Jessica M. Frazier

In the 1960s and 1970s, US women activists in the peace movement and in liberation struggles turned to Vietnamese women for fellowship and inspiration. Peace activists saw Vietnamese women as collaborators against war and violence, while African American, Chicana, and Asian American women in their respective liberation movements viewed Vietnamese women as fellow revolutionaries. However, interactions with Vietnamese women tested US activists' assumptions. Vietnamese women in the North Vietnamese Women’s Union and in the National Liberation Front’s Women’s Union of Liberation promoted their causes to an international audience in the ways that they saw fit. They represented themselves as peace collaborators or as warriors, as equals to men or as victims. Sometimes they bolstered US activists' beliefs; other times they undermined those beliefs.