Women

Natalie Patricia Atkin, "Protest and Liberation: War, Peace and Women's Empowerment, 1967-1981."  Ph.D. dissertation, History, Wayne State University, 1999.  265 pp.  DA 9954182.

Jim Belshaw, "Doris 'Lucki' Allen in Vietnam." VVA Veteran, 19:2/3 (February/March 1999), pp. 19, 40. A brief profile of an African-American enlisted woman who spent three years (October 1967 to September 1970) in U.S. Army intelligence in Vietnam. Her story is told at slightly greater length in Keith Walker, ed., A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty Six American Women who Served in Vietnam (Novato: Presidio, 1985), pp. 245-260.

Bao tang phu nu Nam bo, Phu nu Sai Gon-Gia Dinh va Nam bo trong cuoc tong tien cong va noi day Xua Mau Than 1968. TP Ho Chi Minh: Tong hop Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh, 2018. 327 pp.

Jerri Bell and Tracy Crow, eds., It's My Country Too: Women's Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan. Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books (University of Nebraska Press), 2017. xxxi, 330 pp. The Vietnam War is pp. 176-208.

Amanda Boczar, "Uneasy Allies: The Americanization of Sexual Policies in South Vietnam," Journal of American East Asian Relations, 22:3 (2015), pp. 187-220.

Amanda Boczar, An American Brothel: Sex and Diplomacy During the Vietnam War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. ix, 274 pp.

Rena Briand, No Tears to Flow: Woman at War. Melbourne and London: Heinemann, 1969. xiv, 202 pp. Briand, a Canadian citizen, arrived in Saigon in 1965 with her husband, who abandoned her there. She found work as a free-lance photographer, and then, after the PIO at An Khe got her accreditation cancelled (she thinks over a story about U.S. forces having impoverished a Montagnard village by killing all its elephants), she got a job for a while with PA&E. She did a bit of journalistic work in Cambodia and Thailand, failed to get into North Vietnam, had a run-in with security at Udorn, and finally headed for Australia in 1967.

Sherry Buchanan, On The Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy. London: Asia Ink, 2021. 278 pp.

Deborah A. Butler, American Women Writers on Vietnam: Unheard Voices: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1990. xvi, 312 pp.

Robert C. Cottrell, "Sex and Saigon: Gendered Perspectives on the Vietnam War," Journal of American East Asian Relations, 22:3 (2015), pp. 179-86.

Sandra Lockney Davis, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? Seoul to Saigon. Gulf Breeze, Florida: East Bay Publishers, 2011. Davis was in U.S. Army Special Services, I believe as a librarian, in Vietnam 1967-68.

Marjorie Doughty, Memoirs of an Insignificant Dragon. Allegro Press, 1999. 353 pp. Write Words, 2006. Doughty, the wife of a civilian AID official, lived in Vietnam in the early 1960s, with her young son, until the evacuation of American dependents; then she moved to Thailand.

Jean Dunlavy, "A Band of Sisters: Vietnam Women Veterans' Organization for Rights and Recognition, 1965-1995." Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 2009. xi, 268 pp. AAT 3345723.

Margaret Ellen, "Witness to War: The War Stories of Women Vietnam Veterans." Ed.D. dissertation, (Counseling?), University of Massachusetts, 1998. 253 pp. DA 9823764. War stories of five women (apparently including the author): three nurses, one Red Cross worker, and one civilian who worked in refugee camps.

Noonie Fortin, Memories of Maggie: Martha Raye: A Legend Spanning Three Wars. San Antonio: LangMark Publishing, 1995. xx, 339 pp. Martha Raye, who may have been the most beloved of the entertainters who visited troops (especially Special Forces, in her case) in Vietnam.

Noonie Fortin, Potpourri of War. San Antonio: LangMark Publishing, 1998. Deals with American women in Vietnam, both civilian and military, as well as assorted other issues (hence the title).

Jessica M. Frazier, "Collaborative Efforts to End the War in Viet Nam: The Interactions of Women Strike for Peace, the Vietnamese Women's Union, and the Women's Union of Liberation, 1965-1968," Peace & Change 37:3 (July 2012), pp. 339-65.

Jessica M. Frazier, Women's Antiwar Diplomacy during the Vietnam War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 236 pp.

Jessica M. Frazier, "Making Connections in Viet Nam: U.S. Women's Transnational Activism and the Meanings of Race, Gender, and Revolution." Ph.D. dissertation, SUNY at Binghamton, 2013. DA 3590861.

Marilyn Genz, 20,000 Men and Me. Carpentersville, IL: Crossroads Communications, 1988. vi, 163 pp. Marilyn Genz was a TWA stewardess. In 1969, Major General Elvy Roberts invited her to make a tour, visiting all the units of the 1st Cavalry Division.

Olga Gruhzit-Hoyt, A Time Remembered: American Women in the Vietnam War. Novato: Presidio, 1999. 272 pp. Both nurses and a variety of others. The story of a nurse being killed, on p. 152, is untrue. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

François Guillemot, Des Vietnamiennes dans la guerre civile: l'autre moitié de la guerre, 1945-1975. Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2014. 243 pp. On the Communist side, a lot of the focus is on the Assault Youth (Thanh nien xung phong).

Kimberly Laina Heikkila, "G.I. Gender: Vietnam-era Women Veterans and United States Citizenship." Ph.D. dissertation, American Studies, University of Minnesota, 2001. 389 pp. AAT 3047634. The full text is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

JOann Puffer Kotcher, Donut Dolly: An American Red Cross Girl's War in Vietnam. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2011. xviii, 361 pp. Kotcher was in Vietnam May 1966 to May 1967.

Jean Debelle Lamensdorf, Write Home for Me: A Red Cross Woman in Vietnam. Milsons Point, New South Wales: Random House Australia, 2006. xviii, 302 pp. Lamensorf was in Vietnam for about one year, 1967-68, providing non-medical services to wounded Australian and New Zealand troops.

Berneice Lanier, A Rooster at Tet.  Huntington, West Virginia: University Editions, 1998.  219 pp.  Lanier was a civilian logistics specialist, working at Long Binh.  She was there during the Tet Offensive.

Donna A. Lowery, Women Vietnam Veterans: Our Untold Stories. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2015. Oral history. Lowery herself was in Vietnam as a WAC for 19 months, beginning in 1967.

Kathryn Marshall, In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966-75. Boston: Little Brown, 1987. vii, 270 pp.

Siobhan McHugh, Minefields & Miniskirts : Australian Women and the Vietnam War. Sydney, Australia: Doubleday, 1993.

Betty Merrell and Priscilla Tunnell, eds., Stories that Won't Go Away: Women in Vietnam, 1959-1975. Birmingham, AL: New Hope, 1995. 205 pp. An oral history of Southern Baptist missionary women. Most of the stories are very short--they average a bit under two pages--and there is more human interest than usable information about the war.

Virginia Morris and Clive Hills, Giao Lien: Women of the Communist Underground. Spellmount Publishers, 2010. 256 pp. History Press, 2012. 224 pp.

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Lam, Phu nu quan doi trong su nghiep khang chien chong My cuu nuoc. Hanoi: NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 2001. 173 pp.

Jan Smark Nilsson, Walking the Tightrope. Trinity Beach, Queensland, Australia: Terebra, 2012. 232 pp. Nilsson went to Saigon in 1961 as the wife of a correspondent for Reuters. The book contains considerable information about Pham Xuan An, a Communist agent who was working for Reuters in the early 1960s.

Patricia D. Norland, The Saigon Sisters: Previleged Women in the Resistance. Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press (an imprint of Cornell University Press), 2020. xxiv, 253 pp. Oral histories of nine women from prosperous families who goe good educations at the Lycée Marie Curie in Saigon in the late 1940s, eight of whom went into the maquis in 1950.

Nu chien se lai xe Truong Son / Women Driving the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Hanoi: NXB The gioi, 2012. 175 pp., illustrated. I have not seen this, but I believe it is bilingual in Vietnamese and English.

Julie Annette Riggs Osborn, "War, Women, Vietnam: The Mobilization of Female Images, 1954–1978." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Washington, 2013. 333 pp. UMI no. 3588825.

Charlotte Ann Power, "A Quiet Revolution: American Women and the Vietnam War, 1964-1975." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Memphis, 2001. 203 pp. Deals with both military and civilian women in Vietnam. The full text is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

Sophie Quinn-Judge, "Sex, Lies and Liberation: Women in the Early Vietnamese Communist Movement," in South East Asian Research, November 2001.

Iris Mary Roser, Ba Rose: My Years in Vietnam, 1968-1971. Sydney, Australia: Pan, 1991. xiii, 288 pp. Iris Roser, an Australian, arrived in Vietnam in February 1968. She worked for most of that year in a Project Concern hospital at Dam Pao, about 40 km from Dalat. From late 1968 to late 1971 she worked for CORDS, supervising social welfare expenditures first for Gia Dinh Province and later for all of III Corps. An extremely informative account, as well as being a good read.

Tanya L. Roth, Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 320 pp.

Nany Smoyer, Donot Dollies in Vietnam: Baby-Blue Dresses & OD Green. Chopper Books, 2017. 250 pp. "Donut dollies" served in the Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas program of the Red Cross. Smoyer was there April 1967 to April 1968.

Ron Steinman, Women in Vietnam: The Oral History.  TV Books, 2000.  272 pp.

Heather Marie Stur, "Dragon Ladies, Gentle Warriors, and Girls Next Door: Gender and Ideas that Shaped the Vietnam War." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2008. viii, 391 pp.

Heather Marie Stur, Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xiii, 263 pp.

Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. 310 pp.

Sandra C. Taylor, Vietnamese Women at War: Fighting for Ho Chi Minh and the Revolution. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. x, 170 pp.

Sandra C. Taylor, "Long-Haired women, short-haired spies: Gender, espionage, and America's war in Vietnam", Intelligence and National Security 13:2 (1998), pp. 61-70.

William S. Turley, "Women in the Communist Revolution in Vietnam", Asian Survey 12:9 (September 1972), pp. 793-805. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text directly or go through the JSTOR Asian Survey browse page.

Karen Gottschang Turner with Phan Thanh Hao, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam. New York: Wiley, 1998. xvi, 224 pp.

Lynda Van Devanter and Joan A. Furey, eds., Visions of War, Dreams of Peace: Writings of Women in the Vietnam War. New York: Warner Books, 1991.

Keith Walker, A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty Six American Women who Served in Vietnam. Novato: Presidio, 1985. x, 350 pp. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

J. Holley Watts, Who Knew? Reflections on Vietnam. Legacy Group, 2004. 104 pp. Watts, age 21, was with the "donut dollies" of the Red Cross, 1966-67.

Gina Marie Weaver, "Ideologies of Forgetting: American Erasure of Women's Sexual Trauma in the Vietnam War." Ph.D. dissertation, Rice University, 2006. vii, 314 pp. AAT 3256763. Argues that rapes of Vietnamese women by American soldiers occurred more often than has been reflected in American images of the war.

Gina Marie Weaver, Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in the Vietnam War. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. xvii, 198 pp.

Karen Zeinert, The Valiant Women of the Vietnam War. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook, 2000. 96 pp. Intended for juvenile readers.

Female Medical Personnel

Elizabeth M. Norman, Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses who Served in Vietnam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. x, 211 pp. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

Mary Reynolds Powell, A World of Hurt: Between Innocence and Arrogance in Vietnam.  Cleveland: Greenleaf, 2000.  xv, 171 pp.  Powell was a nurse at the 24th Evac, Long Binh, 1970-71.

Mary Sue Rosenberger, Harmless as Doves: Witnessing for Peace in Vietnam. Eglin, IL: Brethren Press, 1988. 188 pp. By a volunteer nurse who worked in a hospital in Nha Trang from early 1966 to late 1967.

Patricia Rushton, ed., Vietnam War Nurses: Personal Accounts of 18 Americans. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. 196 pp.

Patricia Rushton, ed., Vietnam War Nurses at the Ready: Seventeen Personal Accounts. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2023. 250 pp. This is not a revised edition of the preceding item; it is a separate work.

Elisabeth Sevier, with Robert W. Sevier, edited by Nancy J. Vesta, War Without a Front: The Memoirs of a French Army Nurse in Vietnam. Edmond, OK: Wesley Publishing Co., 1999. xx, 170 pp. Sevier served in Indochina from 1950 to 1953.

Hilary Smith, R.N., Lighting Candles: Hospital Memories of Vietnam's Montagnards. Barre, Vermont: Northlight Studio Press, 1988. ix, 109 pp. Hilary Smith went to work as a nurse at the Minh-Quy Hospital (run by Dr. Pat Smith), in Kontum, in 1971. Most of this deals with her experiences up to in April 1972, when Kontum seemed about to fall to PAVN forces in the Easter Offensive. Only a few pages at the end discuss her return later in 1972, after the threat had eased.

Winnie Smith, American Daughter Gone to War: On the Front Lines with an Army Nurse in Vietnam. New York: Morrow, 1992. 352 pp. Smith served Sept. 1966 to Sept. 1967 in military hospitals in Saigon and Long Binh.

Heather Marie Stur, Beyond Combat: Women and Genender in the Vietnam War Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 263 pp.

Eeva Susanna Taipale, "Soldiers Without Guns: Creating the imagery of women soldiers of the Vietnam War era, 1962--1993.." Ph.D. dissertation, History, SUNY at Stony Brook, 2004. 432 pp. AAT 3148925. The full text is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

Susan Terry, House of Love: Life in a Vietnamese Hospital. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1967; London: Newnes, 1967. 248 pp. Sister Terry (the title denotes a senior nurse--she was not a Catholic nun) was a member of an Australian medical team sent to work in a hospital in Long Xuyen in 1964.

Truong Thi Thu, et al., Lich su phu nu Nam Bo khang chien. Hanoi: Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2006. 526 pp.

Diane L. Trembly, Petticoat Medic in Vietnam: Adventures of a Woman Doctor. New York: Vantage, 1976.

Lynda Van Devanter, Home Before Morning (New York: Warner, 1984). Lynda Van Devanter was a U.S. Army nurse whose tour in Vietnam, June 1969 to June 1970, was served mostly at the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku province. A lot of heavy fighting, casualties. The account seems very good, but the resemblance to "M*A*S*H" is so strong as to inspire suspicions.

Vo So et al., Nu chien si Truong Son anh hung. Hanoi: NXB Thanh nien, 2017. 391 pp.

Kara Dixon Vuic, Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. 304 pp. Based on the author's Ph.D. dissertation, History, Indiana University, 2006.

Kara Dixon Vuic, "'Officer. Nurse. Woman.:' Army Nurse Corps Recruitment for the Vietnam War," Nursing History Review 14 (2006), pp. 111-59.

James E. Wise, Jr. and Scott Baron, Women at War: World War II to Iraqi Freedom. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006. 234 pp.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013. 352 pp.

There is a collection of about half a dozen oral histories of male nurses who served in Vietnam in the oral history collection at the main library of the University of North Texas, in Denton, Texas. They are not very long, but someone interested in gender issues might find some useful material.

Female Journalists

Tad Bartimus, Denby Fawcett, Jurate Kazickas, Edith Lederer, Ann Bryan Mariano, Anne Morrissy Merick, Laura Palmer, Kate Webb, and Tracy Wood, War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters who Covered Vietnam. New York: Random House, 2002. xxvii, 291 pp. Introduction by Gloria Emerson. I have seen this listed as having been edited by Jurate Kazickas, but the book simply lists the authors in alphabetical order, with none singled out as editor. There is a lot of emphasis on the last years of the war.

Elizabeth Becker, You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War. New York: PublicAffairs (Hachette), 2021. How Kate Webb, Catherine Leroy, and Frances FitzGerald covered the Second Indochina War. The author had herself spent two years covering Indochina in the late stages of the war.

Dickey Chapelle, What's a Woman Doing Here? (A Reporter Reports on Herself). New York: Morrow, 1962. (See also biography by Ostroff, below.)

Virginia Elwood-Akers, Women War Correspondents in the Vietnam War, 1961-1975. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1988. ix, 274 pp.

Gloria A. Emerson, Winners & Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses and Ruins from a Long War. New York: Random House, 1977. x, 406 pp. Reprinted with a new preface by Frances Fitzgerald: New York: Norton, 2014. xxvi, 580 pp. This is journalism about the war, not a memoir. Emerson had spent some time in vietnam in the 1950s, so she had some background when she was sent there by the New York Times in 1970.

Oriana Fallaci, Nothing, and So Be It: A Personal Search for Meaning in War. New York: Doubleday, 1972.

Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. vi, 314 pp. By a hawkish war correspondent.

Joyce Hoffmann, On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo (Perseus), 2008. 439 pp.

Kathleen Kearney Keeshen, "Marguerite Higgins: Journalist, 1920-1966." Ph.D. dissertation, Journalism, University of Maryland, 1983. 472 pp. AAT 8412020. Higgins, an experienced war correspondent, sided with the U.S. government, against reporters critical of the way the war was being run, in 1963.

Beverly Deepe Keever, Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. xvii, 337 pp. Extremely interesting, by a reporter who spent enough time in Vietnam to get some serious knowledge of the war.

Roberta Ostroff, Fire in the Wind: The Life of Dickey Chapelle. New York: Ballantine, 1992. xvii, 408 pp. Chapelle was a war correspondent from WWII until she was killed in Vietnam in November 1965. Her coverage of Vietnam in 1961 and 1962 was very hawkish.

Michèle Ray, The Two Shores of Hell (trans. by Elisabeth Abbott). New York: McKay, 1968. xviii, 217 pp. (Original: Des deux rives de l'enfer. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1967.) By a French journalist who went to Vietnam in 1966, observed various American units, and was then captured by Communist forces in January 1967 on Road 1 in Binh Dinh.

Philippa Schuyler, Good Men Die. New York: Twin Circle, 1969. 256 pp. The book was published posthumously; Schuyler, an African American journalist, was killed in a helicopter crash in vietnam in 1967.

Liz Trotta, Fighting for Air: In the Trenches with Television News. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991. Ms. Trotta, of NBC, became in 1968 the first woman network TV correspondent assigned to Vietnam. She was and is pro-war, and criticizes journalists who took an anti-war attitude.

Kate Webb, On the Other Side: 23 Days with the Viet Cong. New York: Quadrangle, 1972. Account by a UPI reporter who was captured by the Viet Cong in Cambodia, 1971.

Marion Williams, My Tour in Vietnam: A Burlesque Shocker. New York: Vantage, 1970. By a black female journalist.

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Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 , 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised June 22, 2023.