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Paperback Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam Book

ISBN: 1558494421

ISBN13: 9781558494428

Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam

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Book Overview

In this powerful story collection-the first such work of fiction by a woman who served in Vietnam-Susan O'Neill offers a remarkable view of the war from a female perspective. All the nurses who served there had a common bond: to attend to the wounded. While men were sent to protect America's interests at any cost, nurses were trained to save the lives of anyone-soldier or citizen, ally or enemy-who was brought through the hospital doors. It was an important distinction in a place where killing was sometimes the only objective. And since they were so vastly outnumbered, women inevitably became objects of both reverence and sexual desire.

For American nurses in Vietnam, and the men among whom they worked and lived, a common defense against the steady onslaught of dead and dying, wounded and maimed, was a feigned indifference-the irony of the powerless. With the assistance of alcohol, drugs, and casual sex, "Don't mean nothing" became their mantra, a means of coping with the other war-the war against total mental breakdown.

Each or these tales offers new and profound insight into the ways the war in Vietnam forever changed the lives of everyone who served there.

Customer Reviews

3 customer ratings | 3 reviews

Rated 5 stars
Stories Too Good to Be Made Up

Susan O'Neill wrote this collection of stories long after her tour in Vietnam. The author served in Vietnam as a nurse from 1969-70. Since I met her at a book reading at the Library of Congress, I got the straight dope on this book.O'Neill decided to write a collection of stories similar to Tim O'Brien. It would be a collection of different stories that would reflect her tour, written chronologically. What is rather clever...

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Rated 5 stars
Goes right to the gut

Susan O'Neill does a masterful job of capturing the feelings we nurses worked hard to suppress in Vietnam. Like Tim O'Brien, she does it with pure poetry. It's the closest anyone has come to conveying the gut feeling of being at a hospital in-country.Thank you, Sue!

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Rated 5 stars
"Don't Mean Nothing" - A Wonderful Book

"Don't Mean Nothing" is a wonderful book. Susan O'Neill has a rare ability to bring the reader's heart to their throat just when she's lowered their defences with a good laugh. The book is full of laughter - and tears. There's the breathtaking "The Boy from Montana," a young nurse's first operating room experience, and the beautiful, moving "One Positive Thing," about a nurse's ambivalence over her unexpected, unwanted pregnancy...

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