The Emperor’s Lost Daughter
John Phan, Assistant professor in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University interviews his father, Phan Công Tâm, Former Assistant to the Commissioner for Special Operations at the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) for the Republic of Vietnam, about a singular post-colonial story that brings together the Central African Republic and South Vietnam around the search for Martine Bokassa, Jean-Bédel Bokassa’s daughter.
John Phan is an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, at Columbia University. His research focuses on the linguistic history of Vietnam and China, as well as the development of Vietnamese vernacular literature over the early modern period. He is particularly interested in the effects of multilingualism in single societies, especially the coincidence of non-spoken literary languages alongside a variety of vernacular spoken languages with oral literary traditions. Phan’s forthcoming book, to be published by Harvard Asia Center Press, is entitled Lost Tongues of the Red River: Annamese Middle Chinese and the Origins of the Vietnamese Language. His current project focuses on the transformation of vernacular Vietnamese language, as it was adapted over the early modern period from a purely spoken medium, into a new vehicle for written literary expression.
