Book Review

Tears Across the Mekong
by Marc Phillip Yablonka
Published by Figueroa Press
(April 4, 2016)
ISBN: 9780182202492
280 pages

By How Miller

In Tears Across the Mekong, Marc Yablonka masterfully brings us a history of Laos and the intense personal battles that many Laotians endured. From the marginalized Highlanders, largely the Hmong, and their wartime leader Vang Pao, to the lowlanders, their communist enemies, and their allies.

Marc tells us the historian’s viewpoint and then demonstrates it with compelling stories of the actual participants. You can’t help being captivated by the unfathomable ruthlessness produced by the communist doctrines as practiced in North Vietnam and the surrounding areas.

It shows the indomitable spirit of the Hmong, in particular, and how they bravely fought and then endured the brutal consequences of the communist takeover of Indochina in 1975 and far beyond. Pathet Lao hunt Hmong to this day, and they are still institutionally marginalized by their countrymen.

The book covers both allies and enemies, from the CIA, SF, Air America, USAID, and others, to Ho Chi Minh and his multi-decade struggle to wrest control from the French, Japanese, and Americans and ultimately subjugate its citizens with the all-encompassing communist doctrine.

There were NGOs, such as those run by religions and others, who helped tremendously.

So you can feel it as well as understand it, he presents the stories of families devastated by war, yearning for the safety of Thailand, and maybe emigration to freedom in places like Europe and the Americas. It is a tale of disappointments and hardship. In 1975, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fell to the communists. This was a time of revenge and transformation. Laos had its equivalent of the Vietnamese “reeducation camps.” They were deceptively called “the Seminar.” It was all a lie, and people were tortured, starved, and indoctrinated in the way of the totalitarian state. If you were lucky enough to survive for a number of years, you might be released. Many others escaped, a lot of whom were caught and killed.

Once free, Thailand beckoned, just across the river. After avoiding the Pathet Lao communist forces and finding scarce and illicit transportation across the wide and treacherous Mekong River, they needed to avoid or survive the same pirates that ruthlessly preyed upon the Vietnamese “boat people” on the open seas.

If one survived the crossing, there was the huge disappointment of finding that the Thai government was not welcoming, and if one was not arrested, then a long “incarceration” in a U.N. refugee camp awaited. Sometimes it took several years, in poor conditions, to apply for sponsorship to another country.

Fortunately, there were many who did make it, and Marc interviews some of them in California and elsewhere. He stays strongly connected to the Hmong community to this day, even writing articles for the Hmong Daily News.

If you want to know more about the “Secret War” in Laos and the people who endured it, this is an excellent place to start.

Next, Marc shares with us a portion of Tears Across the Mekong that will show you his enlightening and engaging style. You will find the excerpt at this link.