the US lost 922 aircraft, was carried out at cozy White House lunches, without a single Air Force commander being present.
Sue's anger at a mind-numbingly incompetent Government, who denied Ho Chi Minh a fair crack at democratic elections (which he may well have won) by installing the hateful and corrupt Diem in the South, is well stated.
These stories take you under the hood, behind the propaganda and the lies and put you right there in the middle of a war that either should never have happened or which should have been fought very differently at the very least.
A great writer. A great human being.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Masterful Storytelling
Comment: Other Amazon customer reviews have done a great job of outlining the subject matter of these stories. But the stories, which are fine pieces individually, are also wonderfully orchestrated in this collection. Some stories are poignant, some are dark with flashes of humor, and 'Monkey On Our Backs' is laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end. The stories benefit from both a common thread and great variety, and the overall effect, with recurring characters, is a bit like reading an episodic novel.
Above all, Susan O'Neill is an excellent storyteller, a writer who has mastered her craft. I hope we're going to see more stories from her. I would expect her narratives to be compelling whether set in a war or not. Highly recommended.
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