Black Americans in Viet Nam letters (i)

from the janitor at the Viet Nam Literature Project

I am aware that my cheerful interest in what black Americans of talent and intellect have had to say occasioned by the nation of Viet Nam is a taste few wish to acquire.

Over there, when I was over there, at Ha Noi over 1994-6, the whole issue was unclear. They couldn't tell us apart, the first thing any American sees about another. The big shot American in the city was one very black man. I was one of the poorest.

My name Dan sounds like I could be saying black in Vietnamese, so questions were raised. One of my very best friends over there, a woman the world has recognized as heroic, in her anger at oppression, her bravery in compassion,

asked me what in the world our national thing is all about. Every country has minorities after all. That novelist studied anthropology at writing school but anthro in VN deals with safely contained hill peoples.

For black Americans, the involvement with the Viet Nams is a matter of pain more conflicted than even among the white rural proletariat. It was their shot at fighting overseas just like folks, brothers in arms, and oh fuck it was a shitshow.*

The VC made hilariously tone-deaf propaganda to them, based on their previous war's outreach to African colonial troops. Went over like a lead balloon. They didn't grasp, as so many Americans also fail to grasp, that black Americans are pure Americans.

They are oppressed, that's all. So majority writers here about the war also get them wrong, framing them as victims. Sure. But not the way you think. The ways they think.

And the refugees here, well, nicest people in the world. That is, just as nice as anyone else in the world. Also scared, at the margins of oppression, like Italians in my time. Want nothing to do with the blacks.

Their children? Again, nicest people in the world. I love them to pieces. But in general caught up in the white claptrap I just explained. It is very hard to talk with a mouth full of horseshit.

The solution, as always, is to shut up and listen to smart people who know what they are talking about. All my Viet Nam letters point in that direction. You don't have to like it, or me.

Probably more engaged when you don't. That's a good thing. All I need is one at a time.

*[I owe the insight of the 5th paragraph to my memory of the oral teaching of a colleague who fundamentally shaped all my work. I do not wish to claim their work anonymously or to implicate them on my terms.

What's more, I don't do peer review, let alone prior review. I think it is wrong, the wrong of groupthink that brought the USA to Cambodia, Laos, DRVN and RVN:

the establishment politesse that masks oppression. So, those who know, will know. Best I can do for now.

When I get a minute I will start engaging directly with my friend’s fundamental work in print on what I call Viet Nam and they don’t. ]

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.