The Circle of Hanh (review)

Book Reviews257 that she was in the womb. She views the world as if she can reconstruct it completely to meet her own needs. And what is wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. Though readers may never know why KettleweU chose to cut herself, they are likely to see a bit of themselves in her. After aU, "this is a story about how an ordinary sort ofperson can end up traveling some dark and unexpected roads." How fortunate the reader is that KettleweU chose to pack us a bag and take us along with her on this brave journey. Reviewed by Amy Hicks The Circle of Hanh by Bruce Weigl Grove Press, 2000 208 pages, cloth, $24.00 In the prologue to his stark, yet uplifting memoir, The Circle ofHanh, poet and translator Bruce Weigl writes, "I don't know how it aU happened. I'm not even sure I want to remember everything. I don't believe remembering everything is necessary for our happiness or weU-being. I have only a story and my beliefin the abflity ofstories to save us." This book is not solely the chronicle of an American soldier's experience in Vietnam, though several harrowing moments of his 1967-68 service in that war are detailed within these pages. In this postwar era, when so many veterans have now pubUshed accounts oftheir roles in that tragic conflict,Weigl begins and concludes his with the story of a man who returns, twenty-eight years after serving, to Southeast Asia to adopt an eight-year-old girl named Hanh from an orphanage in the People's RepubUc ofVietnam. The prologue and eight titled sections of The Circle of Hanh teU the reader, in fifty-three dramatic and impeccably-composed chapters, of Weigl's life in jump-cut episodes that move back and forth through time. Born to live out his youth in a miU town in Lorain, Ohio, Weigl has his first chüdhood encounter with violence—a faU down a flight of stairs that UteraUy scars him for life—and a subsequent series of troubUng sexual encounters, including "wrestling" with his baby-sitter Sharon, which bury within the young man's heart a strong urge to renew his faith in the world and to understand what gnaws inside him. At eighteen, he is drafted into the Army where, once in-country, he witnesses the death in battle of men like his beloved Captain Carter and is 258Fourth Genre wounded himselfby a 122-miUimeter rocket. The briefanecdotes set on the battlefield are foUowed by the story of his re-entry home to the United States. The trauma and lessons of war serve to inspire Weigl in coUege. He marries and fathers a son, but upon discovering that he is driven by an extraordinary need to care and be cared for, seeks reconciliation with the Vietnamese people. Like a small explosion, the book opens with perhaps its most moving episode. Stranded in a bleak and overcrowded Hong Kong airport during a layover on his long 1996 flight back overseas to Hanoi, Weigl struggles to complete the adoption process so he can claim his newVietnamese daughter . Prevented by governmental error from boarding the flight that would unite them at last, he implores the airport manager forAirVietnam in Hong Kong for aid. And though the man initiaUy refuses to grant his boarding request, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Nam relents once he learns that Weigl is the American translator of several prominent Vietnamese poets, who wishes only to provide a home for young Nguyen Thi Hanh. The Circle of Hanh reads like the contemporary prose equivalent of Dante's Inferno, in which a mortal man traverses the nine circles of HeU to bear witness to the great suffering brought on by human sin. Although Dante is ultimately redeemed, he holds within his heart the horror of the underworld.Weigl writes ofa similar transformation experienced by soldiers in the jungles ofVietnam: I want to tell you how the jungle makes its way inside you Uke a worm; how it finds itself a home there in the pink and warm ofyou where it grows. I want to tell you how the triple canopy of trees...