An American Sin

By Frederick Su

"I killed because I was Asian fighting in an Asian war. How else could I prove I was American?" David Wong, the protagonist, asks. While on long-range patrol in Vietnam, he and his squad ran into an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0971120609
• ISBN13: 9780971120600
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Bytewrite
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Timely and Moving Multicultural Portrayal

An American Sin depicts the Vietnam War and its long term devastating effects on participants, but the novel is timely and highly relevant today. The streets of Hue in the 1960s could just as well be the streets of Bagdad or Fallujah in 2005. Many of the actions of our troops in Iraq will deeply affect the soldiers involved and the society to which they return for decades to come. The novel also illustrates many of the difficulties persons of Asian origin have had in striving to fit into American society. The book's protagonist of Chinese American descent, David Wong, laments to his therapist, "We Orientals are forever marked." Despite being third generation in the US, "I always have people ask me where I'm from or if I speak Chinese." Since the Vietnam War era, millions of additional persons of foreign ancestry have come to the United States, and like Wong, they and their children must cope with living here despite differences in physical appearance, ethnic origin, culture, and religion. In the Vietnam of An American Sin, David Wong commits a terrible act against native civilians, the guilt from which destroys his life for decades. The heinous deed is largely motivated by a desire to show he can be as "American" as any white Caucasian. For anyone who thinks racial discrimination in the United States in the last half the twentieth century was limited only to those of African, American Indian, and Hispanic descent, the book will be an eye opener. As a novelist myself (India Fortunes), I greatly admire Frederic Su's mastery of words. For example, in describing the high Utah desert, Su writes that "the nude, outstretched limbs of the trees conjured up images of doomed prisoners." Hospitals are places "where the oils of depression, injury, sickness, and death rise to the surface, contaminating the previously pure, uncluttered waters of one's life." In a depiction of a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., Su says, "And there it stands, the lowslung, black, polished granite embedded like an arrowhead into the heart of a nation." Even though the novel was written well before the second Iraq War, it's as if Frederick Su anticipated that the United States would again become mired in a mess in an inhospitable foreign land. The parallels, and the tragically unlearned or ignored lessons, are clear. Everyone should read An American Sin in part for a feel of the terrifying dangers troops face when they're sent into deadly combat situations, not only in rural settings, but also in urban streets. Of David Wong in Vietnam, Su writes,"For a combat infantryman, Death hovered over him in battle closer than any angel ever would." More and more, like the Wong of Su's novel, American soldiers and their allies are fighting in milieus where it is virtually impossible to tell the enemy from friendly civilians, and where it is necessary to make quick decisions involving life and death. These decisions can impact not only whether or not innocent na