[3] Mai Elliot's great-grandfather Duong Lam, who was proficient in Confucian classics, served under the last emperor of Vietnam, Tu Duc, as a mandarin.
Mai Elliott's sister, however, was pro-communist and lived in the jungles of North Vietnam fighting alongside the Viet Minh, accompanied by her husband.
[4] The involvement of Mai Elliott's family members in Vietnamese politics gave her an insight into the perspective and opinions of the middle class on the Vietnam War, which helped her memoir, "The Sacred Willow".
[4] At the age of nineteen, Mai Elliott flew to the U.S. against her parents' wishes to study diplomacy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C.[4] She graduated in 1963 with a major in Political science.
[6] Initially, Mai Elliott planned to work for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry due to the influences of her family tradition of government service.
[8] From 2014 to 2017, Mai Elliott served as one of the advisers for the PBS documentary series "The Vietnam War", directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.