Be Good, Smile Pretty

Last weekend we watched this very good documentary about Vietnam and researching your own father. Tracy Droz Tragos lost her father in Vietnam when she was a baby, so had no memory of him. Amazingly, but not at all unusual, she knew very little about him. Her mother, who had remarried, did not share with her, until she started making this film, the boxes of letters and tapes that her father had sent home from Vietnam. By interviewing her mother, uncles, grandmother and the men with whom he served in Vietnam, Droz Tragos was able to bring her father back to life to a certain extent and get to know him. The wounds of war are just under the surface in many families. I know it had to be uncomfortable for Droz Tragos to open these wounds, but I admire her courage for doing so.