The Saigon Sisters

In recording the histories and putting them to print, Patricia Norland succeeded in capturing an important slice of history and the very personal story of exemplary women.

* Foreign Service Journal *

To put it mildly, these stories are gripping.

* Green Left *

This is a well-written, incredibly valuable book. Highly recommended.

* Choice *

[Norland] gives [these women] a platform to talk directly to the reader[,] thereby revealing the women's double and even multiple lives, full of contradiction and inner conflicts caused by the complexity and long duration of the war years. The Saigon Sisters is a substantial collection of thoughts, memories, moments of pain and joy in individual lives.

* Asian Review of Books *

The literature on the war in Vietnam includes hundreds of first-person sources by men on all sides in the conflict, but fewer than a dozen books about women are in print. Thus this collection of oral history interviews by Norland (formerly, US Department of State) is an important contribution.

* Choice *

It is quite easy, and motivating as well, to imagine a course on Vietnamese history after World War II that includes only work by women and with The Saigon Sisters as a pivotal work connecting them all. As Norland's powerful oral-history recounting of the lives of this 'band of sisters' demonstrates, friendship and independence required vigilance but endured despite decades of war.

* Pacific Affairs *

To read a good group biography is to come out with a different level of appreciation for the ways, trivial and tremendous, that humans influence one another... Norland tells the stories of nine [Vietnamese women] who chose to stay, and who, after spending their childhoods secretly dreaming of Vietnamese independence, found surprising ways into the resistance.

* The Atlantic *