Duong Van Mai Elliott

Early life and education Dương Vân Mai was born in 1941 into a middle-class family with eleven other siblings. He later became the post-WWII governor of Haiphong, following his family's long-standing tradition of serving in various bureaucratic roles.

The Dương family lived in the official residences of Hanoi until the outbreak of World War II.

Mai and her family moved to Saigon in 1954, during her adolescence. Initially, Mai planned to work for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry due to the influences of her family tradition of government service. She participated in the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project from 1964 to 1968. Her task was to interview Viet Cong prisoners of war and defectors to find out the morale and impetus of the guerrillas.

Inspiration for The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family Mai Elliott's inspiration to write her family's memoir stemmed from a desire to return to her origins after having travelled the world. was to provide her family members, who were now scattered around the world, with a written account of their family history. They reviewed 17 dossiers that had information on the daily training activities of Viet Cong members from 1966 to 1967. She conducted in-depth interviews with relatives located in the United States, France, Canada, Australia, and Vietnam. Mai Elliott wrote her memoir through a technique of multiple narratives, as opposed to writing in the traditional method of individual voice. The Sacred Willow serves as an important piece of Asian-American literature that provides insight on what Rocio Davis calls the "uncritical narratives of history". She discusses the influence of the findings in RAND on US foreign policy during the Vietnam War. No Other Road to Take: The Memoirs of Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dinh (1976): Mai Elliott translated the autobiography of Nguyen Thi Dinh, a leader in the resistance against the French and the uprising against Ngo Dinh Diem.

Filmography Television The Vietnam War (2017): a PBS documentary miniseries directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. It consists of 10 episodes, and incorporates 100 war witnesses from both sides of the conflict.