Half a century after the CIA's Secret War in Laos—the largest bombing campaign in history—explosive remnants of war continue to be part of people's everyday lives. In Bomb Children Leah Zani offers a perceptive analysis of the long-term, often subtle, and unintended effects of massive air warfare. Zani traces the sociocultural impact of cluster submunitions—known in Laos as “bomb children”—through stories of explosives clearance technicians and others living and working in these old air strike zones. Zani presents her ethnography alongside poetry written in the field, crafting a startlingly beautiful analysis of state terror, authoritarian revival, rapid development, and ecological contamination. In so doing, she proposes that postwar zones are their own cultural and area studies, offering new ways to understand the parallel relationship between ongoing war violence and postwar revival.

Leah Zani is a Junior Fellow in the Social Science Research Network at the University of California, Irvine.

Acknowledgments  vii
Note on the Lao Language  ix
Fieldpoem 30: Postwar  1
Introduction: The Fruit Eaters  3
Fieldpoem 11: The Fruit Eaters  36
1. The Dragon and the River  37
Fieldpoem 15: "The Rice Is More Delicious after Bomb Clearance"  64
2. Ghost Mine  65
Fieldpoem 23: Blast Radius  97
3. Blast Radius  98
Fieldpoem 26: House Blessings  130
Conclusion: Phaseout  131
Fieldpoem 18: Children  149
Appendix: Notes on Fieldpoems  151
References  155
Index  165