Arts of War on the Web

Susan Cox, a History Professor at City College of San Francisco, is working on what she calls a “Vietnam veteran positive” book. The book, Professor Cox tell us, “debunks the stereotypical image of the Vietnam veteran as the homeless guy on the street, long-haired drug addict or recluse in the mountains, which is so prevalent in our society.”

To do the book, she has starting taking oral histories from Vietnam veterans. These histories, she says,  emphasize the “positive stories of the Vietnam veterans who transcended the scars and wounds of war and managed to hold onto life while being husbands, fathers, grandfathers, raising children, running businesses and maintaining successful jobs and careers.”

The purpose of the book, Professor Cox says, “is to honor the Vietnam veterans and to erase the stereotypical image by sharing positive stories.” That noble objective is something Vietnam Veterans of America has tried do so since it was founded in 1978.

If you would like to help, call 530-637-9120 or send an email to susan@vietnamvetstoday.com

If you do, please mention that you read about the project on VVA’s Arts of War on the web page.

Recovering From the War, Patience Mason’s pioneering book on PTSD,  which first was published 1990 and remains in print, has just been made available on Kindle through Amazon.com  The book, subtitled “A Guide for All Veterans, Family Members, Friends and Therapists,” deals with how Mason and her husband Robert lived with PTSD “when it didn’t have a name and wasn’t supposed to exist,” she says. Bob Mason did a tour of duty in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot, which he wrote about in his highly praised memoir, Chickenhawk.

After struggling for many years, the Masons began dealing with the problem in a positive manner in ways she describes in her book. Since then, Patience Mason has become a well-regarded PTSD expert. She has given talks on the subject at VA Medical Centers, Vet Centers, veterans’ reunions, and many other venues. In addition to Recovering from the War, she has written two books for children on PTSD as well as pamphlets that the VA uses for patient education. She also has an informative web site.

“Lens” is the name of a New York Times blog that features photography, video, and “visual journalism.” One of the current entries on the blog looks at the unique and innovative photographic images of Binh Danh, 34, a Vietnamese-American artist who grew up in California and has an MFA from Stanford University. Binh Danh’s work concentrates on his Vietnamese heritage and the American War in Vietnam. His work, he says, deals with “mortality, memory, history, landscape, justice, evidence, and spirituality.”

In 2001, two years after making his first trip to Vietnam, Danh invented a photographic technique, the chlorophyll printing process, in which photographic images appear embedded in leaves through the action of photosynthesis. From the start he has included images of the Vietnam War in his leaf photographs.

The article includes details on how the printing process works and Dinh’s reflections on being a Vietnamese-American and the continuing legacy of the Vietnam War.