The Girl in the Picture: The Remarkable Story of Vietnam's Most Famous Casualty

The Girl in the Picture: The Remarkable Story of Vietnam's Most Famous Casualty, written by Canada-based writer Denise Chong, is a great piece of non-fiction. The book tells the story of Kim Phuc, who was severely burned by napalm as she ran naked and screaming from her destroyed village in Vietnam and into the eye of history. She was only nine years old on that day, June 8, 1972. But that picture of hers, which clearly captures her outstretched, burnt arms and the scream of pain lingering on her lips, haunted a whole generation of Americans and helped turn America's public opinion against the Vietnam War. Today, that picture is still considered by the world as one of the most important images of the 20th century.

Wars are cruel. However, an even crueler fact is that instead of those who start the wars and actively participate in them, it is often the ordinary people, the innocent civilians, who suffer most from the consequences of wars. Kim grew up experiencing extreme physical, emotional and psychological trauma. She was constantly tortured by nightmares, in which she was repeatedly burned by napalm and her screams were heard by no one. But Kim eventually learned to love and forget, and to begin a new and meaningful life in Canada.

The Girl in the Picture is an important book, not only because it tells a remarkable story of how Kim came to terms with her fate and to forgive those who played a harmful hand in it. It is also because its author, Chong, has done a great job documenting and analyzing the political, economic and social events both in Indochina and in the United States that had contributed to the beginning and ending of the Vietnam War.

Chong calmly records Kim's journey as the girl and her family struggled through poverty. Many pages are devoted to explaining Kim's refusal to be manipulated by Vietnam's Communist regime as a weapon against the West, and her fight to be recognized by the world as an independent human being instead of simply a vulnerable victim of war. It is with a sensitive but unbiased narrating voice that Chong conducted numerous interviews during the composition of this book. The result, as one reviewer suggests, "is a magnificent confirmation of Tagore's great words, 'Adversity is big but man is bigger than adversity'".

Denise Chong's The Girl in the Picture: The Remarkable Story of Vietnam's Most Famous Casualty was first published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd. in 2000.

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Copyright: Christine Sun, Taiwan.com.au Portal, 2005. All rights are reserved.