Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: An extraordinary diary of courage from the Vietnam War

by Đặng Thùy Trâm

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse Now, but it shows the diarist - Dang Thuy Tram - as a vibrant human being, full of youthful idealism, a poetic longing for love, trying hard to be worthy of the Communist Party and doing her best to look after her patients under appalling conditions.

She wrote straight from the heart and, because of this, her diary has been a huge bestseller in Vietnam - 350,000 copies sold in 2005 alone. Rider brings the first English translation, in book form, to the Commonwealth markets.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, War, Biography, Asia, Autobiography

266 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

See also Dang Thuy Tram.

Đặng Thùy Trâm (born November 26, 1942, in Huế, Vietnam; died on June 22, 1970, in Đức Phổ, Quảng Ngãi Province, Vietnam) was a Vietnamese civilian doctor who worked as a battlefield surgeon for the Vietnamese resistance during the Vietnam War. At the age of 27, she was killed by American occupation forces while on a trail in the Ba Tơ jungle in the Quảng Ngãi Province of south-central Vietnam. Her wartime diaries, which chronicle the last two years of her life, attracted international attention following their publication in 2005.

One of Trâm's handwritten diaries was captured by U.S. forces in December 1969. Following her assassination on June 22, 1970, a second diary was taken by Frederic (Fred) Whitehurst, a then 22-year-old U.S. military intelligence specialist. Whitehurst defied an order to burn the diaries, instead following the advice of a South Vietnamese translator not to destroy them. He kept them for 35 years, with the intention of eventually returning them to Trâm's family.

In July 2005, Trâm's diaries were published in Vietnam under the title Nhật ký Đặng Thùy Trâm (Đặng Thùy Trâm's Diary, also known as Yesterday, I dreamed the peace in the USA), which quickly became a bestseller. In less than a year, the volume sold more than 300,000 copies and comparisons were drawn between Trâm's writings and that of Anne Frank.

The diaries were translated into English and published in September 2007. They include family photographs and images of Trâm. Translations of the diaries have been published in at least sixteen different languages.

In 2009, a film about Tram by Vietnamese director Đặng Nhật Minh, entitled Đừng Đốt (Do Not Burn It), was released.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Hienpham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Đây rõ ràng là cuốn sách không thể đưa ra để mà đánh giá được, đó là một cuốn nhật ký, mà nhật ký thì đâu phải được viết để cho nhiều người đọc.

[5ermán ۷ogel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind- and heart-blown. Dang Thuy Tram's is the real diary of Anne Frank: not a war propaganda forgery, but the raw actual notes of a courageous young woman harassed to death by massively criminal foreign armies (France, the United States) with a policy of chemical genocide against her and her people that is well-documented (see 'Kill Anything That Moves' by Nick Turse).

Also superior in merits to the Second World War Allied pamphlet, Dang Thuy Tram consciously chose to give up a comfortable and prestigious life as a physician in Hanoi, and committed to the sacred goal of helping expel a murderous invading force between 1966 and 1970. She heads a division of doctors rebuilding and managing frontline clinics, while the Americans burn them mercilessly one after the other with calculated precision and the help of local informants.

One of the most precious contributions of the book is the fact that it might be the only Vietnamese perspective about the war available in English, offering exclusive fragments of humanity of the Vietnamese resistance fighters and volunteers that Hollywood worked hard to dehumanize as thoroughly as possible. Hell, even American films, musicians and politicians claiming to criticize the Vietnam war did it only through the eyes of the invading soldiers and THEIR ailings. Yes, never mind the millions of Vietnamese they obliterated: none of them even has a name beyond the cunning "Viet Cong/Charlie" propaganda label. As if a sane human being would need to pledge allegiance to Communism to strongly disagree with the theft and raping of their land.

"Oh war! How I hate it, and I hate the belligerent American devils. Why do they enjoy massacring kind, simple folks like us?"

"Why are there such terrible, cruel people who want to use our blood to water their tree of gold? So much and still not enough for their greedy pockets, so much and still not enough to satisfy the foolish desire of the blood-thirsty devils."

Lines like these might explain why the diary of such an exemplary human being is not the one shoved down people's throats in Western educational systems, why such a strong, admirable and hard-working woman is no feminist's poster girl, and why several people seem to low-rate this gem of a historical document using lame excuses. For example, claims of a one-dimensional personality (typical in colonized minds that panic at the sight of non-colonized perspectives) are contrasted by Dang Thuy Tram's actual complex concerns and critique of her own society,

"The Revolution of the South! Many acts of heroism, many historic events, but also so much complexity and garbage in this society. It's easy to understand because with all our counter-the-Americans-save-the-country endeavors, we cannot yet focus our strength to rebuild our society, to teach our people how to behave and live in a civilized manner."

Finally, it was interesting for me that, as in the case of post-revolutionary Iran defending itself against the globally-backed Saddam Hussein, teenagers in Vietnam were also passionate about joining the defense efforts, willing to sacrifice their own lives for the freedom of their people,

"At fifteen Thien demanded to join the army. His mother didn't give him permission, but he was headstrong. He falsely added one year to his age, then followed a soldier to his unit."

Anti-Iran propagandists (e.g. Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Marjane Satrapi, Masih Alinezhad, etc.) filled their mouths claiming the 'evil' Iranian clerics would promise teenagers "keys to heaven" and blackmail them in other ways to get them to join the war front as expendables. I wonder then, how did the Atheist Vietnamese managed to force their own teenagers to join the war? Again, that colonialist claim that you either have to be a Marxist or a coerced teenager to want to fight against the destruction of your dear ones and the theft of your land.

All in all, this is one book that every non-colonized mind must read with an open heart and I wholeheartedly recommend it to any such person.

[Kim M-M · Rating 5 out of 5]

the last entry in her diary seemed particularly poignant. her last words tot he world... and she didn't know it. I kept thinking about her mother, and how she felt reading the diary years after Dang's death. Dang would read their letters and write responses to people in her diary, things she didn't tell them in her letters. such love she had. If she didn't like anyone, she wouldn't name them, but spoke about their actions. and those she loved, she always carried in her thoughts. such a loving caring person... such a sad ending. she died never seeing her family again, never knowing true love...
and I wonder how I would feel if I was one of the people in her diary and survived while she died... and now am reading her words about me...I imagine it would be a sort of miracle, where out of death, you hear your loved one again. a bittersweet closure to the open ended pain of not knowing how she was when she died.
why did the father die and the mother live? He died when he heard what happened to her. maybe after sacrificing so much, she needed someone with her in the afterlife. I imagine it would have been a wrenching reunion for both of them...

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dang Thuy Tram was twenty-four when she joined the Vietnam War as a doctor. This is her diary.

This is a first-hand account of the war, written during the war, which is a rare find, and I was excited to read this. Unfortunately, the translation here really lets this diary down. There's be instead of he. Closed instead of close. And while you can use your common sense to rejig the words and sentences, it makes a tiresome reading experience.

I did gain some knowledge while reading this, and it is very atmospheric and emotional, so I'm glad I read it.

It's a real tragedy that the author never got to see not only the end of the war but how successful her diaries have been both locally and internationally.

Three stars.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

What I've noticed about most of the reviews of this book... is that they all mention the story of how the diary came to be published. They call that story interesting, intriguing, fascinating. And then there's the diary, where I see the words repetetive and never meant for publication mentioned a lot.

Basically, people don't want to give this a bad review because it is what it is. The story of a girl who died in the medical service of her country during the Vietnam War.

Maybe I don't have enough knowledge of the context of the Vietnam War (I am ill-informed about the history surrounding most wars, actually... history was never my strong point), but I found the diary full of eye-rolling moments of naivete and I ended up disliking Dang Thuy Tram by the end of it. For being such a well-educated and intelligent woman, she seemed very much to be following the cause of the "Party" blindly.

Yes, it was never meant to be published. It was a personal diary of a young and woefully unworldly and inexperienced girl in a war she did not seem to understand. That doesn't change the fact that it WAS published and the public IS reading it, for better or worse.

Finally, I do think that the translator is at least partially to blame for the choppy prose and the stunted ideas. For a lot of the entries, I suspect that Tram wrote them in as eloquent a manner as she could in Vietnamese and when they were translated into English... it reads like an elephant trying to follow in the path of a butterfly without disturbing the trees around it.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 'little' book impacted me....and potentially a few other people in this world....like no other. This is the diary of a young, idealistic doctor who worked, not near, but in the precise location where I was in Viet Nam....at precisely the same time I was in Viet Nam....when she talks about the 'devil Americans'....that's ME! As I read the diary entries I realized, the day I arrived in Viet Nam was nearing....then I arrived....then I traveled to the small LZ north of Quang Ngai....then she was killed in an ambush....while I was nearby. Now, if that's not profound, I'm at a loss for what might count as a book which has a certain impact. It is 'important' to be transported back to a time when young people....living and dying at the edges of life, were still very fresh, naive, and so full of life.

[Rachel Bea · Rating 4 out of 5]

So heartbreaking and intimate.

Amazing to have the chance to read this diary, which was never intended to be published, and when it was found, was ordered destroyed. It wasn't, and kept for over three decades...

Yes, it is a bit repetitive; yes, she talks a lot about her love and heartbreak; and yes, she refers to many different males as "brother". But keep in mind that when she was writing it, she didn't know that this book would be read by anyone else; furthermore, she was young! She had dreams! She was human!

Really glad I randomly found this book and had the chance to read it.

[neverblossom]

Nhật kí không phải là “thể loại” có thể đánh giá hay chấm điểm được. Nhưng để mô tả Nhật kí Đặng Thuỳ Trâm, mình sẽ mô tả đây là cuốn sách chứa đầy máu và nước mắt, của mất mát, của bom đạn, của khói lửa chiến tranh; song, vẫn sáng ngời lên tinh thần, ý chí, niềm tin của những người làm cách mạng. Đây là một cuốn sách mình nghĩ ai cũng nên (và cần) đọc, để biết hai tiếng “tự do” đẹp và đáng trân quý đến nhường nào.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s possible the diary of Thuy Tran, a Vietnamese doctor serving in the National Liberation Front army, is a good read in Vietnamese. In English it is… terrible. I tried hard to remind myself of the real life behind the narrative voice, of the fear and sacrifice, of her youth… but despite the evocative form (reading a diary feels like - maybe because it is? - an invasion) the writing is so terrible it’s distracting. I appreciate, too, that Thuy wasn’t a writer by trade and so my expectations for knock-em out sentences shouldn’t be high, but at a certain point - and I’d suggest this book reaches that point and then well passes it - bad writing (and by that I mean repetitive sentences, poor diction, exaggerated/universalizing statements) gets in the way of any appreciation of content.

I’m inclined to give Thuy more credit and blame the translator. I’d say, from my limited experience evaluating translations, that this is terrible translation. Randomly selected sentence: “These simple letters cannot diminish my longing. My heart lacks the warming fire of the Party” — lots of talk of anguish, transportation of feeling, longing - her heart/head are frequently “filled with many thoughts”.

Okay. So I didn’t like the writing. Content? I was interested in her story of rising the ranks of the Party, of administering medical care in the jungle, of hating the “American imperialists.” All neat. I was far less interested in her jealousy and various crushes. I know its unreasonable to expect a diary to put limits on these kinds of entries, but all the same, by the end I was pretty fed up with her.

So. There you go.

On another note, I received a comment from a reader on my “The White Bone” entry to the effect that I didn’t do enough research into elephants, and that I considered humans to be far too unique, especially in my characterization of what elephants can and cannot do. I do appreciate the comment. I did try to be as careful as possible to limit my criticism to those things elephants cannot - to the best of my knowledge do - for instance, creating art. I rescind my comments about elephant burial practices to the extent that elephants do bury their dead, but do not, as far as I can tell, speculate on the afterlife of those elephants living with She-woman in the sky (as the novel suggests). I could have added elephants do not understand their world through the Biblical story of Adam and Eve (as the novel suggests), or practice monogamy (again, as the novel suggests). My criticism of the book was not intended as a criticism of elephants. Quite the contrary, I didn’t like the book because it reduced the complexity of elephant mindscape to that of humans.

[William Graney · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whole story of how this diary came to publication is very interesting and reading the diary is an experience I highly recommend.
Since it wasn't written with the intention of publication it can be choppy and repetitious at times as Thuy worked through her feelings towards war, love, family and her ethical code. Yet her constant self-examination and her evaluation of character traits in others cast light on the soul of someone who was very introspective and the philosophical closings of many of her entries provided a significant amount of food for thought.
I enjoyed the way Thuy related to the characters of Les Miserables and there are a couple of pages where she compares her life to Jean Valjean, Cosette and Marius. I found those passages particularly compelling and dog-eared the pages to read again in the future.
Knowing how Thuy's life ends from the beginning added to the poignancy of her thoughts and experiences. It is a very sad look into the fighting that took place in Vietnam from 1967-70.

[Phuong · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult to contain emotions-mine through hers. The diary hits me personally. I was born to the lullaby of this war. I grew up witnessing its savagery engulfing lives & humanity... Indeed, the diary has the fire within. Her words are raw & achingly vivid as she accounts amid the atrocities, annihilation & dehumanization of war the very core of human conditions, existence & veracity. Fate did deny her life. But chances & choices, death can't deny her. Her voice echoes eternally. She is extraordinary. Do read this book with one's own sense of humility & openness to understand & embrace peace- the inner peace.

[Sandra D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overwrought and gushingly emotional diary of a young female surgeon. I had hoped for a more straightforward accounting of life within the Viet Cong support system -- what American forces were up against -- but this wasn't it. I couldn't finish it.

[Đoan Thục]

Mình không nỡ rate nhật ký của người khác.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Last Night I Dreamed of Peace" is a short miracle of a book that recounts tragedy along so many dimensions... A diary written by a young physician from the North who chose to go to the central part of VietNam during the war with America, it survived thanks to the haunted persistence of her opponents--two American brothers on the other side of the war and a Vietnamese translator, all of whom admired her passion. It is blessed with a model of a preface by Frances Fitzgerald and copious notes by the translators who seem to have tracked the history of everyone Dang Thuy Tram mentioned in her diary, and also have an exquisite sense of which particular misstep the American military was committing at any given moment.
In the alternative universe in which the American military pays attention to the world as it exists rather than flexing its biceps in front of a mirror, this book would be required reading. Dang Thuy Tram was intelligent, patriotic and medically educated; she should have been a good audience for the ideology of self-determination on which the U.S. came into being. Instead, by assuming that anyone who was anti-colonial was our enemy and cutting deals with the French and the corrupt Vietnamese who followed them in the South, the United States presented itself as a large and violent enemy, recklessly intent on imposing its will. It was a catastrophic mistake, costly to both countries. (Not that I support the side that won--but the U.S. both unified the supposed enemy and empowered its harshest cadres).
As angry as Dang Thuy Tram was about the enemy she calls a monster, she strove for love, a word that appears in almost every entry. She wasn't always referring to romance, and I wonder whether here the translators failed her, or, more likely, the Vietnamese words or that emotion covers a lot more territory than the English ones do. But she loved not only her family and the man who courted and then disappointed her, but the soldiers she treated, the people she worked with. Her grief is constant and she is almost brutally self-critical. She seems have been widely beloved but not without detractors, including the Communist Party, in part because of bourgeois advantages that allowed her to take up her father's career as a surgeon. It is a measure of the deep failure of American policy that a woman with that much heart could call the Party a mother to her.
The national tragedy that she partially witnessed unfolding but that an American bullet to the head did not allow her to see through to fruition was the final independence, which she so passionately desired, of the nation that she so passionately loved. I wonder what path she would have taken, supporting the ideologically-hardened governing group that survived the war, or joining the group that did not view nationalism and freedom of political thought as contradictory. It is a tragedy that she did not live to have to make that choice. It is also a tragedy that she would have had to make it.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

The excellent fifteen page introduction by Frances Fitzgerald of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace contains some incisive observations about the book, its meaning and its history and its origins. The book itself is a diary, an interior monologue by the main character Dang Thuy Tram, a mid twenty-something woman who is a new doctor in the midst of the war in Vietnam. Her job is to care for wounded Viet Cong soldiers just below the seventeenth parallel that divides the North and the South. She is surrounded by the war action with her life often in danger. She has followed after her true love but they were never able to resume their romantic relationship as each becomes totally committed to their war duties working for the defeat of the Americans. She returns to this loss again and again. She is a dedicated communist, fatalistic about the possibility of being killed in the effort to free her beloved country after years of foreign domination and over two decades of war.

For a book in a war setting, there is very little description of war action and injuries. We are insinuated into the mind of a competent physician who struggles with emotional and physical war damage, coming to terms with the loss of her true love, her intense (but non-sexual) love for several of the people she meets in the course of her work in the medical clinic and the deaths of some significant people. She also struggles with her firm communist beliefs and experiences as they develop in her young life.

We see that the ‘enemy’ is also human. And that a bullet in the head is a tragic loss of life regardless of the politics.

[Uyen Nhi Le · Rating 5 out of 5]

Đọc từ lửa đạn đến khúc ca hoà bình

Đêm vừa rồi mình đóng sách lại mà lòng vẫn rưng rưng

Th. không phải nhà văn
Th. chỉ là một người chiến sĩ, một bác sĩ ở chiến trường nhưng từng dòng nhật ký của Th. lại cứa sâu vào tim mình dữ dội đến thế

Chị sống thật
Chị thương thật
Chị là một con người thật

Chị chỉ là một cô gái bình thường, nhưng có trái tim thiệt đẹp. Biết giận, biết buồn, biết yêu thương và luôn tin vào những điều đúng đắn. Trong cảnh chiến tranh như vậy mà chị vẫn giữ được cái trong lành, cái đẹp, mình thấy điều đó quá khó, và cũng quá đáng quý

"Hãy giữ vững tinh thần của người cộng sản, tinh thần trong suốt như pha lê, cứng rắn như kim cương và chói lọi muôn nghìn hào quang của lòng tin tưởng...”

Mình tự hỏi giữa bom rơi đạn lạc ấy, sao chị có thể giữ được trái tim trong lành đến vậy. Những lúc chị buồn, nhớ gia đình, anh em, đồng đội, mình cảm thấy như mọi cảm xúc của chị đều chạm đến một góc sâu trong trái tim mình. Chị không sợ chiến tranh, nhưng chị sợ những điều xấu xa có thể xâm chiếm tâm hồn người chiến sĩ, điều đó khiến mình phải suy nghĩ lại rất nhiều về những gì chúng ta dễ dàng bỏ qua

“Kẻ thù phi nghĩa không sợ, mà sợ những nọc độc của kẻ thù còn rớt lại trong đồng chí của mình” (câu này vừa cất lên là khiến mình rùng mình ngay lập tức)

Đọc xong những dòng nhật ký của chị, mình gấp sách lại, chỉ biết trầm tư với một nỗi thương xót thiệt nhiều. Chị đã sống hết mình, đã yêu thương, đã hy sinh, chị còn để lại cho chúng mình những bài học vô cùng quý giá. Mình cảm thấy thương chị lắm, thương cái tâm hồn đẹp đẽ ấy nhiều lắm, nên mình cũng thương lấy mình
Giữ lòng cho sạch, giữ tin cho vững em ngen

[Son Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quyển sách mình mua từ những năm cấp 3 mà mãi đến khi đi làm mới đọc được. Một cảm giác buồn da diết khi đọc những dòng nhật ký của chị Trâm, dù vậy nhưng tôi vẫn cảm thấy cực kì may mắn vì đã đọc quyển này ngay tại giai đoạn trưởng thành, vì tôi có thể đồng cảm được với những suy tư của chị, những trăn trở của một người trẻ với vận mệnh của đất nước, cảm giác bất lực của người bác sĩ với bệnh nhân của mình mà không thể cứu được, những suy tư của chị với mối quan hệ tình cảm cá nhân của bản thân (với người yêu M và những đứa em kết nghĩa), những cảm xúc này không chỉ riêng chị cảm thấy được, mà nhiều lớp trẻ bây giờ cũng có thể có, nếu đủ tinh tế để nhận ra. Tôi thật sự rất ấn tượng với suy nghĩ và ý chí của chị Trâm, người con gái mạnh mẽ và đầy lý tưởng, tôi học được ở chị về lý tưởng sống cao đẹp, vì mọi người, thái độ tích cực và tận hưởng từng phút giây của cuộc sống, sống có mục đích và luôn cố gắng để hoàn thành mục đích sống đó đến cuối đời.
Chị đã đi nhưng ý chí, nghị lực và lòng dũng cảm của chị vẫn luôn là tấm gương cho thế hệ trẻ có thể học hỏi. Cảm ơn chị đã đồng hành cùng em qua trang sách :)

[♏ Gina☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damg Thuy Tram did something extraordinary at the young age of 24. She volunteered to serve as a physician in the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield in Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from the hospital (this is not a spoiler - the reader will be aware of this from the beginning). This book shares her diary entries, the horrors she witnessed, her dreams of peace (hence the title obviously), her missing her friends and family, her desire to be a true patriot to her own government. It was an American officer who found her diary - he was under orders to destroy all found documents. Thankfully, he did not, keeping the diary for 35 years. Finally, in 2005, a copy of the diary was sent to Tram's mother. Eventually the treasure, saved from flames, was published in Viet Nam. I cannot thank that solder enough - the one who went against regulations and saved this incredible diary. Tram's words need to be shared, and in our world today, the words ring true. What is the cost of war, truly? Is it ever worth it? What REALLY goes on behind the lines?

[Alicia V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tôi đã có cơ hội đến Quảng Ngãi, đến tận nơi chị Trâm hy sinh, sau khi đọc cuốn nhật ký của chị.
Tôi đọc không phải vì những yếu tố văn chương, đây là nhật ký, ghi lại cảm xúc cá nhân như nhiều bạn nhận xét, vì đây là cuốn sách rất đáng để đọc.
Lý tưởng màu hồng nhưng chiến tranh màu xám. Người con gái đầy trăn trở trong suy nghĩ, tình yêu sẵn sàng xung phong ra chiến trường, cứu sống những bệnh nhân, đồng đội. Dù ở chiến tuyến nào thì người đọc cũng sẽ thừa nhận chị Trâm là con người dũng cảm.

[Kathie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I so wanted to read this book, being fascinated with everything Vietnam War....but was exceptionally disappointed. This person, (a doctor for heaven's sake!) did nothing but whine and pine for an unrequited love like a 12 year old school girl....I hated all of it!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my sight, candor is always refreshing, even if the intended audience is only yourself. This educated, 25-year-old woman – although a doctor in extremely primitive circumstances and surrounded , and eventually engulfed, by death – worried about what people thought about her, refrained from displays of affection in public for fear colleagues would whisper, felt the organization for which she worked sometimes failed to appreciate her for unfair reasons, was sometimes terrified, thought of hand-holding as a passionate activity, and wanted to be an admirable person, even though she wasn't really sure exactly what an admirable person was like. It's unusual, almost to the point of unnerving, to find so much genuine earnest awkward unfiltered emotion these days, when cynical detachment seems to be prized above all else.

Sometimes this book can be tough sledding. Some of the same problems of communication I have living here in Vietnam also make disconcerting appearances between soft covers. Particularly, the switching back and forth, without apparent system, between referring to yourself in the third person and referring to yourself and other by place in some imagined family (hence the frequent appearance of “younger sister”, “fifth brother”, and so on). This causes the question “Who are we talking about now?” to rise frequently to the lips, as “older sister” can not only refer to one of several people who appear in the narrative, but also to the writer herself. To translate this way was a choice by Andrew X. Pham (also author of Catfish and Mandala). You can criticize him for sacrificing clarity for accuracy, but be assured the accuracy is there. This is how they talk. This infuriatingly confusing gaggle of pronoun-substitutes occasionally leads to confusion in my life, like when I was left to wonder why the young Vietnamese waitress was flabbergasted by my response when I thought she asked (in Vietnamese) “How old is your father?”. About twenty minutes later, I realize she actually asked “How old are you, father?” But by then it was too late. But I digress.

Anne Frank in black pajamas. That's a flip and cruel way to summarize this book, but flip and cruel seems to be the way of the world, or at least the Internet, these days. I refer specifically to reviewers who, singing happy in the cage of ironic modernity, don't bat an eye at the diarist's undisguised joy at the violent death of enemy soldiers but cannot allow go to unremarked-upon (with disdain) that diarist was, in private moments, plagued by romantic thoughts. If you don't like reading about people who see the world differently than you do, well, why bother reading at all?

[✨bibliann✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lịch sử Việt Nam chưa từng là một thế mạnh hay một môn yêu thích khi mình còn mài mông trên ghế nhà trường. Lịch sử đối với mình không phải là những bài học khô khan và khó nhằn trong sách giáo khoa, mà đơn giản là qua những câu chuyện kể, những thước phim hay những trang sách chứa chan cảm xúc. Rồi cứ thế sự thú vị của lịch sử lớn dần, bởi mình luôn gắn song hành cùng với văn chương.

Mình biết rằng cuộc kháng chiến chống đế quốc Mỹ vô cùng khắc nghiệt và gian khổ, mình biết đất nước ta đã phải đánh đổi rất nhiều, mình biết bộ đội và nhân dân đã hy sinh tuổi trẻ, máu và nước mắt, kể cả mọi thứ trong cuộc sống để tập trung cho trận chiến... Đấy là những gì mình được nghe, được biết, được học, được "đả thông tư tưởng" từ khi có nhận thức rõ ràng. Nhưng tất cả những lời đó với mình vẫn còn trừu tượng và xa lạ, bởi mình đâu có tận mắt chứng kiến hay cảm nhận được trực tiếp. Ấy vậy mà qua những trang nhật ký của bác sĩ Đặng Thùy Trâm, bao nhiêu hy sinh mất mát, bao nhiêu khói lửa chiến trường, bao nhiêu gan dạ, bao nhiêu ác liệt nơi tiền tuyến đều được tái hiện một cách chân thực, rõ nét khiến mình nghẹn ngào xúc động. Ngày qua ngày, máy bay chao lượn trên đầu, pháo nổ khắp nơi, tiếng súng và mùi thuốc súng, hy sinh không đếm xuể, những con người kiên trung ấy vẫn vững vàng chiến đấu, vẫn lạc quan yêu đời và không ngừng tin vào ngày mai thắng lợi. Tác giả - một người con gái giàu tình cảm, nặng tâm tư, yêu thương sôi nổi nhiệt thành đã kịp ghi lại những ngày rực lửa nơi bom rơi đạn nổ, ghi lại những tình thương giữa anh em đồng chí đồng bào, ghi lại những cố gắng nỗ lực trong công tác, ghi lại những tình cảm thiêng liêng nảy nở giữa nơi vào sinh ra tử, cả nỗi nhớ nhà, nhớ gia đình, nhớ miến Bắc xa xôi. Chỉ mỗi điều ấy thôi cũng đã quá quý giá rồi.

Chị từng viết:

"[...] nhưng quyển nhật ký này đâu phải chỉ là cuộc sống của riêng mình mà nó phải là những trang ghi lại những mảnh đời rực lửa chiến đấu và chồng chất đau thương của những con người gang thép trên mảnh đất miền Nam này."

Mình chẳng thể tưởng tượng là nếu cuốn sách được chuyển ngữ, dịch giả nào có thể truyền tải cho hết được tâm tư của chị đây? Không biết bao nhiêu lần chị nhắc đến tình thương, một chữ "thương" chứa đựng bao tấm chân tình ấp ủ dạt dào mà chắc khó có từ nào khác có thể diễn tả được chính xác, trọn vẹn. Hay Đảng cộng sản Việt Nam quang vinh - một tổ chức chị quá đỗi yêu thương, tự hào, chị sống và công tác cống hiến hết mình cho Đảng, cho dân tộc chỉ được gọi đơn thuần là "the Party" trong tiếng Anh :))))) Ôi tiếng Việt! Từng trang nhật ký của chị như lời ca diết da của một cô gái tiểu tư sản nặng tâm tình!

p.s. nhật ký mà, đâu phải viết ra để public đâu:))

[Thuy Vu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know much about the war even though I'd watched several movies about it. So The diary of Dang Thuy Tram is the first book about the war that I've read and absolutely has torn me apart. Doctor Tram was such a typical Vietnamese woman who'd been born in the peace then devoted her life to save the country in the war. She was a determined, resilient soldier who vowed to carry the spirit of Communists in her heart but at the same time, was an emotional, warm-hearted, caring person who had so much love and sympathy for her people and her comrades. My grandma used to tell me stories about the war when I was a kid, she said it'd been the tragedy of our country in her time. Bombs had struck houses and villages day by day, fields had been entirely destroyed and soaked in blood and corpses, there had been so many people killed which she said had become the normal thing in the war. I didn't pay much attention to her stories, I thought she just exaggerated everything. But now I could envision all the details of what she told me about. I am a kid who was born in the peace, thanks to blood and bones of the bravest people who fought for the country. I didn't really understand what that meant.
I thought about soldiers who survived the war and now are living in the peace when the country is changing so fast. The other day I saw a poor man on a very old bicycle collecting old machines that were no longer used nearby my neighborhood, his old soldier uniform's color was faded and sweat-stained, his head kept down. I thought about the diary of Dang Thuy Tram. Was the man possibly a soldier in the war who had survived all of the bombs that'd threatened his life every single minute, who had spent his adolescence, had lost his family and maybe had sacrificed his love for the country, who was luckily alive but somehow "dead" in the time of peace?

[Tien · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly lucky find when researching for a reading challenge task. I was looking for a non-fiction book set in South East Asia (excluding Indonesia) that has been translated to English. You know Anne Frank & her diary? Well, this is also a diary by a girl, a young adult in her early 20s. She may be a communist but she is also a person, a human who bled red with a breakable heart and beautiful dreams. As I read her most intimate thoughts, my heart broke for her over and over. This is only part of the diary she kept as earlier books are lost. In the beginning, you learn that her heart was broken by a boy she loved and throughout the book, she continued to love him, was sad throughout, yet exhorting herself to work hard to forget him and strive for her dream of peace. She is a doctor and she believes in the idea of communism; she is fighting for her country to be free and to prosper. Her idealism, though transparent in the diary, did not saturate the writings. She wrote from the heart and so this book is full of her wishes, longings, and dreams. It is therefore even more heartbreaking that she died so very young.

[+Chaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems that the more we understand our enemy, the more we see them functioning in their daily lives, the harder it is to kill them. Perhaps that is why we dehumanize them; how sad. Ms. Tram’s diary of living under a jungle canopy in the middle of a battle field is almost as eye opening for the Vietnam War, as “All Quite on The Western Front,” was for WWI and “The Diary of Ann Franks” during WWII. A young lady, a doctor gladly volunteering to serve her country to care for her wounded countrymen who are defending their right to be free against a corrupt government backed by the strongest country on earth.
Ms. Tram diary reveals a young woman learning the roll of duty to country and her self. Her love of family and friends flows with pure innocents in a world of so much destruction and pain. Yearning to understand love and life she searches the depths of her heart to find the answers. The book is not always easy to follow and sometimes it’s redundant, but as an intellectual tool its beautiful, enriching the reader with a broader perspective of the term “enemy.”

[Pio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Một quyển sách ướt sũng, ấy là nếu có thể chuyển hóa cảm xúc trong quyển này thành nước.

[Calzean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the printing of a young Northern Vietnamese woman doctor's diary during the Vietnam/American War. Her hospital was hidden in the forests in South Vietnam and catered for the wounded, sick and dying NVA soldiers. It's her internal thoughts on her family, would-be boyfriends, patients, desires and hopes. It's not great writing but how many diaries are meant for publication?
What is powerful is it makes the "enemy" so human. It's raw with emotions, a desire for peace, a life free from foreign powers, and a chance for her and her comrades to go home. There's sadness a plenty as family, friends and comrades are killed and the diary ends on the day the author is also killed.

[Laura (booksnob) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dang Thuy Tram was a doctor who lived and worked in Vietnam during the war. She left her family, became a member of the communist party and worked to heal members of the Vietcong army. During the Vietnam war Thuy kept a diary and wrote down her thoughts, her emotions and the daily tribulations of living and working during a war. She relates some of the history of Vietnam, the conflict with the French and her wish for peace and freedom. Only one diary out of three survives.

Dr. Tram is shot and killed by the Americans. All of the deceased person's effects are ordered to be destroyed but one American soldier recognizes the dairy as important and keeps it. He takes it home after the war and keeps it safe for 35 years. The soldier returns to the diary to Dr. Tram's mother in Vietnam and she has it published where it becomes an instant bestseller.

Throughout the memoir there is death and destruction. Dr Tram faces death daily as people she loves are shot and captured and her patients die of incurable wounds. Her depression is evident as she misses her family and her high school sweetheart. Life happens during war and Thuy shows how she survives everyday when bombs are dropping around her.

I read this book aloud to my 4th hour Humanities class and most of them hated it. I tried to persevere hoping that they would learn something about the horrors of war and that the book would improve but it did not. Thuy constantly talkes about men and love interests and because she calls them all young brother or older brother it leaves the reader confused about who is who. Also Dr. Tram continually refers to herself in 3rd person which left the class wondering why. I was really disappointed in the book. I felt it needed something more, maybe some cultural references that helped the reader understand Vietnam better. There are tons of footnotes throughout the book that while they did explain some of the history, mostly deterred from the memoir and left the reader more confused. I would definitely say that this is a book where the meaning and importance of the book has become lost in translation.

[Nadia | Mon Vàng Vàng · Rating 4 out of 5]

READING CHALLENGE 2020 - 11/2020
A biography
Một cuốn sách cảm động khép lại năm 2020 nhiều biến động của mình. Không như những cuốn sách hồi kí khác viết về chiến tranh, cuốn nhật kí đưa ta đến với một con người chân thật và gần gũi nhất - một hình ảnh không chút che giấu về cuộc sống và xã hội Việt Nam những ngày tháng chiến tranh bom đạn ngập trời, nơi sinh tử chỉ cách nhau có một khoảnh khắc. Dẫu khó khăn là vậy nhưng nhân dân ta vẫn một lòng đoàn kết anh dũng chiến đấu chống giặc.
Bác sĩ Đặng Thùy Trâm là một người con của Hà Nội, một vị bác sĩ đã được tôi rèn bằng chiến tranh để từ một cô bác sĩ mới ra trường đến một cán bộ Đảng xuất sắc. Dù giữa nơi khói lửa bập bùng như vậy, tình yêu thương giữa người với người vẫn là một điểm ngời sáng, tình cảm gia đình, của những người xa lạ cùng nhau chiến đấu đã làm cho cuốn nhật kí hào hùng được sưởi ấm bởi tình người.
Lịch sử của dân tộc những năm chống Pháp rồi chống Mỹ luôn có một ảnh hưởng đến suy nghĩ của mình - lòng tự hào cũng như lòng biết ơn của những người đã dành hết những năm tháng cuộc đời mình chiến đấu cho nền độc lập, hòa bình của dân tộc, những con người như bác sĩ Đặng Thùy Trâm vậy.

[JM · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a great relief that this secret diary was recovered from the wreckage of the war in Vietnam. Through her letters, Đặng Thùy Trâm gives us a remarkable first-hand account of life during the conflict-- encapsulating moments of triumph, boredom, and ordinary horror. Today, the author is revered as a heroine in her country. Đặng Thùy Trâm possesses qualities that transcend political beliefs and barriers-- young, humble, and deeply devoted to her ideals, she acted selflessly to save her countrymen under the most grim and desperate conditions imaginable. This story is recommended for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, and stands along "The Sorrow of War" as a humanist classic from the communist side. At times, the story can be draggy because some of the details regarding the author's personal life are unclear. But overall, this diary gives us a unique and poignant glance into the experience of the war, through the reflection of vivid daydreams and graphic realities.