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Trauma, a Crime, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Clay Gilliland via Flickr (http://bit.ly/2hekfMy) CC-BY-SA 2.0 (http://bit.ly/1dsePQq)
A sculpture at the Vietnam Military History Museum in Hanoi.

In April 2012, a Vietnamese man stabbed random white males in a supermarket parking lot in Salt Lake City. Throughout the incident he was heard to shout, “You killed my people, you should all die!” Witnesses and police suspected the attack was in part motivated by delusional recollections of the Vietnam War, which ended before the attacker was born. In a new book, Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal examines what this violent outburst can tell us about war’s traumatic effects on communities over time.

Paisley Rekdal is Utah's Poet Laureate and a professor of English at the University of Utah. She's the author of several books, including five collections of poetry, a memoir, and a book of essays. Her newest is book is nonfiction. It's called The Broken Country: On Trauma, A Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam [Independent bookstores|Amazon].

Doug Fabrizio has been reporting for KUER News since 1987, and became News Director in 1993. In 2001, he became host and executive producer of KUER's RadioWest, a one hour conversation/call-in show on KUER 90.1 in Salt Lake City. He has gained a reputation for his thoughtful style. He has interviewed everyone from Isabel Allende to the Dalai Lama, and from Madeleine Albright to Desmond Tutu. His interview skills landed him a spot as a guest host of the national NPR program, "Talk of the Nation." He has won numerous awards for his reporting and for his work with RadioWest and KUED's Utah NOW from such organizations as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Utah Broadcasters Association, the Public Radio News Directors Association and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
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