User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is the true story of the fight of the Vietnamese refugees and the locals of the Gulf Coast area for their fishing rights in the 1970's.
When the locals can't run the Vietnamese off on their own they enlist the aid of the KKK. They were terrorized and had their boats and homes burned and in an act of self defense one of the locals was killed. Then there were the environmental concerns from the large corporations to contend with that are still going on today.
This reads like a legal thriller and I found it to be very informative about a period of time I didn't know anything about.
Rating: really liked it
When I first read the blurb, I was a little skeptical. How well could a single book encompass both environmental justice and racial justice? As it turns out, these stories are more intertwined than I’d expected.
The character- and story-focused narrative style is engaging and immediately hooks the reader with a feeling of suspense. Narrative nonfiction is delightful when done well, but runs the risk of leaning too far into sensationalism and abandoning good scholarship. This book’s extensive citations are evidence of a well-balanced tightrope act.
Full Review at Lone Star on a Lark
Rating: really liked it
Another riveting read from Kirk Wallace Johnson. Here, racial animosity, prejudices and hatred that White fishermen have for Vietnamese fishermen, is on full display. And, one can see the playbook of conspiracy theories and disinformation continue into today. Basically, nothing has changed, other than the targets of White grievances. What tied it all together is the environmental impact of the big companies, polluting the waters and causing health issues for the residents of the area. The author has delved deeply into court records, newspapers and interviews to give a full and complete picture about what happened down on the Texas Gulf Coast. This work of narrative non-fiction will be enjoyed by readers of Patrick Radden Keefe, Jonathan Harr, Paige Williams, Susan Orlean, Clint Smith and Isabel Wilkerson.
I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.
Rating: really liked it
The Fishermen And The Dragon, Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast
Kirk Wallace Johnson, 2022
By 1974 the Vietnam war had ended and with it a subsequent migration influx into the US of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese refugees. Among them were former officers of the South Vietnamese army, government officials of the former government but also ordinary people trying to escape the new communist government. Upon being interviewed by immigration authorities a number of refugees said they were formerly in the fishing business. About a hundred of these families were sent to settle along the Gulf Coast of Texas around Galveston Bay. In the small fishing community of Seadrift local fisherman had been plying the waters of the gulf for over a century trawling for shrimp, redfish and crab and thought of these fishing grounds as their territorial waters. When unbeknownst to them a new racially distinct group of competitors was sent to their town by the US government the stage was set for an epic conflict, This is the setting for Kirk Wallace Johnson’s new book as the conflict between these two communities devolved into intimidation, violence, killing and destructive racial warfare, and eventually into an epic legal battle waged in Federal Courts.
“Fury comes easily to the white worker. He is ready for battle. But he does not quite know against whom to declare war”. Gus Tyler, Labor Activist
Initially the integration of the Vietnamese proceeded without much animosity. They sought jobs in the fish packing and processing houses. After a few months, tired of the drudgery and low pay they started to buy old trawling boats at outrageously high prices from the local fishermen who then promptly used the proceeds to buy themselves new boats. Gradually it became apparent that the Vietnamese were willing to work extremely hard sometimes putting in 12–15-hour days. They soon were surpassing the catch of the good old boys who spent many hours of the day at local watering holes rather than fishing. The resentment and anger began to build until there was a physical altercation that resulted in a white fisherman being shot and killed by a Vietnamese. When the incident was ruled a case of self-defense and the shooter was released, the anger and resentment in the community exploded. When there is widespread racially focused anger and resentment, there is almost always someone who sees political or financial opportunity to exploit the situation. In this case it was Louis Beam, newly elected grand dragon of the South Texas Ku Klux Klan, who used the opportunity to enroll many of the town’s population in the Klan. He vowed to use whatever means necessary to expel the Vietnamese. Those means included torching boats, rallies with burning crosses, lynched effigies, refugees threatened at gunpoint and the arson of residences. After many futile attempts at reconciliation the situation finally ended up in Federal Court in Houston with the case: “Vietnamese Fisherman’s Association v. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” The Vietnamese were represented by the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Maurice Dees in what turned out to be a signature case in the organization’s formation. Read the book for the riveting courtroom drama.
“But the oil had come, and it looked like the fish had gone. It had been an even swap.”
Woody Guthrie, Bound For Glory
It turns out there was a much more insidious danger lurking in the waters of Galveston Bay other than the perceived threat of the Vietnamese fishermen. Diane Wilson had been trawling the waters of the bay for decades when she began to pull up in her nets grossly mutated shrimp and crab. Over years she stored numerous samples in her refrigerator. She also noticed a worrying increase in cancer in the community at large and also in her own family. The shores around Galveston are home to a large percentage of refineries, plastic and chemical plants in the US. These industries had been discharging hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals each year into Texas bays and waterways. In 1989 the EPA released a report: “Texas Tops U.S. in Industrial Pollution”. Wilson read: “Seadrift’s Calhoun County, home to fewer than fifteen thousand people was ranked the most toxic place in America”. Then she learned that a Taiwanese corporation, Formosa Chemical, has chosen Calhoun County for the location of a new polyvinyl chloride plant and the county struggling with 16% unemployment, was welcoming the plant with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax abatements. She also learned that Formosa had been banned from building a new plant in Taiwan due to egregious pollution of the island’s waterways. So was set in motion Wilson’s decade long crusade to cleanup the waters where, for her entire life, she had rested her living. Could she prevail against the local sentiment that wanted new jobs, against the money that crossed local politician’s hands? In the end she couldn’t prevent the construction of the plant, but the new plant followed true to form and dumped millions of pounds of toxic chemicals and waste into the water. In July 2017, Dianne Wilson filed a Federal suit against Formosa under a provision of the clean water act. Her new unlikely allies were Vietnamese and White fishermen who protested the blatant pollution outside the new plant waving Vietnamese and US flags. Would she prevail? Read the book.
Occasionally a situation occurs like the one chronicled in this book that mirrors or is a microcosm of the larger national play of social and political forces. Racial animus, resentment, and anger over perceived threats to a population’s economic situation, the blaming of problems on immigrants, these are all forces now playing out in our national politics. Then there is the blatant exploitation of this situation by political, media and economic entities. All these forces that played out on a small scale in the community of Seadrift, Texas are now playing out on a large scale across our country. What the story also emphasizes is that individuals, no matter how insignificant they are politically or economically, through their perseverance and dedication to a cause can make a difference. That is the genius of our country; there is still hope if we care to protect justice, fairness, the future of our democracy and have the fortitude to act and not give up.
This book is well written page turner; you are impelled to turn the page to find out what happens and keep reading. Like the book “A Civil Action” which was made into a compelling movie. This book could also be the stuff of a great movie. JACK
Rating: really liked it
Parts of this book were totally amazing and jaw dropping. Parts made me so angry I wanted to scream at the injustice and awfulness. In the end there was even a limited resolution that brought a tiny ray of light to the blackness, but for 50 years this situation has not significantly changed, and certainly is far from any sort of acceptable resolution. In fact the corruption, hypocrisy, lying and illegal activity seems to have ebbed and flowed at best, but never left. Ultimately this book made me VERY angry, sad and hopeless.
Having read and enjoyed Kirk Wallace Johnson's first best selling book " The Feather Thief" I was looking forward to a great story. It was, in a way, but it was also so big, so filled with injustice, hate, evil, corruption and horrid behavior it was impossible for me to get my head around it.
The stories were just TOO BIG!!!!! Post Vietnam immigration into Texas in the 1970's was itself a watershed of bad behavior and toxic choices by so many people. Add the element of the struggling crab and shrimp industries, ties to the Texas coast...being slowly and legally polluted into cancerous oblivion by corporations like Dow, Dupont, Alcoa, Union Carbide and Formosa, a huge Chinese conglomerate...as well as others and the Oil companies as well. But the cry of Texans was that they brought jobs, But at a Horrid cost in the long run. The corporations orchestrated HUGE tax cuts and ignored any pollution controls for decades, driving the Gulf to become a cesspool of filth and death.
Add to all this was the hated KKK......the arrogant and evil brotherhood of white supremacists who spread their filthy ideas with fear and intimidation. They insinuated themselves into an already
impossible dilemma, deliberately instigating trouble, racism and death. The characters involved were so hateful and repugnant it was difficult to separate that bile from the story. Their antics and rhetoric were always one step above the law, just legal enough to hide behind the First Amendment while burning, looting, hurting and terrorizing other people and trampling all of their rights.
I think what bothered me about the story was the seriousness of it, the HUGE SCOPE of all these issues and then trying to tell a story that big in a quick 300 pages was just a skim coat or frustration. There were 2 issues really that somehow got connected in the story, despite being only loosely connected over the 50 plus years. The Vietnamese immigration and the KKK were at the start of the law suits against the polluters, but it was a broad stroke to try to tell the story of BOTH simultaneously. It struck me a bit like trying to climb Mount Everest and K 2 at the same time.
So the book was good, But it HURT...... literally. It hurt every aspect of my soul and I hated the players and the horrid bad actions of so so many. Even though the KKK has diminished in scope, right now there is ample reason to fear for our Democracy. There is no end. Corporate greed, our unwavering love of money as a GOD....as everything.....and the ability of injustice to twist and convolute the Constitution for evil, racist hateful behaviors astounds me.
We have clearly destroyed much of our planet in the name of money, wealth, jobs and power. This book clearly illustrates that and offers a slim ray of hope, but not much, not much at all.
Rating: really liked it
The Fishermen and the Dragon dives into the racist, polluted history of Texas's Gulf Coast. The book primarily deals with the relationship between Vietnamese refugees and racist white shrimpers/Klan members in the gulf, but it also sheds light on a fight against the chemical plants that have had a stranglehold on the economy there in recent decades. Both stories are intertwined in interesting ways, and the epilogue of the book shows the impact of both on the community in the "Cancer Belt."
Johnson's strength is in crafting a nonfiction narrative that feels not unlike reading a good novel - there are no dry, dense paragraphs to wade through to get a real understanding of the atmosphere or conditions at the time. With nonfiction, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with the amount of information thrown at me at once, thus slowing down the read. Johnson balances the line perfectly between providing that information while also making the book unputdownable, despite the blatant and at times sickening displays of racism and violence on show. Although the two narrative threads diverge for a while, they are ultimately brought together in a way that demonstrates the long-lasting effect both have had on the community over the decades.
I'll read anything about Texas history that isn't just about licking the boot, and while I was aware of the pollution issues near the gulf, I had no idea about the disgustingly racist history between Klan-allied white fishermen and the Vietnamese community who just wanted to earn a living. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise at this point, but I'm glad that Johnson is shedding light on this story, as I'm sure I'm not the only Texan who was unaware of or too young to have seen this part of our history. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Texas history, Gulf Coast history, or the fight for justice in the South.
Thank you to Viking and NetGalley for providing a copy for review.
Rating: really liked it
I win a fair number of books, and when I receive them I go through the same ritual, hardback or paper covered. I open the front cover, I open the back cover, I fan the pages gently. While I was fanning the pages, I kept stopping and reading a line, a paragraph, a couple of pages. At that point, I knew I had to just read the book. It would gnaw at me until I did.
I remember part of this from the news at the time. Since I live in Colorado and the action takes place in Texas, I only paid slight attention. During the late 1970's and early 1980's, there was trouble between White and Vietnamese fishermen around Galveston. Pollution was cutting the amount of shrimp and crabs available to catch just as Vietnamese refugees were being settled there. Of course, it was the new Vietnamese fishermen who were responsible for the lower catch amounts. It couldn't be all the pollution the new petrochemical plants were spewing into the air and the water. Those plants were the source of economic prosperity. There were fights, rallies, marches, threats, boat burnings, and finally a lawsuit. That lawsuit was the beginning of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In places the book reads like a high power thriller, but everything in it actually happened. The SPLC is still with us. It puts national groups and individuals on its domestic terrorist list. We get most of our shrimp from Vietnam. The petrochemical plants still pollute the environment in a greater amount than is good for us, but not as much as before. There is now a limit to the amount of shrimp a shrimper can harvest in Galveston.
I don't read that many non-fiction books, but I completely enjoyed this one. It is recent history, but history that is ignored. I recommend this book highly. Now I have to find another book that grabs me as tightly.
I received the copy of the book that I read for this review from a Goodreads contest.
Rating: really liked it
The old adage that truth is stranger than fiction cannot be denied after reading THE FISHERMAN AND THE DRAGON. From the first page, I wanted to be able to flip back to the cover to find I was reading a John Grisham novel, not a well researched, fact filled look back at the Texas Gulf Coast in the late 70's and early 80's when a conflict between the local shrimpers and the new Vietnamese immigrants who wanted to break into the shrimping industry took on epic proportions. To anyone who does not believe fear can engulf communities, causing rash and dangerous actions, I say, "read this book." To anyone who denies that racism had (and still does) a strong hold on this country, I say, "read this book." To anyone who feels that the other guy can fight for justice, I say, " read this book." And finally, look around your home for every piece of pvc (plumbing) or plastic, then read this book. On one level, this book is about yet another industrial whistle blowing, a hard fought, and not yet completed, fight to save our environment - our air, our water, and our food. But mixed in there is a bizarre tale of hatred and fear bred out of racism and fueled by the Texas KKK. When I look back on my memories of the late 1970's and earl 80's, I remember a time of raising young children, working hard on one income, especially as gas prices and inflation rose. Despite that, I felt I was well informed about our country. I felt basically safe and imagined that families across the country felt the same. Nothing in my memory of that period of American news takes me to the Gulf, boat burnings, intimidation, Klan rallies, and violence. This is a book that I won't forget.
Rating: really liked it
A powerful story that begins in the 1970's and takes the reader to the present day. It begins with the battle over the rights to fishing lanes on the Texas Gulf Coast between Americans and newly planted Vietnamese. The fighting turns especially ugly when the KKK becomes involved. After a trial occurs that solves some of the problems the story turns to one of corporate greed by companies who have been dumping waste into these same waters and turning what was once a way of life for the fishermen in this area into the "cancer belt" of the nation. This is where the stories become somewhat intertwined. This is a fascinating story that reads like a novel. This is also a scary story that does not bode well for our food supply and leaves the reader wondering what the outcome will be and how much of this poison is making it to the tables of the average citizen. I read a couple of reviews actually blaming the Trump administration for this problem and, even though I am a registered Independent, I had to laugh. Trump wasn't in office until 2016 and this story begins over fifty years prior to that time and the issue is still on going after he has been out of office for almost two years. This makes me think about the moral of the story Mr. Johnson wrote in this book. The fishermen of the 1970's finally put away their differences and started working together in later years to fight the large corporations polluting the waters. Why can't we start doing the same thing and stop blaming others and work together to get something done?
Rating: really liked it
They were fighting one another when they should have been fighting the polluters. Johnson has written a terrific examination of a turning point in the history of the Texas Gulf Coast and in the effort to clean our waters. The Vietnamese fisherman who emigrated to the Gulf area were the subject of racism and attacks, especially after Billy Joe Aplin, who had instigated a lot of it, was shot by one of them, leading to an escalating period of violence which began to calm by the late 1980s. SO many lies, so much hatred toward the refugees and their families. Diane Wilson, from a fishing family, saw the problems coming from toxic run off and rallied the Vietnamese first and then the rest to sue, ultimately forcing the Taiwanese company which had been the biggest polluter to pay. Johnson has written a clear eyed history of the period, having interviewed people on all sides. He has a good narrative style backed up by strong and documented research. It's informative and enlightening. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. Excellent read.
Rating: really liked it
I found this book to be very compelling in the stories that it presented. Rather than being a 'screed' about discrimination, hate, etc. it told the story about a community finding difficulty in addressing issues that pitted some residents against others. Factory jobs or fishing jobs. Priorities placed on corporate needs rather than on complying with environmental regulations. The book balances the hateful events with the back stories of the people involved, sometimes showing the human interests as well as the selfish.
The book also made me think about America's current situation with misinformation, disinformation, prejudice, etc. When I talk with family and neighbors about such topics as immigration, I groan with frustration because the complexity of issue seems to not matters. This book addresses the various aspects of the fishing vs. corporate issues and makes the analysis compelling.
This book is a must read!
Rating: really liked it
Feels like three stories that shouldn't fit in the same book, but they do.
White shrimpers on the coast of Texas become convinced that their economic struggles are the fault of Vietnamese immigrants. Local acts of violence escalate with Klan involvement. The courage of the Vietnamese immigrants is impressive.
Meanwhile, industrial pollution escalates as well. Cancer Alley, etc. One (white) woman shrimper takes on a Taiwanese manufacturer of PVC. She tries meetings and press releases, she tries a lawsuit, she tries hunger strikes. She's still at it.
And along the way, there's the Southern Poverty Law Center. That story initially seems to be about a handful of white men from Alabama getting a redemption arc, but it takes a turn.
While I had a vague awareness of some of these stories, the details were new and interesting. It's depressing--so much destruction so that a few billionaires can have more billions? Heroes are few and far between, and complicity takes many forms.
Rating: really liked it
I first came across the work of Kirk Wallace Johnson when I read his book, The Feather Thief, for one of my local book clubs, and it was a phenomenal story. When I learned that he had written a new book, I was excited to jump right in. Like his other book, Johnson's writing in this book is instantly captivating, and I was quickly enmeshed in the story of the Vietnamese fisherman and their battle to be seen as people rather than pests. It saddens me that this is a part of history, and it makes me wonder what all of the fishermen could have accomplished if they had banded together against the true enemy, the big corporations responsible for polluting their fishing waters.
Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.
Rating: really liked it
Corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman’s relentless battle for environmental justice - that's a lot to weave into the narrative of a single setting. The stories the author relates are interesting, but not riveting. So many important themes were addressed I felt that more focus brought to just a couple might have made a more coherent and compelling read. The fact that very little is justly resolved was frustrating. In a story where even the "good guys" were sometimes awful, some of the more interesting information was buried in the epilogue.
Rating: really liked it
Kirk Wallace Johnson weaves together dozens of historical events during the assimilation of Vietnamese refugees into the shrimping industry of Galveston Bay after the Vietnam War. The book reads like a novel. I enjoyed the courtroom drama and description of KKK events more than the second half of the book devoted to one woman's fight against Formosa, a super-polluter of the shrimp and oyster waters. The issues were presented fairly, without political or environmental bias from the author. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Gulf Coast seafood industry and environmental issues.
