Duong Van Mai Elliott | |
---|---|
Born | 1941 (age 82–83) Vietnam |
Occupation | Author, writer, translator |
Education | Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service (1963) |
Notable works | The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era |
Duong Van Mai Elliott is a Vietnamese author, writer and translator. Her memoir, The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (Oxford University Press), [1] tells the story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese family. She was also featured in The Vietnam War, PBS's 18-hour documentary series on the conflict. [2]
Duong Van Mai Elliott was born in 1941 into a middle-class family with eleven other siblings. [3] Her father held several official positions under the French-controlled Vietnamese government. [3] He later became the post-WWII governor of Haiphong, following his family's long-standing tradition of serving in various bureaucratic roles. [3] Mai Elliot's great-grandfather Duong Lam, who was proficient in Confucian classics, served under the last emperor of Vietnam, Tu Duc, as a mandarin. [4]
Mai Elliott's family lived in the official residences of Hanoi until the outbreak of World War II. [4]
In the aftermath of WWII, the growing influence of the Viet Minh drove a wedge between her family members as they were split across ideological lines. [4] Her parents were against the communist organization, and her father reluctantly served under the French. Mai Elliott's sister, however, was pro-communist and lived in the jungles of North Vietnam fighting alongside the Viet Minh, accompanied by her husband. [4] Two of her elder brothers were also drafted into the Viet Minh militia. [4] The involvement of Mai Elliott's family members in Vietnamese politics gave her an insight into the perspective and opinions of the middle class on the Vietnam War, which helped her memoir, "The Sacred Willow". [5]
Mai Elliott and her family moved to Saigon during her adolescence. [4]
In 1960, Mai Elliott was awarded a scholarship by the U.S. government to pursue post-secondary education in the United States under its "Leadership Training Program". [4] At the age of nineteen, Mai Elliott flew to the U.S. against her parents' wishes to study diplomacy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C. [4] She graduated in 1963 with a major in Political science. [6]
After her graduation from Georgetown University, Mai Elliott returned to Saigon and lived there from 1963 to 1968. [6] Initially, Mai Elliott planned to work for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry due to the influences of her family tradition of government service. [6] Mai Elliott's marriage with an American, David Elliott, disrupted this plan. [6] Instead, she worked for an American think tank, the RAND Corporation. [7] She participated in the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project from 1964 to 1968. Her task was to interview Viet Cong prisoners of war and defectors to find out the morale and impetus of the guerrillas. [7] At the end of this job, Mai Elliott and her husband David Elliott co-authored "Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition Platoon of the 514th Battalion", which was published by RAND Corporation in 1969.
In 1975, when the Vietnam War came to an end, Mai Elliott moved back to the U.S. where she started a career in corporate banking. [6] She eventually resigned from her job so as to write the book "The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family", for which she had received a NEH grant of $80,000 to research and write. [7] The book was published by Cambridge University Press in April 1999.
In 2010, the RAND Corporation published her second book "RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era". [8]
From 2014 to 2017, Mai Elliott served as one of the advisers for the PBS documentary series "The Vietnam War", directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. She was also frequently featured on the show. [9]
Mai Elliott's inspiration to write her family's memoir stemmed from a desire to return to her origins after having travelled the world. [10] One of her intentions behind writing The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (1999) [11] was to provide her family members, who were now scattered around the world, with a written account of their family history. [10] Mai Elliott also sought for the memoir to become a lens through which readers could better understand Vietnamese history, and the common struggles experienced by the displaced Vietnamese diaspora at large. [10]
Traditional Vietnamese personal names generally consist of three parts, used in Eastern name order.
Vietnam competed at the 2005 Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines under the IOC country code VIE. By sending a delegation of 516 athletes and competing in 33 out of 40 sports and in 352 out of a total of 439 events, it aimed for a top three placing in the medals table. The final result showed that the Vietnamese team has attained its goal by ranking first in the medal tally with 18 gold, 24 silver and 11 bronze medals. The chief of mission to the games was Nguyen Hong Minh.
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