Across a verdurous field of sweet potatoes, Saeko Ando sits on a porch chatting with elderly neighbor Nguyen Thi Son, whose blackened teeth age her to a time in Vietnam¡¯s history when customs were somewhat different than today.
Vietnam¡¯s younger generation, she tells Ando, are forgetting the country¡¯s past, its horrific war of the 1960s and ¡®70s, but also its traditional culture.
¡°I told her that in my country, too, we experienced such change long before the Vietnam War,¡± says Ando, switching effortlessly from Vietnamese to English. ¡°You can find many similarities between our cultures,¡± she adds, drawing another convivial smile from her host.
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