Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (review)

11 Refugee Lifemaking Practices: Southeast Asian Women

“…10 During the Vietnam War, as the U.S. government contemplated intervening in Vietnam's civil war, U.S. print media began to publish stories and images of Vietnamese women designed to make U.S. intervention palatable to the public. 11 At the time, Vietnamese women were recognized globally as powerful participants in Vietnam's civil war-as volunteers repairing roads and bridges, as soldiers operating anti-aircraft guns, as doctors working on the front lines; 12 and yet, American journalists and government officials often inscribed them "within an orientalist discourse of femininity, irrationality, and backwardness." 13 To make Vietnamese women, and therefore the Vietnam War, acceptable to the American public, U.S. print media framed Vietnamese women's bodies as exotic and hyperfeminine, fitting them into the preexisting tropes on Asian women as prostitutes, war brides, and dragon ladies.…”