Mourning Headband for Hue
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15
Ratings1
Average rating5
"Vietnam, January, 1968. As the citizens of Hue are preparing to celebrate Tet, the start of the Lunar New Year, Nhã Ca arrives in the city to attend her father's funeral. Without warning, war erupts all around them, drastically changing or cutting short their lives. After a month of fighting, their beautiful city lies in ruins and thousands of people are dead. Mourning Headband for Hue tells the story of what happened during the fierce North Vietnamese offensive and is an unvarnished and riveting account of war as experienced by ordinary people caught up in the violence"--
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I happened to be reading this during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
to those who criticize the style of writing, understand that nha ca began writing this the moment she left hue and returned to Saigon. it is no wonder that this reads like someone who is attempting to recall a dream (in her case, a painful nightmare)–roundabout, hasty, a little careless. but the glimpses of nha ca mourning her beloved hometown, her attempts to document and immortalize her family and the people of hue that she met during the tet offensive, her desire to share these memories for the sake of remembering–all of these make this piece so powerful and important.
