Ecological Imaginations, the Vietnam War, and Vietnamese American Literature

In the distance, through a scene of withered trees (which had been defoliated now by chemicals as well as bombs), I could see that Bai Gian had not been rebuilt, and that a few remaining temples, pagodas, and wayside shrines—even my old school-house and the guardsmen's awful prison—had been wiped away by the hand of war. Beautiful tropical forests had been turned into a bomb-cratered desert. It was as if the American giant, who had for so long been taunted and annoyed by the Viet Cong ants, had finally come to stamp its feet.