National Committee of the Women's Union for the Liberation of South Vietnam (1974)
Evyn L Espiritu evyn.espiritu at berkeley.edu
Wed Jan 6 22:09:01 PST 2016
Dear all,
I am writing to request more information regarding a member of the National
Committee of the Women's Union for the Liberation of South Vietnam, who
served as the head of this committee's delegation to a conference hosted by
the General Union of Palestinian Women in 1974. The attached document
transcribes this woman's name as Madame Ying Nol Tsnu. However, this is
not a Vietnamese spelling. I was wondering if anyone had any more
information about this person or this organization, or if anyone could tell
me the proper Vietnamese spelling of the name.
Many thanks,
Evyn Lê Espiritu
PhD Student
Department of Rhetoric
University of California, Berkeley
Nhan Ngo nhan at temple.edu
Thu Jan 7 07:28:33 PST 2016
Was it Nguyễn Thị Định?
Or Nguyễn Thị Bình, Vice Chair?
Or Nguyễn Thị Thanh Hoà, but not likely?
My 2 cents,
Ngo Thanh Nhan
Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture & Society
Temple University
Frank Proschan frank.proschan at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 7 13:25:48 PST 2016
Could this be Nguyen Ngoc Dung, cited as a participant for the UWLSV in a 1965 meeting in Jakarta with the Women’s Strike for Peace, several other meetings in the late 1960s, and head of a delegation to China in 1974?
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks <https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=Union+of+Women+for+the+Liberation+of+South+Vietnam+%22Nguyen+Ngoc+Dung%22&> &hl=en&q=Union+of+Women+for+the+Liberation+of+South+Vietnam+%22Nguyen+Ngoc+Dung%22&=
One can perhaps recognize “Nguyen” as “Ying”, “Ngoc” as “Nol” and “Tsnu” as “Dzung” – I don’t know the phonetics of Palestinian Arabic, but I could imagine that by the time the Vietnamese were rendered in Arabic and then Romanized into English, a little accuracy might have been lost along the way. There seems to be a consistent metathesis going on, if my guess is correct.
(Not sure if this is the same Ms Nguyen Ngoc Dung who represented Vietnam in 1981 at a Security Council debate on Israel’s attach on an Iraqi nuclear facility, but she there reiterated Vietnam’s solidarity with the Palestinian people.)
Best,
Frank Proschan
Amateur Morphophonologist
Washington, DC
Neil Olsen olseneil at comcast.net
Thu Jan 7 15:24:46 PST 2016
Nguyễn Thị Định was the co-founder and chair and Nguyễn Thị Bình was the Vice Chair of the Union.
Neil Olsen
Frank Proschan frank.proschan at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 8 09:42:12 PST 2016
Evyn,
Your best bet would be to search the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports, Joint Publications Research Service and BBC Summary of World Broadcasts for the month of August 1974, when the conference was organized in Beirut. A government documents reference librarian there at Berkeley should be able to tell you which series covered Lebanon in that period. You’ll still be relying on translations from Arabic, but perhaps there will be more than a single source and you can triangulate to the real Madame Tsnu.
Good luck,
Frank Proschan
Washington, DC