Seeking Quan Am: A Dual Memoir of War and Vietnam
By: Susan R. Dixon, Mark M. Smith / Narrated By: Susan R. Dixon, Kevin Basl
Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
… I Want My Hours Back … Where on gosh’s green earth did Susan R. Dixon leave her Soul…?!?
One of the most basic tenets of doing End of Life Doula work is to Meet People Where They Are… With No Judgment. So jeeeez, I sooo tried to hold space for who author Susan R. Dixon is/was, and wondered MOST mightily how on earth I was going to write a non-judgmental review for Seeking Quan Am, especially when m’ Knee Jerked strenuously with disgust within, like, oh say, the 3rd freaking minute.
Let’s, before I spew venom which’ll be sooo terrible of me as a Doula In Training, consider the intended audience for this book.
Uhm, if you’re a veteran, do NOT expect compassion here. At least not from Dixon. You probably will be able to relate to some of what Mark M. Smith dealt with, but this is enTIREly how an anti-war person experiences/views combatants, judges their actions during war, assesses/finds grossly morally-lacking their thoughts and choices during the heat of battle. Oh, and also how a person enTIREly dismisses brain development in order to keep on believing what she most fervently and unswervingly believes.
I’m kinda with her on a few things such as: War is HELL on civilians caught in the crossfire, and that we should only go to war when we’ve got one HELLuva good reason (And NOT by cooked up “intelligence”—I know, boooo me, but there you are). Now, I’m pretty sure Dixon is squarely anti-war at all costs; and if she does indeed think there miiiiight be occasions where it’s justified, she doesn’t mention any. Further, her thoughts on just HOW those youngsters engage in kill-or-be-killed activities? Uhm, she doesn’t note that those youngsters are in such situations at all.
And I say youngsters twice because dude! co-author Mark M. Smith was a teenager when he went over! Of COURSE he wanted excitement; of COURSE he thought it’d be thrilling. Dixon cuts him no slack on that, just being confused and judgmental and all pissy when he trusts her with his writing, and she reads what his memories are. As things go along, as she continues reading, as they do the whole Publisher’s Summary: TWO Trips To Vietnam, she judges him for feeling no shame or remorse, purposefully digging at him and Huzzah-ing to the high heavens when others show him: His actions hurt people.
This is where I point out “youngster” again as the brain is still forming in a person’s teens. He was a KID: Constant trauma, violence, fear, adrenaline, choices to kill-or-be-killed SHAPE the brain, inform conduct, shape how a person accesses and processes emotions, so PLEASE give him some consideration. She gets sooo pissed off when he shows a pic of him posing with a skull on his rifle or something, and he has the “nerve” to have a “smug” look in the photo, pleased that other YOUNGSTERS dubbed him “The Carolina Vulture”. When she passes the photo to their Vietnamese tour guide and he grimaces, SHE gets smug cuz it dawns on him that others might view his act amiss. She goes to great lengths to dismiss what preceded this event: That nobody wanted to burrow into a large gravesite for boobytraps (Something that was QUITE de rigueur and usually hailed an ambush…). Then she feels such a savage glee when Mark mumbles that they buried the skull again right after the site was deemed all clear.
I soooo understand. I saw it all on TV m’self when I m’self had a brain forming. It was ghastly, and it was confusing. And even at the time I felt horrible about the people whose homes were being set on fire with lighters. Their animals? Slaughtered. Family members? Some killed. The numbers? Millions of Vietnamese dead. And later? Agent Orange and what THAT did to the country, is STILL doing to it.
But to not even TRY to see where Mark was coming from just felt deplorable to me, and when she’s in Vietnam and she portrays herself as on her knees, washing the feet of Vietnamese peasants and anointing them with oil? Gee, what image do you think she’s going for THERE?!
Do I have to go on? Do I have to address how her narration is particularly fraught and derisive? Do I have to address how narrator Kevin Basl delivers (Ya wanna hear about really “fraught”?!) Mark’s memories of combat, or being elbow-deep in blood and guts in a near-monotone? How when Mark has just a moment when his mind just kinda sorta Goes There, and he remembers all the KIDS he saw shredded into bloody messes, and he can’t help but cry, and somehow Basl the Narrator stays robotic, and Dixon the Human somehow doesn’t even acknowledge that maybe warfare and constant death bring grief?
Deeeeep breath in; channel my Inner Doula… Meet Her Where She Is… Dixon comes from a place where she is particularly empathic towards those who suffered in Vietnam, the Vietnamese. She feels great shame when she goes back, and the tour group visits Sites of Need and Want, a washer/dryer, or a cow, is donated, and then the Americans use the smiles for a photo-op. She truly feels the trauma of these people, and she truly wishes to, personally, make amends for the great harm that her country did to them.
And she should’ve left it at that.
Cuz she doesn’t think to say anything about those photo-ops, just smiles as the shutter clicks away. And she doesn’t say anything about her country…
But my GOD does she have a LOT to say to poor Mark, and that? I find reprehensible…
And note to Dixon? If you meet a Vietnam veteran, maybe using a walker to just get his mail, just get through his day? If you can’t feel any empathy for HIM? Then for the love of all that is good and holy and forgiving: Do NOT say anything at all.
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