I didn’t want to take this class. I don’t like violent movies, I don’t like studying history. And I certainly don’t like learning about the thousands of Vietnamese people killed. It reminds me too much of my mom.

But I needed five credits and a senior thesis class to graduate, and this is the only one I could take and still keep my job. So I watched Apocalyspse Now on a big projector screen and covered my eyes for half of it, and the same for Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. I read through Dispatches, Things They Carried, and The Sorrows of War until I was sick. Puking into the toilet as I cried my eyes out over Agent Orange, Nguyá»…n Văn Lém, and grainy photos of soldiers in bandaids and coffins.

I hated the class for making me uncomfortable, for putting dark circles under my eyes, for making me feel bad when I put on my faovrite sweater and the tag said, “Made in Vietnam.” I was so proud when I bought that damn sweater; it was on sale for 20$ and fit me just right. I took it to the thrift store a week later.

In class I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I wanted to talk, to argue, to ask what an entire generation may or may not still be asking, which is “why?”

“Why did we do this to ourselves? To each other?”

I was angry, so very angry. The girl who has never had a full-time job, never been to Europe, is afraid of guns and spiders and seaweed; who didn’t watch violent movies because I didn’t want to know that people could do those things to each other. I wanted those books and those movies to be fiction, all fiction; not based on any true events. I made my anger known, like the girls who stuck flowers in the barrels of riot guns, the people who burned American flags. I was a couple decades too late, not that it would’ve mattered anyways. There are…