Plucked from his workaday youth as an Irish-American kid from Brooklyn, Ryan’s military deployment to Vietnam begins in 1966 with shiftless excursions into women, booze, and reefer. As he wades ever deeper north, his cavorting is replaced by an unceasing violence. The amorality of war, and specifically this war, is laid bare. Eve Gilbert’s nakedly primitive drawing perfectly reflects Ryan’s own naivete, filled to the brim with acerbic commentary and pitch-black humor. Images overflow with blood and dissidence, dripping with rage for the injustice done to the young men made grist for the war machine. Ultimately, My Year in Vietnam is a story of triumph and humanity, of men rising against their country’s worst impulses. Ryan’s greatest act of resistance becomes his life, proving that the men who fought these wars can be more than weapons and fodder, but activists and paragons and fathers and grandfathers; thinking, feeling, beating hearts.

Author Biography

George Ryan came back from Vietnam with a bronze star, a purple heart, and other medals, including a presidential citation and a good conduct medal. Since the end of the Vietnam War, he has worked as a printer for The New York Times and also has had successful art shows in and around New York. Today, George credits his happiness to his 3 children and 8 grandchildren, as well as the longevity of his friendships with his lifelong friends. Born in 1967, Eve Gilbert is a cartoonist, illustrator and painter. Before finding a publisher for her work, she attended poetry readings in San Francisco coffee houses and read from xerox copies of her comics, which she sold on the streets. Episodes of her life from homelessness to working dead-end jobs are chronicled in Tits, Ass & Real Estate. In his introduction to that work, R. Crumb wrote, “Eve Gilbert must be an incredibly tough survivor as well as being sweet and nice. Her life would’ve killed me.” Her most recent book is Winter Warrior (Fantagraphics, 2019). She lives in Florida with her husband and her plants.

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