The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War
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- Synopsis
- On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from a misplaced air strike over her village in South Vietnam and into the eye of history. Her photograph--one of the most unforgettable images of the twentieth century--was seen around the world and helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War. This book is the story of how that photograph came to be--and the story of what happened to that girl after the blink of the camera shutter. After years in rehabilitation, and a long battle to survive in a devasted and corrupt country, Kim Phuc defected to the West in 1992 and is now a UNESCO spokesperson. "The Girl in the Picture" is at once a riveting personal story about a victim of war and of propaganda and a groundbreaking social history that offers a rare view of everyday life in Vietnam during and after the war. Nick Ut of the Associated Press took the haunting photo, which turned a terrified girl into a living symbol of the Vietnam War's horror when a South Vietnamese air force napalm strike went wrong. Award-winning Canadian biographer Denise Chong (The Concubine's Children) has written an authorized biography of Kim Phuc that is both a rare look at the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese point-of-view and one of the only books to describe everyday life in the aftermath of this war. The book unearths the lingering effects on all the war's participants and unblinkingly presents graphic depictions of the horrors that the war visited on innocent civilians. Although her parents, once relatively prosperous South Vietnamese peasants, were reduced to dire poverty when the state took over her mother's noodle shop, Kim was allowed to receive further medical treatment in Germany. But amidst these tragedies Chong finds a redemptive story in Phuc's life, which, thankfully, has a happy ending. Through the heroic efforts of Nick Ut, British correspondent Christopher Wain and others, the girl was taken to an excellent hospital in Saigon. Through 17 operations (in 24 months), an international team of doctors saved her life. Later, she fled Vietnam and lives today with her husband in Canada with their two sons. Though in near constant pain and still with the deep scarring of entire back, Phuc works as an unpaid goodwill ambassador for UNESCO and runs her own foundation for child victims of war. Chong captures Kim as a complex woman of powerful religious faith: "It was the fire of bombs that burned my body. It was the skill of doctors that mended my skin. But it took the power of God's love to heal my heart. Finalist for the 2000 Governor General's Award. By the author of the award-winning memoir "The Concubine's Children".
- Copyright:
- 1999
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 382 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780140280210
- Publisher:
- Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Date of Addition:
- 01/23/11
- Copyrighted By:
- Denise Chong
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Military, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs
- Submitted By:
- Rick Costa
- Proofread By:
- Catherine O'Toole
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
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