Author. Journalist. Lecturer.
The Author
Inette Miller has been a national and international journalist, lecturer, and a writing workshop teacher throughout her life. She has published three memoirs and one collection of personal essays. Each memoir defines a pivotal, transformative life juncture – within late 20th century cultural currents. Her memoirs have been produced as feature film; translated into a half dozen languages; and honored with national awards. She is a member of the Authors Guild.
Inette lives with her husband, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, on the Island of Kaua’i.
Newest Release: January, 2021
Girls Don’t! A Woman’s War in Vietnam
The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The women’s movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily reviled as “libbers.” Inette Miller is one year out of college—a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to accompany him to war. There are obstacles. All wives of US military are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper’s editor, Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter. Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After thirty days, she is on her own. As one of the rare women war correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army soldier, Miller’s experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don’t shines a light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious woman of that era and illustrates the schizophrenic struggle between the forces of powerful feminist ideology and the contrarian forces of the world as it was. Girls Don’t is the story of what happens when a twenty-three-year-old feminist makes her way into the land of machismo. This is a war story, a love story, and an open-hearted confessional within the burgeoning women’s movement, chronicling its demands and its rewards. Available everywhere. Click to order.
“Distance did not serve the purpose of truth in this dual-level story: the War for the soul of two nations; the war for gender equality. The first-person voice in this book extinguishes distance, exposes deception, and puts their
emotional fodder in our faces.”
Read a full interview with Inette Miller on #MeToo, Feminism, and Writing Vietnam
Reviews
New York Journal of Books
Inette Miller has the distance and detachment of a journalist trained to see the big picture—and the heart of a woman who understands what it is like to be “the other.” It is these differing perspectives that make Miller’s Vietnam War memoir Girls Don’t! so compelling.Miller grew up in a time and place when women were generally expected to marry and have children. A job and a career came second to being a wife and mother. Miller does marry, but largely because in doing so she can go to Vietnam, a journey she makes precisely “because that’s not where girls were expected to go.” Read in full: https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/girls-dont-womans-war
Reviewer: Author Katya Cengel, whose most recent book is the award-winning, From Chernobyl With Love: Reporting the Ruins of the Soviet Union
Memoir writing at its finest
This magnum opus is unputdownable. The author was a young newspaper reporter in the 1970s who decided to become a war correspondent so she could follow the man she loved who was shipping out to Vietnam. Wow. What a premise for a present-day movie, only unlike a contrived Hollywood story this one really happened. GIRLS DON'T is a gripping narrative of love and war and journalism in our time, and the reader becomes very involved in the parallel stories told here; hers and his. You care deeply for both of these special people, and so want them to make it. Buckle up. What a ride!
Bruce Henderson, New York Times Best selling author of: Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler. and Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War,
Recent Interviews
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A Woman's War in Vietnam (Video)
Inette fleshes out the differences confronting a woman correspondent in the Vietnam War. She is interviewed by History Professor Preston Jones.
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A Writer's Reflections (Audio)
Inette explores the inner life of a professional writer. She is interviewed by journalist Sara Esther Asher and Opyrus Writers’ Collective CEO Arthur Gutch.
Other works by Inette Miller
Grandmother’s Whisper
Inette Miller is a Jewish woman, a writer, a level-headed single mother agreeing to a rite of passage that demanded she walk naked in someone else’s homeland – trek the blurred borders of magic. She was mute that first year, but she is no longer shy about telling her story. This is the story of the human possibilities of spirit. It is equally the story of the human path, burdened with fears and doubts. She went on vacation for a week, and she stayed for a lifetime.
The Return Voyage
‘Iokepa is a Native Hawaiian, who relinquished “everything I’d worked for all my life” to embrace his aboriginal identity and reawaken his ancestral culture.
Inette is a Jewish woman, who surrendered a privileged writer’s life to join him, camping on Hawaiian beaches with little food and no money, and walking the paths of his ancestors.
Together, they packed all they owned into three suitcases and began their ancestor-driven Return Voyage across America. Their message: what Native Hawaiians lived for 12,000 years – ritual practices that prevented war – have profound implications for the 21st century.
Return Voyage Website & Blog
Inette lives with her husband, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, on the Island of Kaua’i. She shares a website with him at: www.ReturnVoyage.com.
Accolades
BBC National Book Tour, England
Books translated into six foreign editions
Taught “Writing to Find Your Voice Workshops” across the nation
Lorimar produced, ABC Sunday Movie of the Week film adaptation of Burning Bridges
Extensive coast to coast American Book Tours including appearances on the: CBS Morning Show; Phil Donahue Show; Sally Jesse Raphael
Authors’ Guild member since 1986
Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowships
National Visionary Award Book of the Year, Grandmothers Whisper