My father, Nguyen Dinh
Nam (31), and my mother, Vu Thi Chin (28), at Montsouris park in Paris
(1952).
At that time he was a student of Sorbonne university and
she - an internate student of the Paris medicine institute.
They graduated in 1954, he as a licencié in mathematics and she as a
medical doctor in pediatry.
They returned back to Vietnam in 1954 after Vietnam won
the battle at Dien Bien Phu ending the war with France. My mother
eventually became the first woman, who had the degree of doctor of medicine in
Vietnam. She opened a small practice in Hanoi in a house, where all their
three children - my eldest brother, my elder sister and myself, were born
and where they are now still living. Soon after the Ho Chi Minh's
government entered Hanoi, she closed her practice and joined a new
hospital, which was established by the new government. My father was
teaching mathematics, French and English in a Hanoi high-school until his
retirement in 1981.
My father wrote beautiful poems in Vietnamese and French, a part of which is dedicated to my mother. Recently, with the assistance of his younger sister, his poems were printed in one volume entitled "Mes amours et ma haine" (My loves and my hate) with an introduction written by his former mentor, the late Mr. Nguyen Manh Tuong, who was a famous scholar of French literature and French culture in Vietnam. It is my pleasure to introduce some of them here.
Nguyen Dinh Nam, "Tinh va han cua toi" (tri'ch)
A poem by Tuong Pho dedicated to my mother
My
mother among the participants of a seminar
on children diseases (Paris,
1953)
Publications by my mother