Finding the Dragon Lady

Western culture has for many decades harbored a unfair, ugly but persistent stereotype of the Evil Asian Woman, supposedly exemplified by a series of women in powerful positions: China’s Dowager Empress. Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Imelda Marcos. The target of the 1960s was Madame Nhu, the sister-in-law of Ngo Dinh Diem, the authoritarian ruler of Vietnam…