Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon

by Tai, Hue-Tam Ho

• ISBN13: 9780520262263
• ISBN10: 0520262263
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-05-14
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

This is the incredible story of Bao Luong, Vietnam's first female political prisoner. In 1927, when she was just 18, Bao Luong left her village home to join Ho Chi Minh's Revolutionary Youth League and fight both for national independence and for women'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 Luong's own memoir with excerpts from newspaper articles, family gossip, and official documents, this book by Bao Luong'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 woman's struggle to make a place for herself in a world fraught with intense political intrigue.

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Principal Characters	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Girl from the South	p. 12
From Faithful Moon to Precious Honesty	p. 23
Apprentice Revolutionaries	p. 37
Vignettes from the Revolution	p. 53
Prelude to a Murder	p. 62
The Crime on Barbier Street	p. 88
The End of the Revolutionary Youth League	p. 102
The Road to Hell	p. 115
Down among Women	p. 139
The Verdict	p. 166
Life and Death	p. 175
Notes	p. 181
Glossary	p. 187
Bibliography	p. 189
Index	p. 191
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.