Book Review: Girl in the Picture

The Girl in the Picture, by Denise Chong

For many of us of a certain age, it is the defining picture of the Vietnam War: several children, followed by soldiers, fleeing down a road. In the middle, a young girl, naked, her arms held out from her body, crying, with a look of absolute fear and pain on her face, running with them.

Her name was Kim Phuc, and we now know that she and her family were running from a napalm attack on her village in South Vietnam. Soldiers from South Vietnam, at the behest of the United States, had dropped napalm during an attack meant to clear out Viet Cong guerrillas. But the napalm missed its target in the nearby woods, and instead landed directly on the village full of women and children.

This is the story of the aftermath: How the war affected people in Kim's village, and in greater Vietnam. How the war -- and specifically the attack on Kim's body -- affected her life.

Kim and her family suffered. She suffered from the injuries of the burning, from the literal and metaphorical scars it left. (As described in the book, napalm is a horrible tool of war. It's a burning gel that sticks to the body, and attempts to pull it off just spread it around.) Meanwhile, her family's successful eating establishment was destroyed by taxes and fees the new communist regime in Hanoi enacted, and by the incompetence and greed of corrupt local officials who demand more and more.

Meanwhile, the government began to use Kim's story as propaganda. It forced her to interrupt her studies -- she at one point dreamed of becoming a doctor to help people -- and otherwise exerted control over her life and her decisions. And while the government sent Kim abroad -- to Russia, to East Germany, to Cuba -- it always kept a close eye on her.

Written 10 years ago, this remains is a wonderful, insightful book. It introduces us to another culture, and explains the differences between people from the north and those from the south. It's a great help to Americans, who, says author Chong, all-too-often see Vietnam not as a country, but as a war.