Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Wartime SarajevoRevised Edition

Book Description

When Zlata's Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian conflict, it became an international bestseller and was compared to The Diary of Anne Frank, both for the freshness of its voice and the grimness of the world it describes. It begins as the day-today record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovi´c becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighbor's cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book .......2007-05-25

Sheesh...this is the product of a child, not the work of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. It is an excellent diary, an excellent primary source and an excellent text for a better understanding of the Yugoslav wars. Yes...it does only tell one point of view - hers - it is her diary! Some readers are offended because of the comparison to Anne Frank; a comparison that Filipovic and others make in the book. The comparison is totally fair. Both are intelligent children caught up in situations they have no control over during wars of ethnic cleansing and extermination. It is a testament to Zlata that she can make the connection to Anne Frank...obviously the rest of the world couldn't. They (We) abandoned the Jews sixty years ago and abandoned hundreds of thousands of Croats/Bosniaks/Serbs to genocide forty years later. Zlata remembered Anne Frank's words...the world didn't.

Good read.......2007-05-07

I remember reading this book as a child and picked it up again as an adult. It was a quick read, but really showed how a child deals with war. It made me think of how children in Iraq are feeling right now. Very interesting.

It's a diary, not a book........2007-05-04

To the reader who wrote comment "we all had our delusional moments when we were teenagers"...you should be ashamed of yourself. This "delusional moment" was war and struggle for survival in besieged city of Sarajevo.
Why don't you try and write a book, and/or diary, sitting in a basement without food, water and electricity for four years. All that while granates and bombs are raining on your city. In the meantime, one by one, all of your neighbors and friends are gone six feet under...
How about that for delusional moment...

Zlata's Diary.......2007-04-20

Zlata's Diary is about a young girl's diary named Mimi during the war in her town of Sarajeavo. She writes of the hardships of being a war child. She tells of the changes of her world during the war such as her parents may have grown older one year but looked ten years older. She is constantly hearing of people being shot and wounded. And how might I know this? She was asked if she had a diary. And guess what she did and it was sent to be published. I think this book was over all pretty well written. I would recomend this book to you if you liked the book The Diary Of Anne Frank. So to find out what happens pick up Zlata's Diary.
-Christine Lanier

Zlata's Review.......2007-04-18

Taylor (Lanier Middle School)

Zlata's Dairy is the real life issue of how an eleven year old girl struggles to stay alive during a civil war in Sarajevo, (1991-93) but more importantly trying to cope with the pain friends and family leaving to escape the war. During the whole process she decides to keep a diary which then later becomes published in the years 1992 and 1993.

This book tells a story of family, friendship, and most of all courage. Though a war might be going on, Zlata Filipovic still manages to go to school. Zlata lives in an average sized apartment with her mother and father.

The life lesson in this book is that no matter how hard things get you will always have your family there with you. And that thing's in life will get though, but eventually they will get better. Also never dwell on the bad things, but the good.

I personally do not like this book. The fact that this is a diary is one of the reasons I don't like this book, it skips around and does not tell you everything that happens.It also repeats everything, so all you are reading is what you read before.I would recamend this book to all, even though I did not like it, does'n mean you don't.

Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity

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A Woman Navigating Multiple, Simultaneous Boundary Lines
Great Bio, not so Great Historical over view

Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520245288

Book Description

During World War II, Mom Chung's was the place to be in San Francisco. Soldiers, movie stars, and politicians gathered at her home to socialize, to show their dedication to the Allied cause, and to express their affection for Dr. Margaret Chung (1889-1959). The first known American-born Chinese female physician, Chung established one of the first Western medical clinics in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1920s. She also became a prominent celebrity and behind-the-scenes political broker during World War II. Chung gained national fame when she began "adopting" thousands of soldiers, sailors, and flyboys, including Ronald Reagan, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. A pioneer in both professional and political realms, Chung experimented in her personal life as well. She adopted masculine dress and had romantic relationships with other women, such as writer Elsa Gidlow and entertainer Sophie Tucker.
This is the first biography to explore Margaret Chung's remarkable and complex life. It brings alive the bohemian and queer social milieus of Hollywood and San Francisco as well as the wartime celebrity community Chung cultivated. Her life affords a rare glimpse into the possibilities of traversing racial, gender, and sexual boundaries of American society from the late Victorian era through the early Cold War period.

Customer Reviews:

A Woman Navigating Multiple, Simultaneous Boundary Lines.......2006-01-12

Dr. Wu astounds us by producing a work of biography that does something very rare in this age of standardized academic prose, she has produced an addictively readable volume. To tell the truth, even though I have lived in San Francisco for 25 years, I had never even heard of Mom Chung, but I guess if I lived here during World War II I would have been reading about her exploits every day.

One record after another, she smashed, despite the obvious disapproval of both the Chinese and white communities here. And then there's the gender thing. She adopted, as Dr. Yu shows us, a comically asexual pose, which made it humorous for hundreds of white men and women to call her "Mom," which would have implied that she had had sex when to look at her, and to survey her lack of marriage license, she had none. There's the secret!

The "fair-haired bastards" of the title were the war heroes, at first the pilots, then those who served in the Navy, then a bunch of "Kiwis" who Chung recognized for their work in the field supporting our men overseas. She attracted celebrities to her wherever she went, sort of like our own JT LeRoy in the present day. When she started out, she walked timidly, and it took a cunning and open-hearted woman like the poet Elsa Gidlow to see underneath the brim of her cloche and discover the Lesbian within. Gidlow's memoirs, from which Dr. Wu draws the story, reveal that Gidlow became Chung's patient pretty much to get that old countertransference going. And after a difficult operation, in which Gidlow nearly died, Chung finally admitted that she loved her.

Later on came an intense attachment to the "last of the red hot Mamas," Sophie Tucker. Chung destroyed Tucker's letters, but Tucker carefully preserved all of Chung's little love notes and tokens--thank Goodness, for otherwise we might never have guessed the lengths to which homophobia and sexual fear drove the love affair of these two celebrities deep underground. In a way it was a perfect pose. Chung nearly built Tucker her own shrine within her lavish apartment, so that whenever Tucker decided to visit San Francisco she would be pampered like a goddess. In one letter she hopes that Tucker wears a special nightgown, and "think of me as that nightgown," getting upclose and personal with the famous Tucker body. Sophie Tucker was then coasting on a formidable heterosexual reputation, having been married and divorced thrice by the time she got involved with Mom Chung. I read a whole biography of this notorious entertainer, and the name of Mom Chung never even made it to the index.

Thank the Lord for brave historians like Tzu-Chun Wu who no longer shy away from the uncomfortable truths about their subjects. How I wish that the bruited movie of Chung's life (starring Barbara Stanwyck in Chinese makeup) had really been made, in the long ago days of Mom Chung's celebrity!

Great Bio, not so Great Historical over view.......2005-11-25

Having had to read this book for a history class I wasn't sure about whether or not I would enjoy it. But once I got an understanding of whom Mom Chung was and her importance I really wanted to read the book. I'm glad I did because Chung's story is inspirational, being the first Chinese American Female Doctor. Also Chung was a lesbian (though not 100% proved one can infer this from the evidence.) At the beginning I was inspired by Chung's strength and guts, her breaking through barriers and fighting to be successful and true to herself.(Also managing to continue fighting after several rejections.) Though by the end of her life it seems as though she lost her spunk and drive and settles into the status quo image.

The author does a great job of explaining Chung's life and actually makes the ready feel her triumphs and loses. So from a biographical point of view this is a 5 star book. From the historical point of view it's not as good. She wanted to"...provide insight into the historical transformation of American norms regarding race, gender and sexuality over the course of her lifetime..." This might have to do with Chung being such a larger than life character it is easy to get lost in her and miss the general trends and changes that happened in her lifetime.

With that being said read the book!!!

Modern American Women: A Documentary History

Average customer rating:

good - but there are better anthologies

Modern American Women: A Documentary History
Susan Ware
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0072418206

Book Description

A collection of primary source documents for the American women's history course, 'Modern American Women: A Documentary History' focuses on events and developments involving women from 1890 to the present. New material includes documents on anti-lynching activism and Indian relocation, excerpts from 'The Vagina Monologues' by Eve Ensler, expanded chapters on 'Sexuality and the Body' and 'The State of the Movement for Women's Equality'. New part introductions provide historical context for and identify key themes that emerge from the documents in each of the book's three parts while headnotes, suggestions for further reading and photo essays supplement this already thorough and intimate look at women's history in the 20th century.

Customer Reviews:

good - but there are better anthologies.......2003-09-01

Susan Ware's documentary history of women in the 20th century has some great material, but very little of it is ground-breaking, and much of it is a rather narrow representation of the female experience. There are the ubiquitous documents and accounts of the Progressivism and the sufferage movement, the impact of the Great Depression and World War Two on the home, and the "birth" of feminism in the late 1950's and 1960's, through to material on the sexual revolution of the 80's. Frankly, I was a bit diasppointed.

As a history teacher, I am regularly appalled at the relative lack of attention that women in history are given. If one were to judge by the materials in this book, women have not had much influence in America. Obviliously this is not the case, hence my rating. Furthermore, women of color are not well represented, nor are the experiences of immigrants, rural women, and similar groups. Ware's anthology is primarily comprised of the experiences of white, urban women. A strength of the book are its 3 "photo essays", depicting the obstacles women faced in the workplace, at home, and in education.

Customer Reviews:

Provincial Lady shows her mettle.......2003-11-05

War has come to Britain, so the Provincial Lady decides to do her bit, and move to London to find a job to help with the war effort. Unfortunately, everyone else has the same idea, and rather than finding her offer eagerly embraced, she is reducing to trying every contact she has to try and get a position, only to end up volunteering at a canteen. Not to worry, for as usual her diary is written with the wit and verve we have come to expect from this series, and not only are we revisited by regular characters (the awful Lady B has not changed one bit) but also new ones.

Customer Reviews:

World War II Comes to Seattle, Detroit, and Baltimore.......2007-06-06

Does war affect the lives of the average citizen, not involved and not related to anyone in combat? The answer to that question, according to Karen Anderson, is "yes." This book concentrates on the experiences of female works living in Seattle, Detroit, and Baltimore during World War II. Anderson chose these three cities because they were boomtowns in different regions of the country that faced similar problems.

Anderson argues that traditional values and sex roles remained extremely strong during the war. The conflict, though, did bring some limited change in the lives of women workers. Job opportunities increased as men went off to war while demand increased, particularly for married women. Inequities in pay and work conditions shrank as well. These increased economic opportunities increased the standard of living that women enjoyed in these three cities. These changes took place because these women did not seem like radicals and could argue that their efforts to get out into the work placed serviced another traditional value--patriotism.

Anderson's research is deep and solid, and clearly supports her arguments. In the mark of a talented historian, she presents history as she finds, letting her subjects speak for themselves and avoids editorializing on or about these views. The problem is a detailed case study of three boomtowns is too narrow a study on which to make broad generalizations.

What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa (What Women Do in War Time)

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What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa (What Women Do in War Time)

Manufacturer: Zed Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Gender, Conflict, And Development

ASIN: 1856495388

Book Description

This is the first book to describe and analyze the experience of women in African civil wars. A mixture of reportage, testimony and scholarship, the book includes contributions from women in Chad, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa and Sudan. The political context of these conflicts is outlined in an introduction to each chapter. The book profiles women's responses to war, as combatants as well as victims, and describes the groups women organize in the aftermath. The first book to examine rape and other forms of gendered political violence in African civil wars, this extraordinary volume is also about women taking action for change.

Wartime Women: A Mass-Observation Anthology (Phoenix Press)

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Wartime Women: A Mass-Observation Anthology (Phoenix Press)

Manufacturer: Phoenix Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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We Are at War: The Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times
Our Hidden Lives: The Everyday Diaries of a Forgotten Britain, 1945-1948
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ASIN: 1842126172

Amazon.com

Too few Americans know about the fascinating Mass-Observation project initiated in England in 1937 (and coming to an end in the late 1940s) with the aim of documenting, without bias, the lives of ordinary people, typically through diary installments by volunteer contributors, and also through directives or questionnaires. Regular contributors included a Miss Pringle, aged 24, a teacher from Liverpool who had been responsible for helping to fit the schoolchildren with gas masks during the Munich crisis of 1938: "In the girls' department there were more cases of fright but the staff in both departments said how well-behaved and plucky the children had been. They also said how difficult it was to keep saying the same cheerful inanities and yet be fitting the children with equipment such as that. Some children thought that the gas was in the defense valve and said they could smell it. Actually it was the Izal used for disinfectant."

The Mass-Observation Archives are housed at the University of Sussex, and from these, editor Dorothy Sheridan has skillfully culled an engrossing selection of excerpts touching on women's attitudes and experiences during the war, including the class snobbery and racism that they unconsciously revealed. Although the project foundered after the war, giving way to commercially driven market research, the hundreds of thousands of pages of information (much still unread) generated by Mass-Observation are a priceless historical resource, as engaging as a stranger's diary or a letter left on the seat of a bus. --Regina Marler

Book Description

These fascinating essays provide unique and unrivaled insight into women’s minds and experiences during World War Two. Set up in 1937, the Mass-Observation organization aimed to record everyday life in Britain during that difficult period. From its astonishingly rich archives comes an anthology that asks whether the war actually liberated women and provided the opportunity that many expected. The extracts include research reports, letters, diaries, and detailed questionnaires, and come from an enormous range of contributors, from a fish-and-chip shop employee in Birmingham to a 17-year-old schoolgirl.

“Irresistible reading.”—Sunday Times

“A list of treasures here presented could continue almost indefinitely...a wonderful book...”—Times Literary Supplement

The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage

Average customer rating:

Excellent!
Great reading
Very touching
The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage

The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage
Clara Kelly
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375506217
Release Date: 2002-04-09

Book Description

“ The Flamboya Tree is a fascinating story that will leave the reader informed about a missing piece of the World War II experience, and in awe of one family’s survival.”
—Elizabeth M. Norman, author of We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese

“It is a well-known fact that war, any war, is senseless and degrading. When innocent people are brought into that war because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, it becomes incomprehensible. Java, 1942, was such a place and time, and we were those innocent people.”

Fifty years after the end of World War II, Clara Olink Kelly sat down to write a memoir that is both a fierce and enduring testament to a mother’s courage and a poignant record of an often overlooked chapter of the war.

As the fighting in the Pacific spread, four-year-old Clara Olink and her family found their tranquil, pampered lives on the beautiful island of Java torn apart by the invasion of Japanese troops. Clara’s father was taken away, forced to work on the Burma railroad. For Clara, her mother, and her two brothers, the younger one only six weeks old, an insistent knock on the door ended all hope of escaping internment in a concentration camp. For nearly four years, they endured starvation, filth-ridden living conditions, sickness, and the danger of violence from their prison guards. Clara credits her mother with their survival: Even in the most perilous of situations, Clara’s mother never compromised her beliefs, never admitted defeat, and never lost her courage. Her resilience sustained her three children through their frightening years in the camp.

Told through the eyes of a young Clara, who was eight at the end of her family’s ordeal, The Flamboya Tree portrays her mother’s tenacity, the power of hope and humor, and the buoyancy of a child’s spirit. A painting of a flamboya tree—a treasured possession of the family’s former life—miraculously survived the surprise searches by the often brutal Japanese soldiers and every last-minute flight. Just as her mother carried this painting through the years of imprisonment and the life that followed, so Clara carries her mother’s unvanquished spirit through all of her experiences and into the reader’s heart.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent!.......2006-11-04

I loved this book. It tells a story of courage, bravery, and family. It vividly captures an aspect of WWII that (sadly) is unknown by most people. My grandmother was also a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp in Indonesia and gave birth to my dad while in the camp. They are both gone now and this book helped fill in so many of the details of their story. Thank you Clara Kelly for telling your story, and telling it well.

Great reading.......2002-09-03

...It's awesome! I am so thankful to Ms. Kelly for sharing her experience. My Grandmother was also a prisoner of the Japanese in Indonesia during WWII. She had 2 babies (my dad, 6 months, & uncle, 1.5 years). I have heard 'pieces' of my Grandmothers story, but she has never been able to speak of it all. Now I know why. This book is truely a favorite of mine and always will be. Thank you Ms. Kelly. God Bless.

Very touching.......2002-07-03

The Flamboya Tree, by Clara Olink Kelly, was very touching.
This is a part of history that people should know about. We know about Japan invading Pearl Harbor,and other places, but what we don't know is the people who became effected by the war.
Clara tells this story so well, she makes you feel like you are there seeing all the tragic events yourself.
This is one book that I would highly recommend to everyone, I think we can learn a great deal from it and have a better understanding of war itself.

The Flamboya Tree: Memories of a Mother's Wartime Courage.......2002-04-15

We were bowled over by this book! Clara Kelly presents vivid and heart rending images of the heroic acts of her mother to save her children from the devastating conditions in a Japanese concentration camp during WWII. This tribute to her mother also reveals the tenacity of the author and her older brother under unbelievably inhumane conditions. We will read it again.

Average customer rating:

A story with real meaning
a simple story that packs a complex wallop
Did you ever see a dream walking?
As Always, Jack : A Wartime Love Story
Captures the heart, one letter at a time

As Always, Jack: A Wartime Love Story
Emma Sweeney
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0316738719

Book Description

The discovery of a cache of letters-written near the end of World War II by a young Navy pilot from Texas to the California girl with whom he had fallen crazy in love-becomes a grown daughter's introduction to the man who died before she was born, the father she never knew. - Unique in its poignant details, yet universal in its depiction of the passions and fears of wartime, As Always, Jack is the ultimate love story of America's 'greatest generation.'

Customer Reviews:

A story with real meaning.......2007-01-10

I purchased this book for a friend of mine whose husband was also named Jack Sweeney. She is also his widow and the mother of his five sons. With so many similarities I couldn't resist getting this for her. After the book arrived I had time to glance through it myself and found myself reading it from cover to cover! It puts you back in time.
CL Pratt

a simple story that packs a complex wallop.......2006-07-13

Sometimes I crave a simple, old-fashioned book. With nice people I'd like to meet. With only one plot, so I don't have to remember who's who in the cast. And with a moral that makes me feel good to be alive.

Not an easy book to find.

So I was happy to be alerted to the simple goodness of a short --- 179-page --- book of letters. The author of the book is Emma Sweeney, who is, of all things, a literary agent. The author of the letters is Jack Sweeney, the father she never knew.

The 45 letters tell of Jack's courtship of Beebe Mathewson. He is "Episcopalian, Democrat, Texan, Irish, bat right-handed, throw right-handed, detest cauliflower and sweet potatoes, and took an oath when I was five years old to devote my life to making blondes happy." Beebe is a blonde, from Coronado, California. They met shortly after the end of World War II, just 11 days before the Navy ships Jack off to Hawaii.

What we know at the beginning of the book: Beebe and Jack will marry. They will have four sons. A decade later, when Jack is a Navy pilot stationed in Bermuda, he will fly off one day and disappear. His plane will never be found. Months later, Beebe will give birth to one more child --- Emma.

It is one thing to know your father as a dim memory. It is quite another never to know him at all, to wonder what he was like, to be haunted by the possibility that he was never aware he was going to have a daughter. Emma Sweeney lived with those questions for decades. Then her mother died --- and in the back of a drawer, Emma found the letters her father wrote during their first separation.

These are letters of courtship, unlike any others collected from military men who have died. Jack starts slow and shy and carefully ironic: "I've never seen a more beautiful sight than you sitting across that table in candlelight, surrounded by filet mignons and profiteroles. Why couldn't I have met you when you were young?" (Beebe was then 23.) He is encouraged by her response: "This letter of yours was the biggest thing that's happened in my life since I left the USA." (Sadly, Beebe's letters have been lost.) He starts to let her into his life: golf, cards, reading, work, movies, silly jokes. And we, in turn, start to imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end of these letters --- you cannot help but think that this is a damn nice guy.

Within five months, he's closing hard: "I was brought up by the same kind of people you were, Beebe --- people who believe that when two people are married, they're the same as one person, and everybody else is on the outside." Well, if that isn't laying it on the line. Reading that, did your heart pound? Mine did.

The letters pile up, then stop abruptly --- for on the next page is a wedding announcement. There was no time for invitations; the wedding was held just three weeks after Jack's return from Hawaii. Because they knew. They just did. And Beebe and Jack were right; they were happy together. Right up to that moment in 1956 when he died.

Emma reads through the letters, and does some digging, and finds out one fact that her mother had never revealed to her. It will make you cry --- sudden, hot, brief tears. And you'll cry again when you read Jack's "last letter", written just a few days before his death. Which is just as it should be. A love story with a sad ending, and then a new chapter with a little girl....that's classic material.

I read such stylish, sophisticated, brilliant books. I stretch to understand them, to be worthy of them. And here is this slim volume, so simple, so tender. The point couldn't be more obvious. And yet it too is a stretch. Maybe a bigger one. Maybe a much bigger one.

Did you ever see a dream walking?.......2006-05-16

Did you ever wish you could meet the perfect man, the kind of man who has a sense of humour, who is intelligent, who talks about his feelings, and who writes you the kind of love letters that not only make you feel gooier than a marshmallow but also restore your faith in all mankind? Well, Jack IS that man! As I read his letters, I couldn't help but fall wholeheartedly in love with him. In fact, I don't think any woman could read this and not fall in love with Jack. He's even dreamier than a year's worth of the R.E.M. stage of sleep.

Jack should have been a writer, if only he'd lived long enough. He had the gift of the gab in spades. His letters, written off the cuff, are better than the writing you find in books that writers have spent years refining and rewriting.

But most of all, Jack is a true romantic. Seriously, I think this is about the best love story I have ever read. If you have a soft spot in your heart for true romance, if you like nothing more than a love story, then all I can say is READ THIS BOOK! And the best thing about it is, Jack's not fictitious. He really lived. Knowing that there really are men like this in the world, who aren't just invented by some writer of fiction, will really gladden your heart, just as it did mine.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is definitely in my list of top ten books of all time.

As Always, Jack : A Wartime Love Story.......2006-03-13

The book i chose to read was "As always Jack" by Emma Sweeney". The book was reprinted not so long ago in April 2003. Written in the 1940's.
There are not many characters in the book, just Jack and Beebe and their daughter. This book is mostly written in letter form by Jack who is a 26 year old navy pilot. After about only two weeks of being together their relationship gets stronger and the eventually fall in love.

The theme of the book is a middle aged women ( daughter of Beebe and Jack) discovers her father past and relationship with her
dead mother. Its a very sad and sympathetic novel. Also it leaves you feeling curious. To me it was curious because you never find out what ever happen to Jack. After his plane being reported as missing and him being lost in the Bermuda triangle his wife assumes he is dead. But no one really knows how he died, for example if he drowned or died of hunger. There was a little bit of foreshadowing also. Such as when Jack wrote a letter saying that if he passed away during his journey to never forget who he was and that is all he wanted..To be remembered. To me this was foreshadowing because in reality he did pass away but at least Beebe new what he wanted after he had passed away.

My favorite character is Jack. He is miles away from Beebe but still keeps in touch with her by written to her continuously. He can be an inspiration or role model for middle age men, for his caring and loving even thought he won't be able to see his loved ones within months. It made me feel so sad reading those letters because he would inform to Beatrice that he has reached a different country and what he did their and who he met. But Beebe only wrote to him a few letters and to me that is not fair, because he took time to write those letters and she only replied to about 5 of them.

Their daughter never even got to meet her father or even get a chance to see what he looked like. There's was a small picture
she had but his face was so blurry in the picture she couldn't see her resemblance to him.
My favorite part of the book was when she finally found out that her father new she was going to be born and at least had a thought of her and how she would grow up to be. This brought a smile to my face because the daughter was always worried that her father didn't even know she existed or was going to exist. So now she didn't feel lost anymore she knew what her past was.
I strongly do recommend this novel because it puts you in an uncomfortable place you don't want to be in but it also lets you know how it was so many years ago and how it is not to grow up with a father and not even have a clue to who he was.

Captures the heart, one letter at a time.......2005-08-09

Wow! I just finished reading this book and I can't even begin to describe how touching a beatiful this story is. What makes it even better is that it is all true. Even though you read mostly from Jack Sweeney's letters, you learn about both Jack, and Beebe in them. His letters made me laugh and makes you feel the same angst that he was feeling at not being able to be where his sweetheart is. The most incredible was the last letter of the book. It truly makes me believe, as it did with the author's mother, that the good Lord did indeed provide a way for Jack to say his last words as well as provide comfort to his family. This story is inspiring and shows what pure love is like as well as the more innocent and sweet times of the 1940s and 50s. I must admit that I keep thinking of the author and wishing that she, too, had the chance to know this man who sounds like a wonderful husband and father.

Forbidden Family: A Wartime Memoir of the Philippines, 1941-1945 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)

Average customer rating:

Great Read
Love triumphs.

Forbidden Family: A Wartime Memoir of the Philippines, 1941-1945 (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)
Margaret Sams
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Written just five years after the end of World War II, this is Margaret Samss moving testimony of life in a Japanese internment campthe can of Spam hoarded for Christmas dinner, the clandestine radio hidden in her sewing kit, the beheading of other prisoners for transgressions. With her husband held elsewhere as a prisoner of war and with a small son to protect, Margaret broke the rules both of society and of her captors to fall in love and bear a child with a kind and daring fellow internee, Jerry Sams. Her picture of prison life, with all its hardships, heartaches, and surprising humor, is unforgettably real.Ralph Graves, author of Share of Honor

Customer Reviews:

Great Read.......2000-07-20

Whether you're interested in WWII or not you'll love this book. Wonderfully written, this emotional tale of love under the most dire circumstances is sure to make you laugh, cry, feel. Margaret and Jerry Sams are an inspiration to all. And even at 90 their love is still as strong as ever.

Love triumphs........1997-11-28

This very interesting autobiography is the story of a conventional young American housewife who becomes separated from her husband in the chaos of the Philippines of 1942 and is imprisoned with her young son in a brutal Japanese internment camp. In her struggle for survival she meets and falls in love with a fellow prisoner, whose child she bears, at great risk, and in the face of opposition from fellow inmates and captors alike.
Sams' story, expertly and sensitively edited, is a frank and touching love story as well as an epic of survival, and will be of interest to students of 20th-century American culture and mores as well as WWII readers.

(The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

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