J. Everett Prewitt, Something about Ann (Northland Publishing Company 2017)
This novella is comprised of twelve interconnected short stories following a group of African-American soldiers who faced traumatic experiences in Vietnam during the 1955-1975 war. The wartime experiences of this squad were covered in Prewitt’s earlier book, A Long Way Back.
These stories talk about what it’s like to experience fear of death, horrific injury, blood and pain and grief—the devastating experience of dedicating one’s life to a cause that failed, a war that ended in embarrassing defeat.
These fictional stories follow the soldiers after their return home. Clarence Bankston falls for a Vietnamese nail salon owner he meets at a party, Ann Minh. Acknowledging the discomfort of the situation, having established they both ‘left in ‘69’, she is the one who apologises. Her real name is Ly Trung Trac; she is married; she is North Vietnamese.
Some of those who fought are still, years later, looking for revenge. As one veteran says, ‘if someone threatens you or your loved ones, and you are trained to kill, you tend to see every solution through the sight of your rifle.’ These vendettas intermesh with present-day conflicts over women or money.
Each man faces his demons from the war as well as the racism and other ills of the society they returned to.
It is written from the soldier’s perspective. Personalising the war experience recognises that the Vietnamese and the American soldiers were arguably ‘fellow victims’.
I liked the device of masking perpetrator’s identities using foreigners’ pronunciation of names (Mr Krantz, Mr Clarence). The portrayal of ways in which the veterans’ inescapable trauma affects their present-day struggles is intimate and profound. I loved the intimate peeks into a veteran’s mind of the one shying away from a fight for fear of hearing something he’d heard before, the smash of a head against the wall ‘like a watermelon’, and the one who kept his pistol under his bed until his wife threatened to divorce him, and the one where a shared wartime experience is powerful enough to break down the black/white racism barrier.
The ‘jungle’ metaphors are beautiful (‘like a sleeping panther that, if awakened, attacks’; ‘hunched like a water buffalo getting ready to charge’). The use of dialogue is excellent; the characters really come through.
It is best to read this work as a collection of short stories rather than as a novella. This format—interconnected short stories—means that some loose ends are left when each episode concludes. That leaves the reader to wonder what connects the stories; they are all connected by the theme of the struggle to come to terms with wartime trauma and the particular struggle of black veterans. ‘Some say that war produces 100% casualties.’
Susie Helme 
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