In the next episode of ‘Fulbright Speakers’ Series: The World Beyond a Book’, Fulbright University Vietnam cordially invites you to a luncheon talk with Ms. Isabelle Müller about her book, “Phoenix Daughter – Hope Was My Way”.
⏰Time: 11:30 AM – 01:00 PM on Tuesday, December 13, 2022 (Vietnam time, GMT +7)
📌Location: Classroom 501, Floor 5, Fulbright University Vietnam
👉 Register at: https://forms.office.com/r/KFjvdJjtqD
🌟 Lunch will be provided at the venue based on your registration.
Vietnamese-French writer Isabelle Müller is often asked if she wrote her memoir “Phoenix Daughter – Hope Was My Way” as a therapy to deal with past trauma. Her answer is clear: “Definitely not.”
The essence of this book is not the suffering that she has experienced in life, but what the suffering has made her: a happy and strong person. The story of Müller’s life gives readers strength, hope, positive energy, and courage to live for the future. It encourages people to question life and themselves, again and again, to conquer their own fears, and believe in their dreams. It shows how just because some things have always been a certain way, they do not have to stay that way.
“Life is a constant process. Nothing stops. Everyone and everything evolves. By regularly questioning something, you can determine whether everything is right in your life. Whether the things that fill your own life, the environment, the people make you happy. If not, it’s time to act and make a difference,” Müller says.
“Phoenix Daughter – Hope Was My Way” is Müller’s second book to be published in Việt Nam, after the success of her previous best-selling book about her mother, “Lo-Anh – From the Life of a Phoenix” released in Vietnamese in 2018.
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Fulbright Speakers’ Series is a quest for knowledge and understanding with diverse incisive viewpoints of prominent authors, both in Vietnam and globally, venturing into a myriad of topics ranging from development history and current Vietnam in the context of globalization, to the importance of mental health in being a compassionate community member.
About the speaker:
Müller was the fifth child of a Vietnamese mother and a French father, growing up in abject poverty in a French village in the 1960s. Her father was a sadist, and she was raised in a heavily racist environment.
However, Müller did not give up where others might have fallen. She inherited from her Vietnamese mother, Loan (Lo-Anh), the will to live and the courage to keep moving forward, even when life seemed unbearable.
After graduating from high school, she studied languages (German, English and Russian) at Francois Rabelais University (France) and the Centre d’Etudes Pratiques de Langues Vivantes (France).
Since 1985, she has worked in Germany as an interpreter and translator. Together with her mother, Đậu Thị Cúc (Loan), Müller traveled to Southeast Asia in the 1990s and learned about her Vietnamese roots.
In May 2016, the author established the Loan Stiftung charity fund, which specializes in educational projects for ethnic minority children in remote mountainous areas of Vietnam.
