Where The Wind Leads: A Memoir

The genre of Where the Wind Leads is a memoir. A memoir is defined by The Handbook to Literature as, “[a] form of autobiographical writing dealing usually with the recollections of one who has been a part of or has witnessed significant events. Memoirs . . . are usually concerned with personalities and actions other than those of the writer” (Harmon and Holman 313).

In Where the Wind Leads, Chung focuses on the experiences of his whole family, rather than simply himself. Because of this, he shares multiple perspectives as well as diverse actions and personalities to color the history which came after the black-and-white Vietnam War. This memoir not only encompasses his family’s fleeing from Vietnam, but it also involves the events preceding

and leading up to the war itself. These significant events changed both Vietnam and the foreign policy of the United States, and through Chung’s words, these monumental occurrences are given personal emotions and viewpoints through the eyes of the Chung family, who also represent other Vietnamese civilians that had suffered through the war. Thus, the memoir not only shares the life of the author, Vinh Chung, but it also reveals the captivating perspectives of others who had survived the same plight and now live a new life which they had never expected.