Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations by Allison Varzally

Abstract

Reviewed by: Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations by Allison Varzally Jana Lipman Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations. By Allison Varzally. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. xvi + 222 pp. Cloth $80, paper $29.95. Allison Varzally's Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations is an excellent contribution to the growing literature on [End Page 130] US-Vietnam relations after 1975 and gender and foreign policy. The book provides a nuanced examination of the fraught politics of adoption, recognizing the competing stories of Vietnamese and US parents and always finding the balance between personal stories and political significance. This book will be read alongside recent works in Critical Refugee Studies, by scholars like Yen Le Espiritu, and in the recent proliferation of books on international adoption, such as Catherine Ceniza Choy's Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption and Laura Briggs' Somebody's Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption. Varzally neither sees Vietnamese adoptees as helpless or forlorn, as they were often depicted in the media, nor does she take a uniformly critical stance against international and interracial adoptions. Instead, she views adoptees as migrants, and ones with agency, choice, and the political wherewithal to navigate multiple bureaucratic and cultural encounters in Vietnam and the United States. She argues, "Conceptualized as immigrants seeking economic improvement and connections with family, the adopted recovered their agency and culpability, thus supporting broader, more nuanced interpretations" (6). Varzally's work is original on multiple fronts, and her fresh conceptualization begins in chapter 1. Most accounts of Vietnamese adoptions utilize a post-1975 chronology, but Varzally fruitfully starts with the American adoption of Vietnamese children during (and not just after) the US war in Vietnam. In this thoughtful chapter, she argues that US adults could use a wide range of ideological justifications for adopting Vietnamese children. On the one hand, adoption agencies like Holt International established a framework whereby international adoption was firmly wedded to evangelical Christianity and anticommunism. On the other hand, young couples and single women who opposed the war in Vietnam also adopted Vietnamese children, and Varzally illustrates how they framed their actions as a way of compensating for US violence in the region. Varzally also includes an analysis of racial politics, and the ways in which discourses of "color blind" families made distinct racial choices. The second chapter covers the more well-known story of Operation Babylift, whereby hundreds of Vietnamese children were "rescued" from Vietnam in April 1975. Along with highly dubious adoption policies, it is infamous for a plane crash that resulted in numerous Vietnamese children's deaths. Varzally's work is the best analysis I have read on Operation Babylift. She does not dwell on the tragedy of the plane crash or an easy critique of the US "rescue narrative." Instead, she excavates powerful stories of Vietnamese women who came to the United States later in 1975 and who tenaciously sought to regain custody of their children through the US court system. These stories were painful, and [End Page 131] more numerous than I would have imagined, and Varzally traces the custody battles between US adoptive parents and Vietnamese women. These were high-profile cases, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, a well-known civil rights organization, played a leading role in representing Vietnamese families' custody claims. Varzally writes, "Indeed, the custody conflicts typically pitted the material comforts, nuclear form, and economic advantages of American couples against the cultural, historical, and natural claims of Vietnamese families seeking restoration" (72). In this chapter Varzally showcases the political knowledge of Vietnamese women who sought to regain custody rights, and the sometimes heart-breaking stories of family rupture and reunion. The final two chapters allow for Vietnamese adoptees' own voices to be more front and center. Chapter 3 narrates the story of Vietnamese Amerasian immigration, and she demonstrates how the Orderly Departure Program and the 1987 Homecoming Act reshaped Amerasian stories in Vietnam and the United States. The concluding chapter allows for many young Vietnamese adoptees to share their stories and ideas related to identity, race, nationality, and family...