Making Two Vietnams
War and Youth Identities, 1965–1975

North and South Vietnamese youths had very different experiences growing up during the Vietnamese War. Their story gives a unique perspective on the conflict.

Olga Dror (Author)

9781108455244, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2020

340 pages, 14 b/w illus. 7 tables
23 x 15 x 2.2 cm, 0.49 kg

'… Making Two Vietnams is an extraordinary work … [Dror's] energetic and imaginative research has resulted in a book that deserves to be widely read.' Patricia Pelley, Cross-Currents

North and South Vietnamese youths had very different experiences of growing up during the Vietnamese War. The book gives a unique perspective on the conflict through the prism of adult-youth relations. By studying these relations, including educational systems, social organizations, and texts created by and for children during the war, Olga Dror analyzes how the two societies dealt with their wartime experience and strove to shape their futures. She examines the socialization and politicization of Vietnamese children and teenagers, contrasting the North's highly centralized agenda of indoctrination with the South, which had no such policy, and explores the results of these varied approaches. By considering the influence of Western culture on the youth of the South and of socialist culture on the youth of the North, we learn how the youth cultures of both Vietnams diverged from their prewar paths and from each other.

1. Educational systems of the DRV and the RVN
2. Social organizations in the DRV and the RVN
3. Publication venues and policies in the DRV and the RVN and prevalent currents in publications
4. Educational and social narratives through texts in the DRV
5. Educational and social narratives through texts in the RVN
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Vietnam War [HBWS2], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], Asian history [HBJF]