Book Review: The Other Side of Grief: The Home Front and the Aftermath in American Narratives of the Vietnam War, by Maureen Ryan

The Other Side of Grief is a survey of what must be hundreds of narratives, mainly novels and memoirs, relating to the Vietnam War - every type of narrative that I can imagine, except for stories of combat. Author Maureen Ryan takes the soldier's often repeated, familiar refrain of "you had to be there [or you can't understand]" and replies, "we were all there." 

Ryan's thesis is that we tend to privilege the stories of men, and therefore those of combat vets (who, we assume, are particularly manly men), but that, if we wish to understand the American "lingering fascination" with the Vietnam War, we need to consider everyone's stories - those of the siblings, wives, and children left at home, those of the war protesters who dodged "home front artillery" in Chicago and on college campuses, those of Vietnamese refugees, as well as the "aftermath narratives" of returning vets, and POW memoirs.

In The Other Side of Grief each of these categories gets its own chapter, in which Ryan discusses the themes touched on by the narratives in that category. Those themes illuminate interesting historical, social, political, or psychological points. For example, in the chapter "Years of Darkness: Narratives by and about American Prisoners of the Vietnam War," Ryan dissects the texts in question to lay bare the political appropriation of the POW issue - in careful counterpoint to women's liberation in the context of the POW wives. In "The Other Side of Grief: American Women Writers and the Vietnam War," Ryan examines the unique psychology of the sisters of soldiers.

Although I thought I knew a lot about the Vietnam War, the '60s, '70s, and '80s, I learned quite a bit from this book. I believe that the sheer number of texts that Ryan examines allows her to make certain assertions with authority. One of the most important from my point of view is her statement that "the women understand, as the men do not, that the Vietnam War happened to an entire generation and lingered long after the last bullet was fired." Clearly, many of us have had that thought before. But in this case Ryan shows how it is grounded in numerous texts, written by many different men and women, all seeming to indicate that same pattern. 

Privileging one type of story unquestionably leads to misunderstandings of reality. This should be a rallying cry. We need the full spectrum of perspectives not only to unravel our fascination with the Vietnam War, but also to prevent future wars.