StringTown Press Books

Ho Chi Minh's Motorbike

A Vietnam Travel Journal

By Sibyl James

Price: $14.00

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Cover Art by Huong Hong Cam,
Country girl #4, (oil on canvas, 80X100 cm), 1997,
held in the private collection of Ron Burman

Copyright © 2005 by Sybil James

HO CHI MINH'S MOTORBIKE by Sybil James, nonfiction, 2005, perfect bound, paper, 134 pages, 6X8, $14.00, ISBN 0971896763

Ho Chi Minh’s Motorbike immerses the reader in the world of Vietnam through the eyes of an American tourist. Sibyl James examines contemporary Vietnam as well as the ghosts of the past; her insights on such issues as the nature of war, imperialism, and the role of women are informed by her experiences as a war protester, as a teacher in China, and as a woman. The language is vivid, colorful, and clean, and the descriptions build gradually, as if the reader is on the journey with the narrator and is slowly reaching the point of saturation of both culture and landscape: the puppet theatres, the market places, the city streets crowded with motorbikes, the lush greenery, and the watery landscape. “It is a personal journey,” Sibyl James writes, and it is the story of the “remembered collision of the U.S. with Vietnam.” James believes that the more we understand about other cultures, “the less likely we are to be in conflict with them.”

About the Author
Sibyl James is the author of three books of poetry, The White Junk of Love, Again, Vallarta Street, and The Bakery of the Three Whores. She has also published The Adventures of Stout Mama, fiction, and In China with Harpo and Karl, nonfiction. James has a Ph. D. in English and twenty-five years of experience teaching K-12, college students, and senior citizens, including schools in China, Mexico, and as a Fulbright professor in Tunisia and Côte d'Ivoire. She has served for four years on the Seattle Arts Commission and chaired the Arts in Education Program. Her work has been published in over 100 journals internationally, and she has received an Artist Trust Award as well awards from the arts commissions in Seattle, King County and Washington State.

Ho Chi Mihn’s Motorbike is supported by generous grants from the Artist Trust fund, the Cultural Development Authority of King County, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.