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
Juxtaposition to my grandmother who was a big character in the story it was very and xenophobic so how she shaped my life as well and part of the reason i became an engineer was because of that and in pursuit of a career in the arts early on. In this book you sort of see you are reading i would hope you are reading with the context of this little kid who i am showing you eventually grows up and has this amazing moment in history. Wide view open the story with a wave of . Host in some ways she is the cause of a lot of trauma and she was very verbally abusive and very homophobic as i said and xenophobic. But on the flip side of that ironically in some way she made me a writer because she made me were withdrawn and maybe an observer of the world versus a participant. Also that led me to become, to learn how to read people. I had to know how to read people to know how to respond and not get called a you know what by her by others. All that power of observation and reading in between the li
[inaudible conversations] who has won the most money so far . Raise your hand. You can totally take me to dinner. It would be great. We can do that shopping thing like in a decent proposal except for the part that because thats not going to happen but i love the dress. No . Very good. Do we have a decision . Your honor . Members of the jury had he reached a verdict . We have. Very good. Will the defense attorney Dinesh Dsouza please rise and face the jury. Here we go again. [laughter] madam foreperson please read your verdict. Yes we the members of the jury find the defendant not guilty. [applause] oh no you did. You are totally undefeated. You are the Floyd Mayweather of freedom fest. [applause] all right, mr. Dsouza you and your friends have been found not guilty and therefore you are free to go and enjoy a night in the city of las vegas, the most lascivious and succulent Entertainment City in the world known as sid city where you are free from the taliban were you may enjoy life lib
Dallas and theres a ranch there and she gets invited to go shooting. So her daughter dresses up in like western gear and apparel has the first kind of teenage romance with a texas guy. And her reception that madame nhu gets from her mother, was very worried about madame nhus visit to the United States so she posts a state department has had an estimate as has madame nhu really shouldnt come you. I have arent all that the in these to throw tomatoes after and if they see her to run her over with the car. This is her mother. She does get tomatoes for better. She also gets Standing Ovations from fordham, from georgetown, from a lot of Catholic Education speed is good to say, she really mapped out the Catholic College and universities, i can or as part of her tour was she presented at that point as her catholicism commune, very important part of her political ideology, if you want to call it that. Was she seen in that light, in 1963 in the United States . I assume to the extent that she was
Certainly get shoved into one of these to the categories. We even had chicagos tokyo rose. When i was trying to kind of wrecking waits this very complex figure, you present her and all are complex today, which i think is wonderful. I kept thinking also about modelo to mark those who doesnt come up in the book, this strikes me as a counter model. She certainly was a figure like that. The mac now she wasnt. Registered theres an offbroadway play in new york. Discussing about the delta markers. I think it was called boots. A thousand shoes. Its called here lies love. And i think madame nhu would be a great character for his next. She was flamboyant and didnt go quietly either. Has anyone been interested in making a film about her life if im asked quite not that i know of. The next theres anyone out there, taking authors. Thats right. What was she like . You portray this very well in the book, but tell us about what she was like when you anointed a contact. She wasnt exactly advertising whe