Roadside
My Journey to Iraq and the Long Road Home
Airman Dylan Park-Pettiford’s powerful memoir Roadside chronicles his Iraq War deployment and hard times back home.
Half Black, half Korean, Park-Pettiford often felt like an outsider in Oakland. He enlisted in the air force after 9/11 and served for six years, combating racism and discrimination all the while. While he was deployed in Iraq, he experienced stretches of boredom punctuated by the terror of roadside bombs and sniper fire. He and his fellow soldiers drank energy drinks to stay alert, stocked up on toiletries at the PX, and watched bootleg films in their downtime. Park-Pettiford also befriended a Kurdish teenager, Brahim, whose assistance was given at a risk to his own family. When he returned home, Park-Pettiford faced conflicts including substance abuse, divorce, and homelessness; it seemed that the violence of the war zone had followed him home.
Sentimentality is eschewed in this unvarnished text, which notes that the flashing lights of tracer rounds in the distance might have been considered romantic by those who did not know what they did. In moments of action, the book is propulsive, conveying how explosions shook the barracks at a forward operating base and how anxiety spiked in new soldiers experiencing rocket attacks for the first time. Scenes come alive due to concrete language and palpable details, as of what it felt like to promise to see Brahim again, knowing it likely would never happen.
A gripping memoir, Roadside is resonant in discussing both war and loss. Dark humor gives the pages wry perspective, as when, with clear-eyed cynicism, Park-Pettiford dissects the rhetoric surrounding arming Iraqis, which is said to have benefited defense contractors most. There are also poignant depictions of death, with the book having previously established the related relationships in depth.
Reviewed by
Joseph S. Pete
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