The Return to Viet Nam

Book excerpt: "Equal parts conjuring, critique, and memorial, the passages in The Return to Viet Nam portray the entrenched hauntings of not only war but also cultural, national, and racial purity, as Hidle inverts shame with an elegiac rawness that holds a truthful mirror to the cultural value of racial purity within Vietnamese societies at home and abroad. By poetically portraying her own multiple transgressions of not belonging both 'here' and 'there, ' Hidle's book reveals lifelong commingling of guilt and pride, deprivation and abundance, sacredness and profanity, loyalty and disobedience, rejection and rootedness." -Julie Thi Underhill, multidisciplinary scholar-artist-activist, author of "Ghosts," "Corner Shore," and "The Gift Horse of War"