•  
  •  
 

Abstract

A long time ago in a place far away, a place called Vietnam, I had to come to grips with the monkey. The monkey was not war. As a colored woman born in the forties, the monkey was life. Vietnam just forced me to look at it. Maybe it allowed me the opportunity. Who knows. Looking back at it has been almost impossible. You see, growing up my grandmother would always say when I wanted to explain something, "Baby-darling, will talking about something that has already happened change it?" Of course it wouldn't change anything. Any fool knows that. "Well," she would say, "Then it's not worth talking about. You're just wasting time." So on I would go, never getting a chance to understand what had happened or trying to figure out if I could have changed it. War was like that. You see, it didn't matter if I talked about it, nothing would change anyway. It had already happened. It was my belief that talking about it would only take up the time that I need to work on other things.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.