Synopses & Reviews
This is the incredible story of Bao Luong, Vietnamand#8217;s first female political prisoner. In 1927, when she was just 18, Bao Luong left her village home to join Ho Chi Minhand#8217;s Revolutionary Youth League and fight both for national independence and for womenand#8217;s equality. A year later, she became embroiled in the Barbier Street murder, a crime in which unruly passion was mixed with revolutionary ardor. Weaving together Bao Luongand#8217;s own memoir with excerpts from newspaper articles, family gossip, and official documents, this book by Bao Luongand#8217;s niece takes us from rural life in the Mekong Delta to the bustle of colonial Saigon. It provides a rare snapshot of Vietnam in the first decades of the twentieth century and a compelling account of one womanand#8217;s struggle to make a place for herself in a world fraught with intense political intrigue.
Review
and#8220;This book will serve as a valuable means of entering the turbulent world of Vietnam in the 1920s and 30s.and#8221;
Synopsis
"This book makes its entry into a fieldand#151;modern Vietnamese historyand#151;that is quite starved of detailed social history. It will deepen our understanding of the period, fill in important knowledge gaps, and inspire new inquiries."and#151;Christoph Giebel, author of Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory
About the Author
Hue-Tam Ho Tai is Kenneth T. Young Professor of Sino-Vietnamese History at Harvard University. She is the editor of The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam (UC Press) and the author of Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution and Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam.