Ninh, Kim N(goc) B(ao) 1965-

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NINH, Kim N(goc) B(ao) 1965-

PERSONAL:

Born March 13, 1965, in Saigon, Vietnam. Ethnicity: "Vietnamese." Education: University of California—Berkeley, B.A., 1986; Yale University, M.A., 1988, Ph.D., 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Asia Foundation, 465 California St., Ninth Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94104. Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Michigan Press, 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-4388. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Author. Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA, assistant director of the Governance, Law, and Civil Society Programs.

WRITINGS:

A World Transformed: The Politics of Culture in Revolutionary Vietnam, 1945-1965, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Born in Vietnam, Kim N. B. Ninh attended college in the United States and has worked for the nonprofit Asia Foundation in San Francisco. In AWorld Transformed: The Politics of Culture in Revolutionary Vietnam, 1945-1965, Ninh looks at the Vietnamese culture of artists and intellectuals following the first two decades of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, from the communist-driven August Revolution of 1945 to the period when the United States began to escalate its involvement in the conflict between the north and the south. With access to extensive and never-before-available Vietnamese-language materials and intellectual works, such as dissident journals and North Vietnam Ministry of Culture documents, Ninh focuses primarily on North Vietnam as she analyzes the complex debates within Vietnamese society about national identity, culture, and even the self. The author pays particular attention to the Communist Party's efforts to reshape the country's culture to fit a socialist view of the world and how many intellectuals and communists became united in their view that a socialist state was the best path to an independent and modern Vietnam.

Reviewers have commented that Ninh's book addresses the greatly understudied and poorly understood postcolonial era in Vietnam, as the country struggled to free itself from French rule. Writing in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Bruce M. Lockhart noted that "Ninh's study makes a substantial contribution to our understanding" of the anti-French Resistance and its efforts from 1946 to 1954. However, Lockhart felt the book was "soulless in its treatment of what was a very anguished and bitter struggle for many intellectuals." Nevertheless, Lockhart stated that A World Transformed is "an extremely interesting book," even though readers unfamiliar with the early political developments of this era in Vietnamese history might not find the book "easily accessible." A contributor to the American Historical Review noted that "Ninh's excellent study of Vietnamese revolutionary politics from 1945 to 1965 makes an important contribution to … our understanding of modern Vietnamese history."