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    Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram
    Unavailable
    Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram
    Unavailable
    Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram
    Audiobook5 hours

    Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

    Written by Dang Thuy Tram

    Narrated by Kim Mai Guest

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war's ceaseless fury.

    The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram's death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, "Don't burn this one. . . . It has fire in it already." Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years. In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram's elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation's previous generations.

    Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is an extraordinary document that narrates one woman's personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the most dire of circumstances-told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 11, 2007
    ISBN9780739354490
    Unavailable
    Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram

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    Reviews for Last Night I Dreamed of Peace

    4/5

    48 ratings7 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I've always avoided the Vietnam War as a topic (my Dad's a history buff who almost wound up serving in Vietnam, and it always seemed wiser to avoid the conversation). Learned a lot from this, especially, I think, since I read it after Stockdale's Vietnam Experience). Totally different perspective. I don't think we'd have gotten along if we were somehow to have met, me being a bourgeois North American and her being a, well, admittedly also bourgeois, but dedicated Communist. And she was: there's mention, in the earlier parts of the diary, about her concern about how the local Communist party is being run, but never any hint of treason, or of any doubt about Communism in general or Ho Chi Minh in particular. I admire her idealism, and can't help but think that the time she was writing was more or less when Martin Luther King was saying that someone who has not yet found a cause for which they'd be willing to die has not yet started to live. She had her cause, and she lived, breathed & died for it. Part of me envies her.
    • 3/5
      Dang Thuy Tram was a North Vietnamese doctor during the Vietnamese war. She kept diaries during the war. Thuy was killed in the conflict, and her diary was discovered by someone serving in American military intelligence. According to protocol, he should have destroyed the diary after determining that it had no intelligence value, but instead he kept it. 30 years later, a copy of the diary was returned to Thuy's mother in Vietnam, where it was published. It was also translated into English for publication in the U.S.The diary wasn't what I expected to read. That's no fault of the author's. She didn't keep the diary for my benefit, but for her own. I had hoped it would contain more about her medical work and the conditions and challenges she faced. However, the emphasis of her diary entries is mainly personal. She has a lot to say about her relationships, mostly with young men she granted the status of younger brothers. In the earlier entries, she talks about her frustration that she had not yet been accepted as a Communist Party member. She is bothered by perceived criticism and jealousy. She is also troubled by a rift in her romance with a man she refers to as “M.”Although she was 25 when she began this diary in 1968, Thuy came across to me as somewhat naive. I'm not sure her feelings for at least one of the young men she called “brother” were as platonic as she tried to convince herself they were. I'm not sure her younger brothers' feelings for her were as platonic as she thought they were, either. I think this could have been cause for the jealousy and criticism she experienced.I think I would have gleaned more from this book if I knew more about the Vietnam War before I read it. The extensive footnotes helped some, but not enough. I was a child during the war, and I've never wanted to revisit the memories I have of the television news reels of the combat, the images of flag-draped coffins returning to the U.S., and images of angry protestors. One of my uncles served in Vietnam, and I remember praying for his safety every night at bedtime. It was a little startling to read of Thuy's hatred of the enemy/Americans. I know there are U.S. veterans who felt that way about the North Vietnamese, but they're not among my family and close friends.I think this book is best suited for readers with prior knowledge of the causes of the war and the military operations. This review is based on an advance reading copy loaned to me by a friend.
    • 4/5
      Like The Diary of Ann Frank the back-story of this book is perhaps as interesting as the book itself. Thuy was a young North Vietnamese doctor who went to the front (walking the Ho Chi Minh trail for three months to get there) in 1966. She served in Quang Ngai province, where My Lai is located.When the diary begins in April, 1968 (previous volumes were lost or destroyed) she was 25 years old and the chief physician at a field clinic that served civilians as well as Viet Cong soldiers. By August, 1967 the district where the hospital was located had become a "free-fire zone" where:"...people lived in caves or in tunnels that also served as bunkers for the guerillas. Many of the hamlets had been burned or bulldozed to deny the guerillas shelter; the fields were pockmarked with craters and the nearby forests were defoliated." (From the introduction written by Frances Fitzgerald).Thuy's diary ends abruptly in June 1970, when she was killed by American troops. The diaries were found by an American soldier whose task it was to go through captured documents to see if there was anything of military significance. His interpreter told him not to burn the diary: "It has fire in it already." Against all regulations, the American soldier kept the diary and brought it back home after the war. 35 years later, the soldier found Thuy's surviving family in Hanoi, and returned the diaries to her mother and sisters. The diaries were published in North Vietnam and became a huge bestseller.The diaries themselves are a combination of the mundane and horrific, naivite and wisdom, innocence and cynicism. While Thuy shouldered huge responsibilities and a leadership role, she was also like Ann Frank, still a young woman with dreams and plans for the future. While her descriptions of the war are not graphic, the war is ever-present--the thunder of the bombers and the scramble to the shelters, interactions with the villagers and feeling their pain when their homes are destroyed, the babies, children and other civilians who were wounded and who she tried to save, the barreness of the exfoliated forests.It was easy for Thuy to demonize the Americans and those Vietnamese soldiers fighting on behalf of South Vietnam, and some may find this aspect of the book jarring. I nevertheless highly recommend the book. Although it's sometimes may seem a little boring or childish it is always compelling. I would also note that it made a very interesting read in conjunction with Novel Without a Name. I had a bunch of quotes from the book I was going to include here, but unfortunately I have long since returned the book to the library.
    • 5/5
      This is the diary of Dang Thuy Tram, a 27 year old North Vietnamese doctor who volunteered to work in the heart of the war in 1968. She was shot to death by U.S. soldiers in 1970. One of the of soldiers secretly kept her diary, a small note book, and 35 years later returned it to her family in Vietnam. She wrote in her diary almost daily. The diary is addressed to herself and bears her soul with beautifully written descriptions of the country and people she loved. Thuy reveals in her diary that she became very attached to the people she worked with, many died during the time of her writing. Her idealism seems to have caused misunderstandings in her relationships. She aspired to overcome the stigma of her bourgeois upbringing and become a communist party member. She was finally accepted and recognized for the work she accomplished as a war surgeon. She worked under hostile enemy fire and earth shaking bombings, often hiding in underground shelters. The clinics she worked in were frequently destroyed and often forced to move to safer locations. Cherished memories of her family and the enduring fighting spirit of the soldiers gave her hope for the success of the war and ultimate unification and independence of Vietnam. This commitment to the cause kept her spirit alive but deep in her heart she knew the odds were against her; she would never witness the end of the war or see her family in North Vietnam again.
    • 4/5
      Much like poetry, I find that I can only read a little of this book at a time. The journal of Dang Thuy Tram is both beautiful and heart wrenching. For only seriously interested in Vietnam or the Vietnam War, this book is an invaluable primary resource. However, without a specific "plot," so to speak, to move it forward it will have limited appeal. Still, I think it deserved a place on public library shelves.
    • 5/5
      Dang Thuy Tram was a female North Vietnamese doctor who served in a clinic in South Vietnam during the conflict. This is an English translation of a diary she kept. She met her death in June 1970 at the hands of American soldiers. Some of the soldiers kept her diary and eventually got it back in the hands of her family. It was published in Vietnam. This is its first "official" English translation.It is interesting to read Thuy's thoughts and feelings as she treats the wounded and experiences the proximity of war. Thuy's observations are almost poetic at times in the imagery she uses to record her feelings. Her dislike for the American "bandits" is frequently mentioned. It certainly presents a side of the Vietnamese conflict which is often overlooked. Thuy loses family, friends, and patients because of the war. One cannot help but sympathize with her plight as the war draws closer and closer to her clinic.
    • 5/5
      A touching account of a self-described "health-care revolutionist." Tram's diary bears her soul as she describes her longing for her beloved, her commitment to medicine and the love of her country. The book provides a point of view other than the American perspective.