Please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year long with a subscription. This year we are also introducing a new digital bookstore. Please take one of our promo cards for information about the app and axis the special book deals. Before they can todays program please file ensure cell phones. You return your camera flash off. We will allow you to take pictures. You can post those pictures online using hashtag printers row. Gives me great pleasure to introduce to you guys are moderate todays conversation, eric banks. Mr. Banks. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome everybody. Its good to see you here this morning and its my pleasure to welcome today Monique Brinson demery, the author of the amazing book, finding the dragon lady the mystery of vietnams madame nhu, which has recently been published by Public Affairs books. She holds a masters degree from harvard university, and when she made contact with madame nhu who was the unofficial first lady of the south east government in 2005, she was the first journalist to interview her in almost 20 years. She is based in chicago where happy to walking, monique. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming today. Its such an interesting book. Im curious how you first became interested in writing a book about what i think a lot of people might be somewhat unlikely an unknown subject, someone who was known to scholars of history of the vietnam war, but probably not that well known to so many other people. How did you become interested in madame nhu . It started sort of by a mission. My mother is french and my dad is american, so it was a very clear to me what had happened there, and every time i tried to ask the adults around, it was too controversial to really talk about. So there is this nagging question of okay what happened in vietnam and every time i looked at a book there was a very gory picture, that youve seen a vietnam or napalm picture and then flip the page and heres this beautiful, stylish comes with a very cosmopolitan looking woman and theyre calling for the dragon lady, the diabolical what is not to be interested in . I started digging around, and actually out of curiosity wanted to read a book about this woman because her life sounded interesting to me, putting the pieces together. I would have known that she grew up during the French Colonial period and i thought, okay, someone has written maybe a great historical book about this one. There was nothing, really just these articles from the 60s that had been written about her. And then no biography, no mr. Koh fiction. What i noticed was no obituary. So that led me to think, ma wow, she still alive. Somewhere out there. Yes. Great fascination for writers who are reporting from vietnam. There was very much a builtup image of her in the United States, but then after she went into exile in rome and later in paris, she does kind of disappear from the records. You had a lot of sleuth working and tracking her down. I did. I mentioned there was no obituary. There was no obituary from madame nhu but what he did find was an obituary for parents. Her parents in 1986 were living in georgetown. They made the elder after he resigned in protest from his daughter and soninlaws government so they been living in georgetown. And 96 they were murdered in their sleep by their only son. And i thought, this is a reallife . This is nonfiction . So the ministry really threw me in zooming in and those of us time madame nhu emerged from her self imposed exclusion to say this is a family affair, leave my family alone. At the time she was living in rome but she was back and forth between rome and paris. Did you start out possibly, the parents, did you start out thinking about writing about their lives perhaps and then she became such an interesting figure to you a long the way . I sort of thought there was something there. Their faces looking, 90 im going to get the names wrong 90 and 86 or something when they were murdered and they were murdered i read in their pajamas. That seem so heartbreaking and sad. I start looking into it and what i found was that these lives, these very sympathetic, elderly couple had, in fact, lived quite a life before that. Madame nhus mother was known as the pearl of the orient by the french. And benefit archives was digging around all these references to she slept with and why and then she slept with the japanese. And in this sort of further confusing, she was 14 when she had her daughter. 14 years old. So i thought, theres really, theres so much contradiction here and she wasnt just a sweet old lady. She was a sweet old lady who slept around quite a bit. But you also had a daughter at 14. All of those questions kind of led me to pursue them. Its a very aristocratic family. We probably need to take a step back and see exactly who madame nhu was. She was calm her brotherinlaw, the brother of her husband became president of South Vietnam in 1956 or 55. Fiftyfour he becomes premier. So yes, madame nhu is the first de facto first lady because the president of South Vietnam, and theres a few titles before that, primus to, premier, for simplicity call him the president. He was a bachelor. Thats what makes them sound like he was going to vegas on the weekend but he was really very moral. He slept on a hard, wouldnt cant. He personally signed entry visas in and out of the country sing up late at night. Theres this very catholic austere man who needed a first lady became somewhat to host parties and go to the orphanages and those flowers should. So madame nhu, his younger brotherbrother site becomes thin and she perfect for. She looked great for the cameras. Should like to be out there. This gives her a voice. All of her life i think matter had been looking for the perfect combining, she was the second child, she been overlooked as a child. She had a bit of a chip on her shoulder, and so for her to be handed this, you go, b. The first lady, be the official hostess, she took it and ran with it. And she basically occupied this role up until 1963, when the government was upended, and her husband and her brotherinlaw were both executed. Thats right. And one within. Madame nhu wasnt just first lady to she was overwhelmingly elected by like an unrealistic 99. 9 of the population to hold seats in congress, in their legislature. So by doing so should still the first lady hosting parties but you can also pass laws. So madame nhu past these family and morality laws. Some of them were very well intended, i think perhaps theyre all well intended but south of the needs women were not able to open Bank Accounts but they were not touch the South Vietnamese women. Madame nhu before the laws. So madame nhu recognized what her husband and her brother did that was the 50 of the population was being just ignored except by the communists were doing a great job of recruiting women. So madame nhu thought okay, lets give these women some rights and some power, and she did and sort of took it upon herself to be the voice of the women. She doesnt like most vietnamese women. She came from a very aristocratic family. They spoke french at the dinner table. So for her to suddenly declare herself a voice of the vietnamese woman was all presumptions. She couldnt mshas unable to write in vietnamese, is that correct speak what she didnt write, i mean she could, but she expressed herself most will only in french which is what of course she studied in school and what they spoke at home. So the other laws that she passed were a little ridiculous. I mean, thinking about them in context it seems to make sense. Vietnam was a country at war and the north vietnamese, the communist were to ever good job of saying this is a war, we have to treat it is usually. Madame nhu was wordy, its becoming like a party. There were girly bars and all of that stuff that is on restarting and madame nhu said no, we have to take a series of. So she outlawed dancing along with prostitution. She outlawed hand holding and kissing but she outlawed underwire bras, but she wore them. So she had these sort of, this moral like high horse, and then the best was her sister had been married off young like a madame nhu head, this is her older sister issues married to a guy who worked for the government. They fell out of love i guess come in a, and she fell in love instead with a french guy. He was a big game hunter and madame nhu thought you cant leave good upstanding vietnamese guys for a french guy. Disappointing colonial. So when her sister tried to divorce her husband, madame nhu outlawed divorce, and the story goes, theres a record of this but the story goes madame nhu sister slashed her wrists and going to the pound and madame nhu locks up in hospital and takes her own mother to come back to saigon to break up the daughter then goes to the United States enters the french guy anyway. They are still alive, correct . I believe so. She lives in north carolina, correct . I tried to reach out to her with letters, but the event unanswered. So her husband has published a couple memoirs at this time, and they been published by a small press and candida, perhaps selfpublished. Quite interesting. One of the things remarkable about your book and her store, and i should point out you mentioned her looks, a real striking figure is hard to characterize her but the image on the cover really says it all. You all probably cant see it from a distance, but she knows how to handle a pistol. And especially with the sort of beehive haircut that gives a nice lucks been she did have a fashion thing. A high collar, a manager in color and madame nhu was one of the first to say, you know, if youve got it, flaunt it. So she cut the neck down so you could see kind of her collarbone. At the time this was like really risk a. So the president , her brotherinlaw, said dont you think thats a little too flashy quick she said Something Like, its not your neck that is sticking out, its mine so shut up. Thats a great line. What is going to say though is its fascinating not just from a geopolitical standpoint and from a historical standpoint but it really is a family saga as well. One also where you see someone who is able to use whatever we think about her, and we can come back to that end a little bit, has this incredible amount of gumption. She managed to create herself and to really direct her own idea of what a public image would be, with an iron will pick anything thats really fascinating about her. And it seems like when you may contact with her, many years later, that that sense of herself was still very much intact. I love the word gumption but i think thats a great description. And yes, madame nhu was going to tell her own story. So when i did find madame nhu she was in her early 80s, and she sort of said to me, this is great. You are the angels that god sent to me. We are going to do my memoirs. Youre going to get me a book deal, its going to be great. And i was like, all right, you know. But i wanted to hear what she had to say but she had very specific way of seeing her past, which is understandable. Perhaps we all revise history in our own way but madame nhu, she was vietnam was the center of the universe and she was sort of the thing everything revolves around. So she was very much at the center of her story, but then again it was also understandable. Her husband and brotherinlaw were killed by the sanction of the americans and should gone through this life had been quite hard. And so i think to make sense of it she really turned to religion and that was the only way that she could really make sense of things, and biblically or ordained. A joan of arc idea, survivor story. How did she come do you think its just the force of her personality gave her the presents she had in the government . The american thought she was really the problem behind the problem that were very clear with, in the South Vietnamese government, that she was the one pulling the strings. I think the way that you write about or she does come across as a who had an unbelievable amount of influence over what her brotherinlaw did. Do you think thats just come you know, force of the personnel because you write about, for example, when she was taken a prisoner of war in 1946 by the communists, and that this figure images from that who is so strong. Is that your sense of it or do you think her role has been somewhat overrated in government . I think it is actual bit of both, if thats possible. Madame nhu has the story of when shes taken by the communists and shes carrying her infant daughter, walking across the bridge and bullets are flying and she emerges unscathed. For her, she was like oh, yeah, i got i a. All got to do is be brave. And that message, that, in the face of your in any, stare him down, and stand strong the matter what you do dont back down, that was kind of her motto. Everything she tried to pass that on to the brothers. There was one point when they ty were negotiating, there didnt t attend to attend an institution to open up his government and madame nhu thought that was just awful, that he would dare to share power and all of us do. She convinced him to stand firm. In some way yes, she had the power to convince the brothers that they did need to open up the government. They needed to lock all the doors and keep it even more but i think the other thing is just the appearance that it looked like the men were following what she said. Kennedy said Something Like she looks like she is leading the meant around by her apron strings. So theyre just sort of following and i think i was just as dangerous as any real power, to make it, they were sort of an estimate by her and that was kennedys biggest fear is that they would look like america was following us for late around and that was not going to fly. Yes, and so much of her criticism of, well, i should put it this way. So much of her reaction to what was taking place in vietnam, modernization, its neocolonialization if you want to call it that, westernization that started to appear in South Vietnam, in the late 50s and 60s that she run it against, was very much a criticism of america. It put her very much, because so much of that was made possible by the influx of Foreign Policy money from the United States, which put her very quickly i think on the opposite side of the thinking of the government of the United States. States. She was happy for the money. Lets be clear, that was how they were funding the fight. But what they wanted was the money but then stay out of our business, let us run our government. And the United States obviously wanted Strings Attached to that money. When things were going the right way, for example, the United States tried to send in Ground Troops a lot earlier but the brothers of said absently not. You know, these have to be advisors only. It wasnt until much later that the vietnam war escalate into what it became. There were several trenches attempts against the government began in 1960, i believe. Coup attends. A couple of air men desperate she narrowly survived spent there was a direct hit on madame nhus bedroom. Some rogue South Vietnamese air force pilot was tired of this sort of bossy lady, pushy lady. One of the vietnamese i talked to said she was, talked to big. She was too much. One of these South Vietnamese air force pilots was upset about it and did a direct hit of her sweet. So there was this gaping hole. Madame nhu fell through she said three stories again, one of her sort of survival, she survived it, it was magical. But she hurt her arm but one of the childrens nannies was killed but otherwise no one, no one in the family was hurt. And then finally the protest against the government began to escalate in 62 and 63, and there are, for the first time very strong confrontation with the buddhists in vietnam, which he described very well. Why dont you tell us about how those protests started and what, i think this is really when madame nhu filter place, a bad figure in history around the buddhists protest to if you will remember, there was the famous pictures of the Buddhist Monks burning themselves at traffic stops. I think they were seven who committed suicide that way, the way of protesting against the government. It started with a law that had been on the books since colonial time. No flag was allowed to flya state like but, of course, nobody really paid attention to the. There had just been a catholic festival and white and gold flags have been flying all over, and so for the buddhists birthday sometime in may, one of the brothers, so theres the president , his brother, madame nhus husband who was kind of ahead of the secret police, also in charge of all the politics, he was kind of a guy who did the dirty deeds, and there were a few other brothers, one of whom was the archbishop of a city in central vietnam. When is coming into town one when he noticed that buddhist flag was flying to i. So he ordered people to take it down and there was this backlash by the buddhists of why are you enforcing this random law now against the backing down and saying, youre right, were making a mess out of this, they cracked down and it was suddenly a protest by the buddhists. People started firing on them. People were killed, and so then assessing we are sorry, things got out of hand. The family played the communist. Blame the communist. Sort quickly turn into a mess, and basically the buddhists repression was less, less repression in the way we think of now than more of a vehicle for every grievance you think of because no one had been allowed to say anything against this family. But 90 of the country was buddhists so anyone could identify with this, youre putting down these people, so it would everybody jumped on the bandwagon. Elderly monks were self immolating, which means they were letting themselves on fire. When madame nhu solid, she sounded like marie antoinette. You know, great, lets clap our hands and have a barbecue. The most cruel response you get to old Buddhist Monk lighting himself on fire and that just spread like wildfire around the world. People couldnt believe that she could be so callous. Now, from madame nhus perception was the buddhists have been intoxicated, which doesnt mean drunk, it means poison. They been intoxicated by communism everywhere a very loose knit association organization. There were no strict rules coming in, coming out. Madame nhu was pretty sure they had already been infiltrated by kindness. And it turns out actually that by 1968, the United States even