Fellow adult Vietnamese adoptee has a story to show on YouTube

A fellow adult Vietnamese adoptee gave Ethnically Incorrect Daughter an exclusive video of his month-long visit to Vietnam.

Take a gander.

Perfect fantasy moment for right now…

Beach.

Warm sunset.

Couple good friends.

Glowing embers in a fire pit.

Beer.

Radio with a mixed CD in it.

Time on our side.

I was so smart back then

Back in 2006, I started a blog on Blogger called What Happened To Your Hair? I was brand new to the blogging scene and I was only doing it because I was inspired by my friend Sarah who blogs at Outside In…And Back Again. After jumping into the deep end so quickly, in a couple months I panicked and then wanted out. I felt like I couldn’t sustain a unique perspective for very long, let alone an anonymous reader’s interest.

But, before I climbed out of the massive whirlpool, I actually wrote something coherent about my honest thoughts on being adopted. When I read it back to myself, I was surprised at the clarity I expressed about growing up feeling ambiguous.

So, below is my 2006 Self addressing no one in particular:

I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t particularly enjoy talking about the fact that I was adopted and how I feel about being adopted. The reason for this is because I’ve always been in conflict with this fact along with the confusion that arises out of my own coming to terms with it and others’ misperceptions about adoption and what an adopted person is supposed to represent. Also, being adopted did not preclude me from forming my own personality and living my life without always being conscious of my adoption.

In other words, in my day-to-day activities, I don’t announce to everyone within earshot that I’m adopted and I’m fairly careful about whom I tell my adoption story to.

Ever since I’ve opened myself up to exploring those blank pages in my own book of life, I’ve felt both invigorated and enlightened, but also more cautious and wary of anyone’s input on adoption, in general, and my own adoption, in particular. I was all gung-ho about meeting other (Vietnamese) adoptees and forming a comradery, which I believed should naturally spring up from our shared history and experiences as both a co-opted and marginalized subgroup of American citizenry.

How wrong I was.

In fact, I’ve only taken away a few positive experiences from my interactions with other adult adoptees. It was only until it was too late that I was made aware of the cliquishness and egoism of some people in whom I put my trust and friendship. In the end, I’ve learned that even though we may have a common ethnicity and brief history together, and that we may be able to communicate on an intuitive level about being adopted, these things cannot cover up the fact that we are each individuals with very different needs, wants and ambitions.

So, whenever someone asks me about my origins and I tell them that I was adopted, the usual reaction is comparable to telling someone I just came from the doctor’s and I only have two weeks to live or that my dog got run over by a car. Pity, sympathy or condolences ensue, and not always in that order. Further, when I tell them I was adopted from Vietnam during the War, I’m always told, in a variety of amusing (and annoying) ways, that I must feel lucky that I wasn’t left there to die and that I must really appreciate living in the U.S.

There’s always the expectation that I’m going to agree with the person who utters these platitudes because such arrogance has always been rewarded and never confronted. It’s usually been ingrained in the adopted person’s psyche to always accept such concern with grace and a (fake) smile. However, as I’ve gotten older and my understanding about the world and life has developed and become more nuanced, I’ve been less and less accommodating toward received wisdom and preconceptions that deserve to be critiqued and thrown back in the faces of the ignorant.

The main reason I choose to act in such a confrontational manner is because I’m not all that certain about how I’m supposed to feel about being adopted. My family tree has long since been burned to the ground. The empty pages in my book of life are ripe for the filling in of wishful thinking and never-to-be-realized fantasies. I’ve said before in my previous essays that my birth parents are ghosts to me. I know they conceived me and that my mother gave birth to me, but beyond that, I’m the only evidence that they had ever existed on this planet.

If I told any casual observer, or even friends and family, about what I had just written above, more than likely they would be overly concerned with my morose viewpoint. It’s been impressed upon me many times before that I’m either too serious or too cynical or too indifferent. Perhaps I’m this way because I know that nothing in my past has been settled, that the facts of my life, before adoption, could easily shift into the realm of fiction.

I’m in the process of discovery and for someone to assume that I should just put down my shovel and call off the whole venture because they see it as being disrespectful toward those people who nurtured me and brought me to where I am now is wholly way off the mark.

If you ask any adult adoptee, who is in, or has gone through, the same situation I’m in now, he would say I’m in the coming-to-terms phase.

To give you some perspective, growing up, I always knew I looked different from my parents and my youngest sister, and they didn’t keep my and my younger sister’s adoptions a secret from us. But, on a societal level, adoption has always carried a stigma with it and I guess my parents didn’t want to burden me with it. So, they didn’t ever discuss adoption with me and very rarely did they seriously discuss racial diversity and adversity with me, even when someone would pick a fight with me for being this short, chinky-eyed brown-skinned kid. Adoption and non-whiteness were things I was supposed to simply shirk off because in the long run, my parents (and society as a whole) believed, I was in the U.S. now and I had to become an American, I had to become assimilated in order to be accepted.

As a consequence, I truly didn’t feel any different from my peers. I didn’t grow up with an identity crisis. I didn’t sit in front of my bedroom window wishing to be transported back to my birth parents or my “homeland”. I was content with growing up a normal American boy who was fixated on the next summer vacation or the next crush on Laura, Johanna, etc.

The only time I was reminded that there was something odd about me in a sea of white was when someone specifically commented that I didn’t look like my parents and then my parents had to explain that I was adopted from Vietnam. Sometimes situations arose that made me question, in the back of my mind, what is it that makes other people create generalizations about me that are in direct opposition to how I view and think of myself, that attempt to strip my self-identity from me.

Case in point, I distinctly remember that whenever we crossed the border over to Canada my parents would hastily take out my and my sister’s naturalization papers, which had been slipped in plastic and secured neatly in musty black leather protectors, from the glove compartment of the station wagon. Before we reached the booth where the border guard sat, my mom would coach the two of us to say, “Yes“, when we were asked whether or not we are American citizens and that, “Yes”, the people in the front seat of the car are our actual parents. It was amusing to me to verify to a perfect stranger what I had always taken for granted to be the obvious facts of my life.

What I would come to realize later on is that there is always going to be a disjuncture between how I see myself and how others view me within the context of who is and who is not perceived to be an American.

Father Knows Best

Well if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand
I’ve seen your face before my friend, but I don’t know if you know who I am
And I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you’ve been
It’s all been a pack of lies

- In The Air Tonight, Phil Collins –

“We started off tossing C-ration cans at the kids when we went through a village because we wanted to give them the food. Then it changed. We began trying to hit them with the cans. We’d toss them into barbed wire and watch the kids go tearing after them, cutting themselves up. Some guys would drop the cans off the back of a truck when we were in convoy. There would be maybe 25 or 30 yards between trucks. They’d drop the cans so the kids would have to dart out and grab them and try to get out of the way of the next truck. One of the kids didn’t get out of the way in time. The convoy just kept going. Every truck ran over that kid.”

-Jack Smith, New Haven, Conn., Sgt. Twelfth Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division, 1969 -

Confessions of ‘The Winter Soldiers’
by Donald Jackson
Life, v71, n2, 7/9/71

Letter to Wende Grant

Originally uploaded by KevMinh

April 18, 2008

Wende Grant
XXXX
XXXX

Kevin Keith (Minh) Allen
XXXX
XXXX

Dear. Ms. Grant:

I received word from Rosemary Taylor that you still reside at the above address and wanted to contact you immediately. My name is Kevin Keith Allen and I was given the name Nguyen Duc Minh, as it appears in the enclosed copy of my Vietnamese passport. My birthdate is December 5, 1973.

As my adoptive mother recollects, I was first adopted by a couple in Springfield, Missouri. My first American name was to be ‘Dominic’. However, the couple soon separated after I arrived in their home and I was subsequently sent to a foster home in Colorado. According to my mother, you personally escorted me to Rochester, NY from Colorado in November 1974.

My mother also told me a story about my origins in Vietnam which she said had been told to her. She does not remember who told her this story and my adoptive father does not remember such a story being told to either him or my mother. The story goes that I was born to a Vietnamese woman and American father. Somehow, my biological mother was killed and then my maternal grandmother took me in. Unfortunately, since my grandmother’s husband and sons were killed earlier in the war and she was destitute and alone, she gave me up to an orphanage in Saigon called Regina Pacis. I really have no way to verify whether any part of this story is true.

The only starting point that I can think of is to find out if Friends For All Children (FFAC) had a file on me. I hoped that since you were the Director of Adoptions at FFAC you could verify whether any such file(s) was created and in which facility or archive it might be held at this time. I understand that over 30 years has passed, but I can only hope that FFAC documented my relinquishment in Vietnam and subsequent adoption to both the family in Missouri and then my current family in New York, and that I may finally see and read this paperwork for myself.

My interest also extends to the history of how FFAC was created and what happened to it after the Vietnam War ended. I would also be interested in knowing how you have fared and what you have been doing all these years.

I look forward to your response and wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Kevin Allen

German Vietnamese adult adoptee – Ngo thi Linh Trang

In the spirit of commemorating Operation Babylift (OBL) this month, I would like to present to you an adult Vietnamese adoptee who was adopted by a German family back in 1975. Although the majority of children of OBL were flown to America, the others were flown to countries such as England, Canada, France and Germany.

Wading through the video pool of YouTube I found a video made by Linh which pays tribute to the children of OBL. It’s always fascinating to me to read (and see) how other Vietnamese adoptees interpret and re-interpret their histories and present them to the general public. Self-reflection can be a freeing experience and obviously can be done in many ways. As more and more of us from that first generation of Vietnamese adoptees take our rightful place among the actors and participants of that era, we will start realizing how much of an influence we can have on the storylines and debates that continue to surround the history of the Vietnam War.

Through Linh’s personal YouTube page, I was directed to a webpage she made. In it, she relates quite an intriguing story about an apparent switch, or simple replacement, of one set of birth documents for another. Yet another case of adoptee identity mis-/displacement for convenient’s sake. What would be valuable is to research this recurring phenomenon in Vietnamese adoptions from the beginning till the end of American military involvement in Vietnam and relate the findings to the present situation there.

Below is my German-to-English translation of an excerpt from Linh’s webpage. If anyone out there knows German, and has translated before, let me know if my translation is on the mark or off it.

BABYLIFT – CHILD in Gedenken an den 4. April 1975 / GALAXY

Ich heiße Ngo thi Linh Trang und bin am 25. Juli 1974 in Vinh Long geboren, einem kleinen Dorf südlich von Saigon in Vietnam. Das Kinderhilfswerk Terre des hommes begleitete seit Jahren Waisenkinder auf ihrem Weg durch die Adoption. Es war einmal ein kleines Mädchen, geboren am 9. September 1974 in Qui Nhon, einem Dorf an der Nord/Süd-Grenze Vietnams, ein paar Monate alt, das war bestimmt für ein junges Ehepaar mit einem vierjährigen Sohn in Deutschland. Es war kurz vor Ende des Vietnamkrieges, genauer im März 1975…. Früh am Morgen des 5. April 1975 stand eine „Pan Am 747“ bereit, um alle verbliebenen Kinder auszufliegen. Und dann gab es da mich, 9 Monate alt. Ich bekam die Papiere des kleinen Mädchens aus Qui Nhon und konnte so das Land verlassen. Alle 11 Begleiter stiegen mit uns Kindern an dem Samstagnachmittag die Treppen des großen Vogels empor, ohne sich umzusehen. Am 12. April 1975 kam ich in Deutschland an, in der Universitätsklinik Erlangen. Meine Adoptiveltern lebten bis Mitte 1978 in West – Berlin, und bis heute in einem kleinen Dorf in Norddeutschland. Meine Adoptivbrüder studieren in einer südlicheren Stadt. Ich bin inzwischen selbst Mutter von zwei Kindern und lebe seit August 1993 fast 300 km entfernt von meiner „Kindheitsstadt“. Anfang 1998 kontaktierte ich Terre des hommes zum ersten Mal und hörte von einer Reise mit Adoptierten, die für Jan./Febr. 1999 in Planung war. Ich entschloss mich, diesen Schritt zu wagen und erfuhr von Rosemary J. Taylor in Bangkok persönlich von dem Austausch der Geburtsdokumente wie auch, dass ich mit den Überlebenden des „Galaxy“ – Absturzes planmäßig am 5. April 1975 Vietnam verließ und nicht, wie meine Familie und ich 25 Jahre lang geglaubt hatten, selbst in der Galaxy saß. Die Bilder sind Bestand einer Ausstellung, die eine Auswahl von über 900 Aufnahmen zeigt, die auf dieser für mich lebenswichtigen Reise entstanden sind. WIDER DAS VERGESSEN …………………………………………………………………….. linh

Babylift Child remembers April 4, 1975/Galaxy

My name is Ngo thi Linh Trang and I was born on July 25, 1974, in Vinh Long, a small town south of Saigon in Vietnam. For years the Terre des hommes orphanage paved the way for the adoption of orphaned children. Once there was a little girl who was born on September 9, 1974 in Qui Nhon, a small town near the DMZ, and destined to be adopted by a young couple that already had a four-year-old son in Germany.…Early on the morning of April 5, 1975 a “Pan Am 747” was prepared to fly out all of the remaining children. And, there I was at 9 months of age. I received the papers of a little girl from Qui Nhon and could then leave the country. All 11 escorts boarded the plane with us children on that Saturday afternoon without looking back. On April 12, 1975, I arrived in Germany at the university clinic of Erlangen. My adoptive parents lived in West Berlin until mid-1978, and to this day live in a small town in northern Germany. My adoptive brothers study in a city in the southern half of the country. Meanwhile, I have become a mother of two children and have been living almost 300 km from my “childhood home” since August 1993. At the start of 1998 I contacted the Terre des homme orphanage for the first time and learned of a trip being planned with other adoptees. It was set for January/February 1999. I decided to take the leap and through an exchange of birth documents I learned from Rosemary J. Taylor personally that although I left Vietnam, as planned, on April 5, 1975 with those children who survived the crash of the “Galaxy”, I was not on the “Galaxy” itself as I and my family had believed for 25 years. The pictures on display, which have been chosen from 900 photos, represent the most important trip of my life. NEVER FORGET…..

The Forest Bird – đàn tranh duet

A little musical interlude.

The Hướng Việt Performing Arts Group is a Seattle Vietnamese song & dance troupe. I’ve seen them a couple times and they make me appreciate, more and more, the traditional Vietnamese culture I was never introduced to as an adoptee.

My parents probably never thought that I would care very much about where I came from and that I’d actually “miss” this type of exposure to the culture I was taken from. But, arts groups like the Hướng Việt Performing Arts Group have become integral in my endeavor to fill in the gaps and to identify, as best as I can, with the country I was made to forget.

Mr. Avery

[NOTE: The following is an allegory and is not autobiographical.]

Mr. Avery never made me feel at home. You see, I was dating his daughter whose skin was as white as alabaster and ever so tempting. As for me, my skin was browner than fudge and just as tasty. At least, that’s what she told me when we were sitting on the swings in the park, dangling our toes in the mud.

Once, Mr. Avery took me aside in the kitchen and warned me, “I don’t want you to ever touch my daughter’s fair skin with your grimy fingers. You hear me, darky?  She’s supposed to be saving herself for the right fella, and we don’t need you messing up her future. Don’t you think for a second that I don’t know what you want from her. One hair on her head is worth more than a million of you God-forsaken people.” 

I looked into Mr. Avery’s pale green eyes and announced to him that I wanted nothing further to do with his daughter, that I was going to break up with her that night. Mr. Avery glared back at me in disbelief and bellowed, “What?  You ingrate! Is she not good enough for you?!!”

In a steady voice, I reasoned,

“It’s not that.  It’s just that I’ve had better.”

Aimee Phan is not really a fan of mine

Jae Ran at Harlow’s Monkey posted a blurb yesterday about Aimee Phan’s book, We Should Never Meet.

Now, I have a very tangential connection to the author and the fateful reception her book received among many adult Vietnamese adoptees.

Some background:

In 2004-2005, I got in a furious debate with a couple other adult Vietnamese adoptees on a forum about Phan’s just published book. Basically, I took the position that all fiction authors should be allowed creative license and that the community should read Phan’s book before trashing it. The others took the position that no one, other than adoptees, should have the privilege of writing about their lives, whether in fiction or non-fiction, and they were fed up with people outside of the community using them as subject matter to create and sell their books.

Notice how lenient I was back then and actually pushed back on a radical viewpoint that I would later on pretty much share myself. That’s not to say that I completely repudiate the position I took because, as a published writer myself, I do not tolerate censorship and barely tolerate self-censorship in creating work that both speaks to me and to other readers. I think the best writers are those who are empathetic enough to mentally walk in someone else’s shoes for a while and then be able to write a well-rounded, credible story that engages people who would not otherwise read about certain people outside of their comfortable clique.

The debate quickly turned into accusations, and feeling that I was being drummed out of the group for intelligently expressing an opinion and defending it to the best of my ability, I took my ball and went home, i.e., I left the group. Several other factors contributed to my exit from the forum [and from the adoption community for about 3 years], which I will slowly dribble out and which may give you a better understanding of why we’re (aka, adult Vietnamese adoptees) such a sorry lot when it comes to organizing and acting on our collective best interests.

Anyway, I want to share with you an essay/book review of Phan’s book that I wrote back in 2005. Aimee Phan actually read this piece herself and emailed me. She encouraged me to come to a reading she was doing in Seattle at the time. I never went. We never met:

I would have loved to have told Aimee Phan (author of We Should Never Meet) the story about my own release from the homeland, Vietnam, which was handed down to me. It goes something like this:

“On December 5, 1973, I was born Nguyen Duc Minh, just outside of Saigon, to a Vietnamese woman. My father was an American. Somehow, my mother was killed and then my maternal grandmother took me in. Unfortunately, since my grandmother’s husband and sons were killed earlier in the war and since she was destitute and alone, she gave me up to an orphanage called Regina Pacis. I was flown out of the country in August 1974 because an American family wanted to adopt me.”

However, if you were to ask some of those who were adopted by American families during or after the war, they would say that they are perturbed that Ms. Phan chose not to consult any of them, or their contemporaries, in order to receive a more accurate account of the very people she portrays in her book, We Should Never Meet. These same people might even accuse Ms. Phan of appropriating and exploiting their histories for her own personal profit, that her book naively mischaracterizes adult adoptees as hopelessly angry and embittered, forever searching for that missing link that will complete their fractured lives. Lastly, many would conclude that only adoptees have the right to tell their stories and no one else.

All too often adoptees’ lives have been turned into a piece of fiction to be consumed, digested and planted into the minds of the audience who may unwittingly take these stories of unavoidable identity crises to be the Bible truth and apply it to all adopted persons. Only rarely do Vietnamese adoptee’ viewpoints share the national stage with those of Vietnam vets, ex-presidents and generals, and adoptive parents. When the chance does come along, those iconic black-and-white images of young children sitting on the floor of an orphanage or of sickly babies set two-by-two in cardboard boxes in a cavernous hull of an airplane are automatically dusted off and held aloft for everyone to see. Yet again, we adult adoptees get the sympathetic treatment and are branded with that tired, guilt-tripping maxim of “being glad for what you have been given, otherwise you would have been dead.”

That said, however, there really is no guarantee that the stories any adoptee chooses to write wouldn’t be as dramatic or cloying as Phan’s or anyone else’s for that matter. Certainly, each person’s writing style would be as unique as each individual is and would represent an invaluable first-person perspective. However, this endeavor may also include narratives and attitudes that serve to perpetuate the stereotype of the victimized/embittered/angry adoptee/orphan, whether consciously or unconsciously. I think it’s safe to say that any story about adoption, especially written by a person who had been adopted, would undoubtedly deal with the issue of loss, both actual and metaphorical. Of course, the methods used to engage this perceived void would be varied and conflicting.

Another major reservation that some adoptees have about Aimee Phan’s book, which I mentioned before, is the claim that she has no right to write about their lives. There are diverse reasons for holding this opinion, but I would take an educated guess and say the main reason is that Phan is not one of them and would have no idea what it’s like to be adopted. Well, let’s put that sentiment to the test:

I once wrote a short fictional story about a boy and his mother who immigrated to the US from Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge based on the first paragraph of a chapter in a book about the phenomenon of Southeast Asian gangs in California. These two struggled to make a living in the U.S. and eventually the boy had enough of feeling like an outcast and decided to join a gang made up of young men who had similar backgrounds. This boy, later, was himself tried for murder of a video store clerk who had also been a Cambodian immigrant. I thought about the tragic irony of this young man’s life. He was a child taken away from a murderous regime only to commit murder in the new country against a fellow countryman.

The history and the circumstances were so overwhelming that I just had to write a story from my own imagination and out of a sense of duty to not allow these people’s lives to fall onto the heap of historical amnesia. I felt compelled to put a spotlight on them and, using the vehicle of my own prose, carry them further into the public’s conscience. Now, since I was not that boy and I was not born in Cambodia to a Cambodian family and I had never joined a gang, does that mean I had no right to write that story?

This argument, in my opinion, is too simplistic. At worst, it seeks to dissuade any writer from using one’s imagination and inspiration to write about the world and to expand people’s knowledge of and empathy toward other people outside of their safe communities.

Yes, there are ethics that one should keep in mind when using real people and real events in one’s stories. Any writer of historical fiction who wishes to stay in good repute would not claim to be speaking definitively for any person or sector of the community. When I set out to write about the immigrant from Cambodia, I avoided resorting to cheap thrills or stock emotions so as to appear to stand firmly upon some moral certitude. I don’t believe for a second that my story trivialized his life or that I was speaking for him.

Aimee Phan’s freshman effort seeks to continue this tradition of historical fiction and has coincidentally chosen a history very personal to me, and hundreds of others, as her topic. The mission of fiction is to tell a good story, period. No doubt, Phan probably heard stories about Operation Babylift and, according to her website, her mother used to be a social worker who worked with foster children in Little Saigon.

Her story focuses on three people who were placed in foster care after they arrived in the US and one person who was adopted by a Caucasian family. Scenes and characters from the past are put alongside the present in order to lay down the foundation for what is to come. No one plays the hero and no one plays the victim. Her book is an easy read because Phan’s prose is basic and to the point. She does a good job of switching back and forth from the past to the present without losing the reader. The settings, the characters and their interaction with one another provoke insight into what it means to lose a loved one, or a homeland, and how it still hurts when one decides it is necessary to move on.

Hunter, MacGyver & Airwolf

Hunter, MacGyver and Airwolf were three TV shows I hardly ever failed to miss when I was wee lad. I wanted to see action when I watched TV, and these three shows delivered. If my young body couldn’t escape from bleach-blonde suburbia, I made my mind go places, far and wide.

It’s one thing to reminisce about cultural productions that are both meant to entertain and inculcate the youth as to how a “real American” looks and behaves, and quite a different thing to peer back and catch a glimpse of your actual Self within those very same TV shows.

How and where did I see myself in these three late 80’s/early 90’s action shows?

Well, if you haven’t already gathered from some of my writing on this blog, I am what you would call an “Amerasian”. Technically, according to the U.S. State Department, I am one of thousands who was “born in Vietnam between January 1, 1962, and before January 1, 1976, fathered by an American citizen.”

So, it was quite amusing to find a video on YouTube showing Hunter confessing to a young Vietnamese-looking guy that he is his biological father:

According to TV.com, this scene came from episode #115, season 6, and aired on a Saturday, 11/25/89.

“Hunter thinks an Amerasian boy may be his son and believes the boy when he claims to be an innocent bystander during a car theft that results in a murder.”

Even MacGyver got in on the Amerasian tip with two episodes featuring actors playing Amerasian characters:

Second Chance, episode #088, season 5, aired on 10/16/89

“MacGyver heads a project bringing young Amerasians to the U.S. for medical treatment. His companion finds a son he didn’t know he had.”

The Coltons, episode #130, season 7, aired on 10/14/91

“The Colton family aids an Amerasian girl fleeing from the Chinese Mafia. She’s the lone witness to a Chinatown murder.”

[what is with Amerasians on TV accidentally witnessing murders?!]

And, lo and behold, Airwolf gave an Amerasian some airtime!

Daddy’s Gone Hunt’n

“A pilot (James Whitmore Jr.) intends to steal a high-tech aircraft to ransom his Amerasian son from the Soviets.”

[what is with white American actors accidentally running into their half-Vietnamese offspring?!]

Watch the episode HERE.

The timing of these episodes featuring Amerasians is interesting, considering that the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1988 was coming into full force. Between 1989 and 1993, hundreds of Amerasians emigrated, along with their relatives, spouses and/or children, to the U.S.

However, if you read books like Surviving Twice: Amerasian Children of the Vietnam War and The Dust of Life: America’s Children Abandoned in Vietnam, you will quickly understand that, although the American government finally accepted responsibility for rectifying the situation with these people, the program was hastily thought out, not well funded and poorly carried out. Not only that, but, heart-wrenchingly enough, a lot of Vietnamese Amerasians came to America believing completely that they would be reunited with their fathers and live life happily ever after. Commonsense will tell you how well those fantasies turned out for them.

Back to Hunter, MacGyver and Airwolf.

I have no recollection as to whether or not I saw these specific episodes. All I know, is that many times I made it a point to be in front of the TV in order to watch the explosions and adrenaline-rushing action sequences in these shows that were produced for the benefit of young boys like me all over the country.

The fact that there were characters who mirrored my own ethnic and racial heritage and represented a past relationship between two countries in which my body was physically present, in one way or another, completely went over my head. Because, as an adopted Vietnamese kid living in a relatively small town in western NY, there was no question that the Caucasian faces on TV were the heroes, the real deals and the ones who had all the answers. The “Asian” male characters represented the coolies, the gooks and the chinks, the ones who usually got unceremoniously mowed down.

I had already gotten enough flak from random kids at school and around the neighborhood for looking not quite right/White.

And, when it was time for primetime, my young self-esteem would be damned if it was the only one left holding the rice hat.