Bui doi - My lai
From: Sascha wölck
Date: Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 1:48 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Dear List,
I surprised myself with the decision to write a PhD. Therefore, I seek your help concerning certain sources that might be unknown to me, as well as your general opinion on this matter:
It seems to me, that the present situation of M? lai or b?i d?i in Vietnam is an interesting field of research and I am currently gathering information on this topic. The focus I have chosen is to look into present material and link it to issues concerning body-politics, (war)-trauma and racism in order to later on do a fieldwork in Vietnam with similar questions. So far, it is my impression that there is much more literature on M? lai situated in the USA than works picturing the life and social situation of these people in Vietnam.
I, thus, wish to ask you all, if this field of research is really as underrepresented as I assume. I would be very thankful for recommendations, material and opinions etc. that you find important for me to consider.
Sascha
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From: Nghia Vo
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Sascha,
This is a great field to explore and to my knowledge, there has not been any study done on this subject either in the US or in Vietnam. There have been stories about these bui doi but no in depth study about this unfortunate group of people.
1. They have suffered a lot b/c they are of mixed race and b/c they were branded as children of the "enemy" after 1975. They did not deserve to suffer b/c they did not do anything wrong.
2. They have suffered not only emotionally, physically, but also socially. Traumatized by their personal experiences, some had died at a young age or had disturbed childhood. Rejected by society, many had been rejected by their own mothers; they were lucky if they were sent to live with their grand parents. That is why they were called bui doi or dust of life.
3. They would have been more traumatized had they remained in Vietnam. The US had accepted a certain number of these bui doi along with their families. The most succesful is Kien Nguyen who has related his story inThe Unwanted (a very accurate description), which turns out to be a best seller. Heapparently is a dentist in New York.
4. I would be interested in knowing more about their lives, survival spirit, adaptation, traumatic sequelae, and so on. The story of these unfortunate people needs to be studied and retold.
Good luck,
Nghia
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From: ldp
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Sascha,
just a reminder: My lai (children of Vietnamese and American parents) are not to be described as bui doi (street children).
Writing about My lai is not common in Vietnam, I believe there were some in the late 80s about the changes in their lives after the USA started to take over those people who could prove that they have some link to the former US personal in Vietnam prior to 1975.
Bui doi got much attention in Vietnam recently. there is quite a lot of literature about street children and many efforts have been done to bring them home or some type of homes.
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From: Nghia Vo
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
My lai were not be seen as bui doi until after 1975, when most of them were shunned/rejected by their parents b/c they did not want to be seen as collaborators of the "enemy" and ended up as street children.
McKelvey wrote a nice book about the dust of life.
Nghia
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Sascha:
Perhaps you are familiar with Robert McKelvey, The Dust of Life:America's Abandoned Children in Vietnam (1999)?
In fact, ldp is correct that Amerasian children and bui doi are conceptually different. While abandoned Amerasian children may have become bui doi (street childen), not all bui doi are Amerasian.
In 1993, when I visited Vietnam for the first time since leaving many years earlier, there was a huge crowd of Amerasian gathered in front of Notre Dame cathedral in Saigon. Two years later, they had disappeared. The US and Vietnam had apparently finally reached an agreement about bringing Amerasian children over to the US. A few years later, the Joiner Center at UMass-Boston organized a very moving photograph exhibit entitled Ngoc I was--Pearl I am about the plight of these Amerasian children stranded between two cultures, accepted neither by the Vietnamese society they had left behind, nor the expatriate community in the US or mainstream American society, yearning for fathers they did not know or who might not even know of their very existence... Nguyen Ba Chung could probably give you a more detailed account of this exhibit.
I believe there was some attempt at comparing what happened to children of American fathers after the Vietnam War and what happened to children of French fathers (and fathers who had fought in the French Legion) after the Indochina War. But the comparison focused on legal provisions rather than the children's experiences.
There are plenty of street children in Vietnam nowadays, many of them labeled as "xa me." They can be found hawking postcards and guidebooks, offering to shine shoes, carving soapstone sculptures, etc... But we are 36 years after the end of the Vietnam War. I have not seen a person in his or her late 30s of mixed parentage in my travels to Vietnam. Has any done so?
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Kenneth T. Young Professor
of Sino-Vietnamese History
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From: julie thi underhill
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hi all,
Robert McKelvey's book 'The Dust of Life: America's Children Abandoned in Vietnam' sheds some light on the topic, including through interviews with adult Amerasian children hoping to emigrate to the US to escape their perilous social conditions.
Best wishes,
Julie Thi Underhill
UC Berkeley
PhD candidate
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From: Mac McIntosh
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
During my stay in Vietnam the great hunt for the child of Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic was electrifying and became the Cinderella story for every street child in Vietnam . If you recall Bokassa had served in Vietnam in the early 50's as a corporal in the French army and left his wife and child in Saigon and after he became Emperor in Central Africa he commissioned the French Government to find his daughter . Every pulp magazine in Vietnam followed every twist and turn of this story and the street gossip that went with it was really very special .
I don't know if that whole episode is captured in any sort of study of street children .
Mac McIntosh
The Lighthouse, Bluff, NZ
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From: Stephen Denney
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Liz Thomas also wrote a book titled Dust of LIfe, published in 1977, about her experiences working with street children in Saigon.
Steve Denney
library assistant
UC Berkeley
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Soldiers fighting for the French seem to have left a few offspring behind. I met a young Afro-Asian woman in Bac Giang town in late 1979. I was told her father was Senegalese - who were in the area during the French War. She had a job in a factory, so was definitely not a street child.
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Dean Research
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
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From: Ivan Small
Date: 2011/3/4
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
There was also a documentary film titled Bui Doi, about Vietnamese American gangs and adaptation to life in the U.S.
-Mishan, Ahrin, and Rick Rothenberg. Bui Doi: Life Like Dust. San Francisco, CA: CrossCurrent Media, 1994.
Cheers,
Ivan
--
Ivan V. Small
PhD Candidate
Department of Anthropology
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
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From: Dana Sachs
Date: 2011/3/5
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Sascha,
In 2005 and 2006, when I was conducting research for my book about Operation Babylift, I tried to interview Amerasians who still lived in Vietnam. It was difficult to find them, as so many by that time had already emigrated to the United States. Eventually, I was able to find and interview a couple of them in Da Nang, both of whom were working to secure visas to the U.S. If you're looking for subjects to interview, it may in fact be easier to find people outside of Saigon, particularly in the Da Nang area.
I think this is an excellent topic of research, as so little has been done on the subject. One question that I would be curious to see someone explore is the intersection of race and poverty. Many people have asked me to what extent the Vietnamese were racist toward these Amerasian children. Though I believe that these children suffered because of their race (and, as others mentioned, because they were fathered by U.S. soldiers) it's important to remember that they were also, often, the children of women who were extremely poor. Thus, they suffered in ways that are typical of all people in poverty. I interviewed one Amerasian whose childhood sounded like something out of Dickens, and her adult life hasn't been much better. I wouldn't say that her suffering, though, is purely based on the fact that she is Amerasian. She has no eduction, no family, no prospects for the future--all factors that relate as much to poverty as to race. Did she miss out on an education because she was Amerasian or because she didn't have parents to make sure she went to school? There's obviously no clear answer to this question, but I'd be interested to see what more extensive research can untangle on this subject.
By the way, I rarely heard people use the term "My lai" or "bui doi." In my experience, these children are called "con lai."
--Dana
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From: Anh-Minh Do
Date: 2011/3/5
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear sascha,
Do you know of AmerAsian Building Bridges? They do direct work with people of mixed birth in poverty in Vietnam. I can put you in contact with The head of that organization, Mrs. Nguyet, if you are interested.
Cheers,
Minh
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From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: 2011/3/5
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Indeed, there were a few. I knew of a woman whose father had been in the French Legion; she married a Vietnamese scientist in Paris. A girl of 8 or 9 (that would be back in the late 1950s) was adopted by family friends; the mother was hurt by rumors that the girl was really hers and that she had put the child in an orphanage to hide the fact that she had been involved in an affair with an African soldier.
I did hear the term My lai back in the 1960s (before the My Lai massacre) just as I heard the term Tay lai. There is a subtle difference between saying someone is "lai Tay" or "lai My" and saying that someone is "Tay lai" or "My lai." The first is more in the nature of a statement of fact; the second is a label.
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From: An Lac Truong Dinh
Date: 2011/3/5
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Sascha
The film " Poussières de vie" directed by French filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb 1995 (released in Germany/Hong Kong: "Die Kinder von Saigon" and "Dust of Lifes") is a quite emotional and dramatic film about Amerasians and Saigonese street children and could be of interest for you.
Quote from IMDB.com:
"In 1975, 3 kids decide to escape a reeducation camp in the Vietnamese equatorial forest near Cambodia where the Amerasians are imprisoned, tortured both mentally and physically. Son, the hero is sent in that camp after her mother fails to find his father to send him away to America."
Truong Dinh An Lac
PhD Candidate
History Department
University of Basel
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From: Tobias RETTIG
Date: 2011/3/6
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Sascha,
Further to the wide range of sources cited by other VSG-ers, I wonder whether comparisons in time and space make sense.
E.g. comparisons with the metis (see recent post that highlighted Eric Peter's article in Intersections in which you can find plenty of references to the metis of European-Indochinese origin).
Furthermore, there should be an interesting literature on at least the women (if not the children?) of French and other women who 'collaborated' with the Germans during World War II. And, similarly, there should be studies on the offspring of American GI in Western Europe and their European mothers, such as in West Germany. The scope for comparisons seems endless (e.g. offspring of the Red Army in central Europe; children borne out of Japanese-local unions in East and Southe East Asia).
Best regards, and good luck,
Tobias
Tobias Rettig
School of Social Sciences
Singapore Management University
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From: Dana Sachs
Date: 2011/3/6
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sascha,
My book is called THE LIFE WE WERE GIVEN: OPERATION BABYLIFT, INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION, AND THE CHILDREN OF WAR IN VIETNAM. It was published last year by Beacon Press in the United States.
--Dana
Dana Sachs
The University of North Carolina at Wilmington
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From: Anh-Minh Do
Date: 2011/3/6
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hi Sascha,
Sending you the email now. I forgot that AmerAsian Building Bridges doesn't have a website yet, although they are listed in the VA-NGO website: http://wp.va-ngo.org/?page_id=9
Cheers,
Minh
--
Anh-Minh Do
An Giang University - Indochine Tourism & Trade
From: Adam @ Nexon <adam@aduki.com.au>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
My opinion is that it is likely that this area, like others, will benefit from a fresh view. One can argue that there are evident ‘waves’ in research on Vietnam, and so research informs both the immediate subject and study of evolving trends in scholarly approaches. Discussing whether, as has been argued by Martin Rama (conference intervention) one can see a shift to a less discriminatory approach to social issues of this sort, following, some would argue, a neo-liberal ‘civil’ agenda, would require getting a grip on the approaches inherent in the studies – why and how do they see what they say they see and do you think they really do see it? So you get two birds with one stone. This is also to say that you would get value from more rather than less reading in the ‘deep cultural’ stuff produced by many who labour in poor and underpaid conditions and are often active in this list (aka the usual criminals). J
So hang on in there.
Adam
Prof. Adam Fforde
PO 2096 Ivanhoe E
Vic 3079 AUSTRALIA
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From: Thaveeporn Vasavakul
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
…. general opinion on this matter:
I am not familiar with the term M? lai appearing in conjunction with b?i d?i. Is M? lai a place (in Quang Ngai where a massacre took place) or a group of people (children of American soldiers during the war time period -lai m?)
1. If it is the latter
- Note though that if this group of people was born between 1960- 1975, they will now be between 36-51 years old, i.e., they are no longer under the category of "children". So it will be methodologically challenging to work with them.
- Linguistically, it is intriguing to see how the term ‘b?i d?i’ (dust of life?) appeared in Vietnam, how it has been used and how the way it is used has changed over time.
- Some comparison with SEA countries (or any other countries with a long-term presence of foreign soliders) could be helpful. I am thinking of Thailand in the 1960s and 1970s (the so-called “American period” ) and in the 1990s and 2000s (the so-called “globalized era”). They two periods show different types of marriage of alliances and somewhat different consequences related to their children’s social status. This may help enrich the body politics argument.
2.If the topic is about M? lai as a place where the massacre took place, I believe you can also talk about Viet-American children and ‘b?i d?i’ there as well although this will add a few more twists to the study.
I apologize if I misunderstand your intention.
Thaveeporn Vasavakul
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From: Nghia Vo <nghia2520@yahoo.com>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
M? lai (or bui doi or dust of life) should not be confused with M? Lai (the place)
lai (lower case) means mixed race in Vietnamese
1. Since these people are are 35 years of age, it would be interesting to look at the trauma effect on their children or grand children. Are the latter better accepted in the Vietnamese society?
Nghia