conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Lana, Nicole, Chace with the genre: Teen & Young Adult, Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Girl in the Picture'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Girl in the Picture
  It's the magic hour in Havana, when the sky goes iridescent indigo before the light drops. The young woman poses for the photographer on the low wall of the esplanade above the sea, with racing clouds as a backdrop. The young woman loves the camera,
  War calls many things out of people—crusading zeal, crushing sadness, mysticism, martyrdom, victimhood. From Kim Phuc's wounds have sprung a passion to be normal. "I want to live my life, marry, have children." She admits that Nick Ut's photo enshrined her as a symbol of agony. "But I'm alive and now I'm happy!" "A joyful young woman," says her interpreter from the Vietnamese Embassy in Havana. "That's the symbol now..."
  IN JANUARY OF THAT YEAR, NICK HAD MADE his first return trip to Vietnam, fourteen years after he'd left on an evacuation flight from Saigon. He went on assignment, accompanying Saigon's last bureau chief for the AP, George Esper. They had each been granted one-month journalists' visas to cover the return of six former Marines journeying there to make their private peace with the past.
  While Hanoi had no luck securing economic aid from the United States, there had been a breakthrough in expanded American relations in the fall of 1987. The United States amended its trade embargo regulations to permit private charitable and humanitarian aid to Vietnam in exchange for greater cooperation on unresolved MIA cases. In the spring of 1989, Hanoi removed a second longstanding obstacle to normalization when it announced that, in the fall, it would unconditionally withdraw its fifty-thousand-strong combat troops from Cambodia. However, yet again, Washington stalled, seeking from Vietnam a guarantee of peace in Cambodia, an impossible demand.
  Upon his return from his assignment in Vietnam, Nick got a telephone call from New York from a woman he'd never met. Merle Ratner and several Indochinese activists were raising funds to bring Kim Phuc on a speaking tour of the United States. In Hanoi, Nick and George Esper had known from the AP's files that Kim was in Cuba, but they'd been put off by her minders whenever they'd asked after her. According to Merle, Hanoi had already approved Kim's visit.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: three more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At the onset of the Special Period almost two years earlier, Cuba had prepared for its impending gasoline crisis by calling on farmers to substitute oxen for farm machinery and for the people of Havana to use bicycles—until the late 1960s, virtually unseen in the city. In 1991, the first shipments of 1.2 million Flying Pigeon bicycles from China began to arrive for Havana's population of 2 million, and on May Day that year, Cuba's armed forces paraded on bicycles.
  GORBACHEV'S RESIGNATION AT THE END OF 1991 marked the formal breakup of the Soviet Union into independent states. The kingpin among them, Russia, grappling with economic dislocation and inflation (which would soar to 2,500 percent over the next year), abruptly halted subsidies and demanded world prices for its oil and payment in hard currency.
  Immediately, the oil pipeline to Cuba dried up. To compound Cuba's economic woes, the buying power of its sugar exports dissolved. World prices plummeted to levels that would stay depressed for the next several years. The crop also shrank, as Cuban farmers could not get fertilizers, pesticides or gasoline. By early 1992, the Cuban economy had contracted so drastically under the Special Period that it brought scourges reminiscent of the Batista era: high inflation, joblessness and shantytowns outside Havana. The signs on some state stores said they were closed for inventory, though their shelves were empty. Repeated electricity blackouts disrupted or shut down factories. To ease demand for electricity in downtown Havana, the regime shortened the workday by canceling lunch hours for office workers. It mobilized tens of thousands of city workers to "voluntarily" work extended stints on state farms. Yet everywhere was more breakdown and deterioration. Shoving and fistfights broke out in lineups. Older people took on interlopers: "Comrades, comrades, respect the lineup."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: ". Older people took on interlopers: "Comrades, comrades, respect the lineup. Shoving and fistfights broke out in lineups. Yet everywhere was more breakdown and deterioration. It mobilized tens of thousands of city workers to "voluntarily" work extended stints on state farms. To ease demand for electricity in downtown Havana, the regime shortened the workday by canceling lunch hours for office workers. Repeated electricity blackouts disrupted or shut down factories. The signs on some state stores said they were closed for inventory, though their shelves were empty. By early 1992, the Cuban economy had contracted so drastically under the Special Period that it brought scourges reminiscent of the Batista era: high inflation, joblessness and shantytowns outside Havana. The crop also shrank, as Cuban farmers could not get fertilizers, pesticides or gasoline. World prices plummeted to levels that would stay depressed for the next several years. To compound Cuba's economic woes, the buying power of its sugar exports dissolved.
  Immediately, the oil pipeline to Cuba dried up. The kingpin among them, Russia, grappling with economic dislocation and inflation (which would soar to 2,500 percent over the next year), abruptly halted subsidies and demanded world prices for its oil and payment in hard currency.
  GORBACHEV'S RESIGNATION AT THE END OF 1991 marked the formal breakup of the Soviet Union into independent states.2 million Flying Pigeon bicycles from China began to arrive for Havana's population of 2 million, and on May Day that year, Cuba's armed forces paraded on bicycles. In 1991, the first shipments of 1.At the onset of the Special Period almost two years earlier, Cuba had prepared for its impending gasoline crisis by calling on farmers to substitute oxen for farm machinery and for the people of Havana to use bicycles—until the late 1960s, virtually unseen in the city
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'The picture exerted its power on nobody more than her, its subject'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The picture exerted its power on nobody more than her, its subject. She would be plunged into despair by those who manipulated her life as though the picture were the scaffolding of their own. She suffered, victimized once by the napalm bomb, and yet again by those who would control her. Human nature is to seek redemption for a terrible wrong, and for some, suffering itself is redemptive. Kim Phuc did not find it so. The more she suffered, the deeper she fell into her solitary darkness. She recast herself spiritually, forsaking one religious faith and committing herself to another, and navigated her way out. In paying homage to her as a living symbol of wartime horror and suffering, others, religious or not, feel a hopeful sense of being able to mitigate the darkness together.
  Kim and Toan, their two sons, and her parents live together in Ajax. Toan holds down a night job, working at a group home, and a day job, taking daily charge of a mentally disabled adult—while also taking Bible courses at the church. He hopes to become a minister. One month after escaping to Canada, while he and Kim were still installed in a motel, Toan accepted Jesus Christ as his savior, and some weeks later he was baptized in a church in Toronto. Kim's parents, who spend their time caring for their two grandchildren, go regularly with the couple to their church, and when at home read the Bible in Vietnamese.
  Kim's life outside the home involves speaking and traveling the world on behalf of UNESCO. The position is voluntary. She also continues to bring to audiences, mostly in Canada, her message about her commitment to Jesus Christ. "It was the fire of bombs that burned my body. It was the skill of doctors that mended my skin," she says. "But it took the power of God's love to heal my heart." An Italian filmaker is making Kim the centerpiece of his film on Christianity at the end of the millennium. Meanwhile, a prominent Toronto artist has donated the proceeds of sales of his portraits of Kim, inspired by the famous picture, to a fund to pay for her two sons' education.
  Most difficult of my research were the interviews I conducted in Vietnam. My traveling companion was my brother, Wayne, and together we coped under circumstances that were often tense. There were several people I interviewed whom I shall not name in the interest of protecting their identities. Both Wayne and I shall ever remember, in particular, one interpreter who bravely led me to stories she thought ought to be told and heard. She reminded me of my friend Frank Zhao. Bruce Levy gave me advice in Vietnam. Back in Canada, Tran Thu was a skilled interpreter who also shared insights on the life she had left behind in Vietnam.
  I learned much about the Vietnam and Indochinese wars from published works, many by distinguished journalists, among them Neil Sheehan and Stanley Karnow. Newspaper and film archives proved invaluable. I also read moving and harrowing memoirs of the experiences of the Vietnamese during the war. Much less is available in English of the postwar years in Vietnam, and I was sorry that I did not read Vietnamese.