My father was a soldier in the Vietnam War when I was a baby. He told stories of his chopper crashing in a hot zone, his helmet getting grazed by a bullet, his good friend dying in an early morning ambush. My father, mother, and I went to Vietnam to see all the places he had been. We traveled from Ho Chi Minh City up the central coast and into the Central Highlands. Our main guide’s father had been sent to re-education camp but our local guide in the Central Highlands was Viet Cong. He showed us fox holes where Vietnamese took cover from bombings. Then he took us to his friend’s cafe with a lush garden where we sat on benches and talked like old friends.
Vietnam
Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoirs Black Elephants (Bison Books, 2011) and Walking A&P (Mascot Books, 2018) and the chapbooks This Woman I Thought I’d Be (Finishing Line Press, 2012) and Vietnam Made Me Who I Am (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in nonfiction in 2012. Excerpts were honored as notable essays in The Best American Essays in 2010 and 2005. Her full poetry collection was longlisted for the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award in 2021 and was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry in 2007. Her work has appeared in Epiphany, Guernica, Lumina, North Dakota Quarterly, Permafrost, RiverSedge, and elsewhere. She has taught writing at New York University and New York Writers Workshop.