Publisher’s write-up:
‘The
long-buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently
shattered the barriers to women covering war.
Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil
photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual,
arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared
purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time
when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine,
and Kate challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the
belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war
reportage for generations.
In You Don’t
Belong Here, Elizabeth Becker uses these women’s work and lives to illuminate
the Vietnam War from the 1965 American buildup, the expansion into Cambodia,
and the American defeat and its aftermath. Arriving herself in the last years
of the war, Becker writes as a historian and a witness of the times.
What emerges
is an unforgettable story of three journalists forging their place in a land of
men, often at great personal sacrifice. Deeply reported and filled with
personal letters, interviews, and profound insight, You Don’t Belong Here fills
a void in the history of women and of war.’
You Don’t Belong
Here is a book written recalling the stories of three women – who were photo
journalists during the Vietnam war – the first to break the glass ceiling of
women being involved in wartime photography. The book is written by a woman war
photographer herself, Elizabeth Becker.
It starts with
the story of Catherine Leroy, a
young woman from France who is not happy with her circumstances in a Parisian
suburb and is looking to move abroad – to London, but later takes a one way
ticket to Saigon (present day Ho Chi Minh city), to be a wartime photographer
and goes through her experiences – when it comes to how she was seen as a woman
and the constraints she had (such as, the fact that male journalists having
Vietnamese partners were not seen as an issue but the other way round was). The
next is on Frances Fitzgerald, daughter of US ambassador to Laos and is from
the elite circles of US political sphere – whose trip to Laos decided to make
her take this career. The last is on the Australian woman, Kate Webb, who also
comes to Vietnam as a photographer and ends up in captivity of the Viet Cong.
This book details the story very well and we learn a lot – on the
background of these women, their motivations and also the political situation
around the Vietnam war. The author takes a lot of effort to inform the reader
about the war, and the situation that was surrounding it, including touching upon
less known aspects such as the bombardment of Cambodia and its impact. The
struggles of Catherine was also well documented – but at the same time, the
author also pointed out the few allies they had in this journey who helped them
face these odds. Equally interesting was Kate Webb recalling her experiences,
where there was a point where she was declared ‘dead’ by the Australian media
and we are unaware to what extent hers was a case of Stockholm syndrome or a
case of gaining understanding the other perspective that changed her views.
It was also interesting to know the steps that these women had to take
to break these adverse circumstances – such as Catherine had to show herself as
pro-war, pro-military action, more so than the average American conservative to
be accepted in the area.
Having said that, much as I would not want to comment on the life choices
of individuals and indeed, took a great step in opening up career avenues for women
in the west, I also could not help but see how here were western women, who
were bored of lives in their own countries and decided to make a career out of
the misery and suffering of people far away from where they were. I might have
viewed it differently had they been well informed of Vietnam, its politics, and
its history and hence were passionate about it; which made them make this
journey, but instead – they learnt all on the go.
Moreover, I understand that the book is about ‘women not belonging’ in photo
journalism during a war and these women defying the odds; however, the author went
a lot deeper than that, in explaining the war and the politics surrounding it
(very well, if I may say so). In that case, to negate the earlier criticism, I
would have like it if there was also the story of a Vietnamese or a Cambodian
journalist who was trying to bring to light images from this war.
The last, I understood during the epilogue that the author herself is a famous
photo journalist and if one of the few to have interviewed Pol Pot in Cambodia,
post which she witnessed a traumatic incident which resulted in the murder of
one of her colleagues in her hotel in Cambodia. So, adding her own story in
addition to these three women could have also been an interesting choice.
On the whole, I would say that this was a very interesting book, and
there was a lot for me to learn – about these women and their struggles in this
field, the situation in Vietnam and its surroundings and the experience of
someone in captivity with the Viet Cong. On that note, I had a good reading experience
and I would award the book a rating of seven on ten.
Rating – 7/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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