Vietnamese, 20th – 21st century, female.
Born 1952, in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Film-maker, writer, composer. Feminism, race, post-colonialism, diaspora.
Trinh T. Minh-ha studied piano and music composition at the National Conservatory of Music and Theater in Saigon and comparative literature at the University of Saigon before migrating to the United States in 1970. She took up further studies in music composition, ethno-musicology, and French literature at the University of Illinois, where she received her M.F.A.s and Ph.D. She also studied at the Wilmington College in Ohio and at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). From 1977 to 1981, she did ethnographic field research in West Africa that led to her first film, Reassemblage, which was shot in Senegal. She has written a number of books, including the seminal Woman, Native, Other in 1989, as well as collaborated with the architect Jean-Paul Bourdier on two books, African Spaces: Designs for Living in Upper Volta...