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North Việt Nam
The Republic of Việt Nam, the southern half of partitioned Việt Nam, which was based in Sài Gòn from 1954 until its defeat during the Vietnam War in 1975. Run by a French and United States-allied capitalist government, it was supposed to reunite with the North two years after its creation in 1956, but its leader Ngô Đình Diệm (who had recently deposed the state’s earlier leader, the emperor Bảo Đại) refused to honor the Geneva Accords that set the conditions for Việt Nam’s independence. Eventually, this inconsistent political situation and military campaigns by the Việt Cộng set into motion the Vietnam War, which the South lost on “Liberation Day” in April, 1975. Bui’s parents lived in South Việt Nam and started their family throughout this time, although neither of them was originally from there.
South Việt Nam Quotes in The Best We Could Do
The The Best We Could Do quotes below are all either spoken by South Việt Nam or refer to South Việt Nam. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4
Quotes
I had never, before researching the background of my father’s stories, imagined that these horrible events were connected to my family history…
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Chapter 5
Quotes
“But the month I spent in the Communist North had a very different effect on me.”
“It was true that the Việt Minh had won independence by winning the WAR.”
“But the new society I dreamed of didn’t EXIST.”
“Here there was no freedom of thought, no allowance for individuality.”
“I was fourteen. Sài Gòn represented a whole new world of possibility to me.”
“Who would choose a world that had become so narrow, so poor and gray?”
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Chapter 7
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The American version of this story is one of South Vietnamese cowardice, corruption, and ineptitude…
…South Vietnamese soldiers abandoning their uniforms in the street…
…Americans crying at their wasted efforts to save a country not worth saving.
But Communist forces entered Sài Gòn without a fight, and no blood was shed.
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My father explained to me that there was a word for our kind—
NGỤY
It meant “false, lying, deceitful”—but it could be applied to anyone in the South.
It meant constant monitoring, distrust, and the ever-present feeling that our family could, at any moment, be separated, our safety jeopardized.
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South Việt Nam Term Timeline in The Best We Could Do
The timeline below shows where the term South Việt Nam appears in The Best We Could Do. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Preface
...Việt Minh, the anti-French and anti-Japanese independence movement led byHồ Chí Minh, and the capitalist South was run by the Western-backed, antidemocratic leader Ngô Đình Diệm.
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In the late 1950s, the Việt Cộng began military activities in the South. Starting in 1955, the United States gradually escalated its own military involvement, first providing support...
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Chapter 5: Either, Or
...political situation at this time, in 1954. Việt Nam is provisionally divided between North and South for two years, until the planned elections. There is “a MASS EXODUS” from North to...
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...poverty and conformity of the North, Bố wants to return to Sài Gòn in the South. Plus, the land reforms mean his grandmother will lose her property—and the whole family could...
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Chapter 6: The Chessboard
South Việt Nam became a “police state,” and the police interrogated Bố. A general even threatened...
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...stressed while they were busy being parents, ultimately giving birth to Thi “three months before South Việt Nam lost the war.”
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Chapter 7: Heroes and Losers
...and worry that “Sài Gòn would become a sea of BLOOD.” When they hear of South Việt Nam’s surrender, Bố runs outside and is relieved to see that no one has...
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Chapter 10: Ebb and Flow
...Mẹ—a “weighty, serious, more elegant word” from the North—whereas her children called her by the Southern “‘Má,’ a jolly, bright sound we insisted fit her better.” But Thi wonders how she...
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