The Remarkable Story of Vietnam's Most Famous Casualty
On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran naked and screaming from her burning village and into the eye of history. The haunting image of her fragile and burned body became an emblem of the civilian casualty, a moment of agony frozen for the West to recoil from and reconsider.
This book is the story of how that photograph came to be - but also of what happened to Kim Phuc after it was taken. As her family fought a losing battle to support itself in a physically and economically devastated country, now plagued with corruption, Kim embarked on an attempt to achieve a normal life. Kim's recovery and rehabilitation was long and arduous, and after many years of manipulation by Vietnamese officials, she was finally able to escape by seeking asylum in Canada, where she now lives.
A meditation on the aftermath of celebrity, and the power of the media image, this book delves beneath the horrific image of the girl in the picture to reveal the poignant story of an innocent casualty of war, and her heroic triumph of her survival and forgiveness of others.
