{"id":351108,"date":"2018-03-07T05:58:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T04:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/william-joiner-institute-under-siege\/"},"modified":"2018-03-07T05:58:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T04:58:56","slug":"william-joiner-institute-under-siege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/william-joiner-institute-under-siege\/","title":{"rendered":"William Joiner Institute Under Siege"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><i><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-100292\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/03\/QIdFkkFdFDyUwpA-800x450-noPad.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"287\"  \/><br \/>Extra! Extra!! \u00a0David vs Goliath!!!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>In 1995, when reading my paperback copy of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1995\/03\/05\/books\/in-short-fiction-502095.html\">The Sorrow of War,<\/a>\u00a0by the North Vietnamese veteran and novelist Bao Ninh, I would fall into a trance, feel as if I were floating above my bed. What was happening, I did not know. Several months later, traveling in Southeast Asia, I invented excuses to not locate Ninh.<\/p>\n<p>Once home in New York I purchased the book in hardback; at the sight of Ninh\u2019s dust jacket photo I saw again the faces of enemy soldiers my platoon had hunted down, and who\u2019d hunted us. That night I dreamt my platoon was trapped, out of ammo, trying desperately to escape.<\/p>\n<p>In the winter of 1998\u00a0 I sent Bao Ninh a hard copy letter. Two months later I received his reply: \u201cOn the occasion of Christmas and the New Year, I am very glad to send you our warmest regard from Vietnam. I wish you and your family a new year full of happiness. I hope we will soon meet each other in Hanoi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Two years later, I decided to attend the annual\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.umb.edu\/joinerinstitute\">William Joiner Institute\u00a0<\/a>Writer\u2019s Workshop, located at U Mass Boston. On the first day, while seated in a packed auditorium, forty meters to my right, I noticed five Vietnamese men waiting to be introduced to the audience. Their remarks concluded, single file, they headed back to the exit at the rear of the room. Instantly I jumped up, and pushed past a gauntlet of outstretched legs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExcuse me\u2026excuse me\u2026\u201d I said, following my target.\u00a0 \u201cBao Ninh!\u201d I stammered as he neared the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/03\/06\/william-joiner-institute-under-siege\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Extra! Extra!! \u00a0David vs Goliath!!! In 1995, when reading my paperback copy of\u00a0The Sorrow of War,\u00a0by the North Vietnamese veteran and novelist Bao Ninh, I would fall into a trance, feel as if I were floating above my bed. What was happening, I did not know. Several months later, traveling in Southeast Asia, I invented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-351108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}