Additional information
by Monique Brinson Demery (Author)
In November 1963, the president of South Vietnam and his brother were brutally executed in a coup that was sanctioned and supported by the American government. President Kennedy later explained to his close friend Paul Red Fay that the reason the United States made the fateful decision to get rid of the Ngos was in no small part because of South Vietnam s first lady, Madame Nhu. That goddamn bitch, Fay remembers President Kennedy saying, She s responsible ... that bitch stuck her nose in and boiled up the whole situation down there.
Author Biography
Monique Brinson Demery took her first trip to Vietnam in 1997 as part of a study abroad program with Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She was the recipient of a US Department of Education grant to attend the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute in Hanoi, and in 2003, she received a Masters degree in East Asia Regional Studies from Harvard University. Demery's initial interviews with Madame Nhu in 2005 were the first that she had given to any Westerner in nearly twenty years. Demery lives in Chicago, Illinois.
