Overview

During the Vietnam War the United States government waged a massive, secret air war in neighbouring Laos. Fred Branfman, an educational advisor living in Laos at the time, interviewed over 1,000 Laotian survivors. Shocked by what he heard and saw, he urged them to record their experiences in essays, poems, and pictures. Voices from the Plain of Jars was the result of that effort. When first published in 1972, this book was instrumental in exposing the bombing. In this expanded edition, Branfman follows the story forward in time, describing the hardships that Laotians faced after the war when they returned to find their farm fields littered with cluster munitions- explosives that continue to maim and kill today.

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9780299292249

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[In Laos, ] where a right-wing government installed by the CIA faced a rebellion, one of the most beautiful areas in the world, the Plain of Jars, was being destroyed by bombing. This was not reported by the government or the press, but an American who lived in Laos, Fred Branfman, who told the story in his book Voices from the Plain of Jars. --Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

In this small, shattering book we hear--as we are so rarely able to do--the voices of Asian peasants describing what we can barely begin to imagine. --Gloria Emerson, New York Review of Books

Author Information

Fred Branfman is a journalist and peace activist who lives in Santa Barbara, California, and in Budapest.

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