My Tour in Viet Nam: A Burlesque Shocker

New York: Vantage Press. Very Good in Good dj. (c.1970). First Edition. Hardcover. [worn at spine ends and corners, light spotting/foxing to top edge of text block; jacket moderately soiled, browned and lightly stained along spine, a couple of tiny stains on front panel, bits of paper loss at spine ends]. Very scarce vanity press-issued account of the Vietnam War, by "one of the few female foreign correspondents allowed into this embattled country" -- and quite possibly the only one of that group who was African-American. A native of Kansas City, the author had been a nurse, a teacher, a real estate broker, and "the first and only black bondswoman in the State of Minnesota," and had even dabbled in politics by running for mayor of Minneapolis in 1969. According to the book's introduction, the author "amazed her family and friends" in 1967 when she apparently just up and decided she was going to go to Vietnam and see for herself what this war was all about. (She states that she went as a "volunteer nurse and accredited correspondent," but she never identifies what news organization she might have been affiliated with.) Her observations and experiences while in country left her deeply disturbed about this "particularly dirty war," and in her book she takes a staunch position against the war. She is particularly scathing in her comments about certain other members of the press corps (although she doesn't name names) and about the management of the war in general, and particuarly insightful, as one might expect, about the circumstances of black soldiers. All in all, she provides a unique perspective -- definitely not that of the "mainstream media," as nobody was calling it in those days -- but her book seems to have received little or not press attention at the time. (Not that this is surprising for a vanity press issue.) The book is fairly uncommon, with an OCLC search turning up just ten institutional copies. .