Featured Interview With Sandy Hanna
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m a BRAT – in capital letters, not lower case letters. This acronym refers to being a British Regiment Attached Transfer; part of a tribe made up of military dependent children that follow their families around the country and world, experiencing things that most can’t imagine. This life is ever changing and requires the ability to adapt as the world changes around us. To ask me where I was raised, I can only respond ‘everywhere.’ We moved every two years, leaving our friends, schools, pets, homes, and teachers, all without a second thought. I now live in Lambertville, New Jersey, and fight the impulse that comes over me every two-years to move and walk away from everything I know. I rearrange the furniture to trick myself into thinking I have moved. I’ve had so many animals throughout my life, including a monkey and an elephant, but currently I am without a pet. My memoir, The Ignorance of Bliss: An American Kid in Saigon, will give an insight into the transient life of military children, my life. It also gives a window into the conflict in Vietnam that the United States became involve in and the reality of what was happening there in the early 60s when my family and I lived there.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Books were wonderful, because even if we had left our books behind in every move, there were more to be had wherever we went. My fascination began with the Walter Farley horse stories. I loved the illustrations and the stories. When living in Vietnam, however, I was grateful for anything written in English and found I was reading everything I could find; basketball stories, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mysteries, and biographies. When I realized how amazing books were was when I finally read “To Kill a Mockingbird” and I was hooked. I moved on to books by Walter Faulkner, finding ‘The Sound and the Fury’ unforgettable.
I started writing when I was in my twenties, mostly to try to figure out my life. Short notes to myself and stories I would remember from my strange gypsy life. It wasn’t until my father, the Colonel, then in his 80s, gave me an expose on the ruling Diem regime written by his Vietnamese counterpart that I took the job of writer seriously. He put me under orders to write a compelling true story about what was really going on in that small country. His statement was that ‘if you don’t understand history you are destined to repeat it.’ The expose was a reveal of the anti-American position the regime of Diem held, although supported by the United States.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love all genres, though some more than others. What I appreciate is good writing. I’m a visual person so when the writing forms images in my head I’m hooked. The classics are my favorite: D.H Lawrence, Anais Nin, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot ,and Henry James. More modern reads included Robinson Davis, Pat Conroy, Kazantzakis, and Lawrence Durrell. I think the two authors that inspired me the most when writing my book were Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) and Pat Conroy (The Great Santini). Their stories mirrored mine in some way and I loved their style of writing.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The Ignorance of Bliss: An American Kid in Saigon by Sandy Hanna
“Saigon was a world of crushing poverty and extraordinary beauty. It was also a world of streets, villas, and brothels, where politics and intrigue resided between plot and counter plot. It was the world I grew up in as a ten-year-old with my brothers and sister between 1960 and 1962. As children we lived in the continuous present – perhaps the only way children can live.”
It took me years to write this true coming-of-age story and in many cases I had to refer to my older brother’s memory for some of the detail. My father died before I finished it, but I think I achieved the goal of writing a story that would be easy for anyone to understand and join with me on the journey. Mine is not the story of the darkest days of Vietnam, but what led America into the conflict. Told through a child’s eyes it is approached with an innocence that is not threatening to the reader. My father, the Colonel, was the Chief of Ordnance with MAAG (Military Aid Advisory Group) from 1960 to 1962. I strived to give the reader a clear picture of a country and history little understood by most and to provide the information that was revealed in the expose given to my father from his Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Le Van Sam. It is a unique story with unknown historical facts woven in to give critical background information to the reader. This coming-of age story takes place in a turbulent country striving for nationalism, giving the reader a stunning look into the life of military dependents living abroad and the underlying ignorance that surrounded a little understood time in history
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