Home Before Morning By Lynda Van Devanter Analysis

November 11, 1993 –a date typically dissociated with the remembrance of America’s involvement in Vietnam. On this day, the female Vietnam Veteran memorial was dedicated in honor of unspoken heroes, ones whose experiences are unparalleled to the soldiers who partook in the physical fight and incomprehensible to the public’s mind. These brave women, some married, engaged, or mothers, held the burden of a war with undefined intentions both physically and mentally, during combat and upon returning home. Although they played a role in a new kind of warfare, felt the personal sting of the anti-war movement, and suffered from PTSD much like their male counterparts, there was little research done on the nurses and nearly no recognition granted for nearly twenty years. …show more content…
Van Devanter, a veteran and author, wrote Home Before Morning, a compelling memoir published in 1979, just ten years after she arrived in war-torn South Vietnam and a year after the National Health Center defined a new disease, commonly referred to as Post Traumatic Stress Disease (PTSD). This book was one of the few early female memoirs that spoke for the muted female veterans of Vietnam. She discusses in detail about her voluntary year of service and the years to follow her return from war. During Van Devanter’s assimilation period, the Vietnam War’s popularity plummeted and the intangible wound which she acquired only grew more difficult to confront. This memoir was published to raise awareness of the female Vietnam Veterans, although a miniscule group of approximately 11,000, they are one of importance, whose suffering should be