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

nhan at temple.edu

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