The first time I watched Daughter from Danang by filmmakers Dolgin and Franco, I was so happy to finally see a film being made about a Vietnamese adoptee. To my relief as well as great sadness, Heidi’s story was proof that there were others out there whose lives had followed a similar path to mine. I could identify with her growing up in the south within an all-white family and trying to blend. Memories began to surface of my own attempts to cover and pass hoping others would forget and allow me to forget my origins.
At the time of my first viewing, I was in a different place and more naive about adoption, the war and my own story. The beginning of the film came as a shock as it brought into question things I’d heard about Operation Babylift. I remember feeling disgusted as I watched a social worker solicit Vietnamese parents for their children saying that it would be “better for everyone”.
“I am not taking them away from you. I’ll send them to good families,” coaxes an American volunteer social worker.
Did the parents she might have repeated this to understand what a contradictory, presumptuous statement she was making?
“I asked her, if she didn’t give me any papers, how could I find my child in the future?” said Heidi’s mother, “She said when the Americans came back, I would have my child again.”
How many of them thought they would have their children returned to them once “the danger” had passed? How many held onto hopes that they’d be able to join their children in the US? The stories of the families left behind seem largely untold. The glimpses we have been offered so far seem to be mostly from within the general context of the war. As far as I know, there has never been a comprehensive report or study done that concentrated on the family unit itself and the individuals within.
As the film progressed, focus became increasingly concentrated on Heidi’s negative reactions to the unexpected “culture clash” she experienced. Naturally, it became increasingly difficult to keep my own bias from affecting my interpretation of the film. To my surprise, I began to have negative feelings towards Heidi despite knowing I was in no place to pass judgment.
In one scene, she was sitting on a bench in front of the camera complaining about constantly being touched. I didn’t know what to make of it. To me, it made sense but to Heidi, it was overwhelming and suffocating. By the time Heidi’s distress reached it peak over her half-brother’s request for financial assistance for their mother, I felt something close to disgust at Heidi’s behavior.
I still don’t know why I felt this way. In her place, I might have had similar reactions, but what exactly was Heidi’s “place” at the time the film was being made?” We are given the expected biographical information on Heidi; country of origin, Vietnam War, Operation Babylift, childhood and adulthood, events leading up to her reunion. We are even allowed a few insights into her mind by way of a few blurbs on her thoughts as a Vietnamese adoptee. What it doesn’t emphasize is how terribly isolated Heidi really was before and during the making of the film.
It wasn’t until I read the Choys’ piece in Outsider’s Within that I began thinking about it again. In talking to other adoptees, I discovered that my initial responses weren’t all that unusual. The general consensus seemed to be that there was definitely something wrong with the film though opinions varied as to the specifics.
The second time around, it was pretty much the same as I’d remembered except that this time, I considered things that hadn’t occurred to me before. I still thought it started off well, though like the Choys, I again noted a shift in the film’s tone and focus.
What began as a critical look at Operation Babylift quickly deteriorated into a bombardment of emotions resulting from an East/West “culture clash.” One becomes in danger of being swept away right along with any previous attempts at critical thought. By the end of the film, some part of me also wishes Heidi had not gone back to Vietnam at least not under the circumstances in which she’d gone.
She was without having prior contact with other adoptees and the benefit hearing their experiences might have offered. She ran headlong into her reunion with her Vietnamese family with little more than her own expectations. I say this not as a criticism of Heidi, but to emphasize that what we’re seeing in the documentary cannot be simplified down to a result of “culture shock.” While that is a reality for many of us as transethnic adoptees, it is still only a small part of a much larger picture. Though the film does take the time to clue us in on Heidi’s search for unconditional love, it soon gets lost in the east vs. west framing.
Romanticizing our reunion with our original families is something I think we all do no matter how much we attempt to equip ourselves. The resulting disillusionment on top of an already stressful situation can be devastating. I can agree that it is nearly impossible to fully prepare oneself or someone else for many of the things we encounter as adoptees. Uncertainty and the unexpected are things with which many of us become very familiar at a young age, but it seems Heidi had not been equipped with even the most basic of tools.
The film is falsely considered an “adoptee narrative” which can make the viewer forget that Heidi is treated as more the subject of the film than the speaker. The filmmakers keep themselves behind the camera to re-enforce the illusion. We hear the words coming from Heidi’s mouth, see her moving from place to place yet what we hear and see is still in control of the editors of the film.
During the documentary, Tran Tuong Nhu who served as translator/guide says, “With Heidi, there was no way of really telling her what she was going to come up against. And I don’t know if it was my job to tell her all of this, I mean I was trying desperately to teach her to say hello to her mother. I tried to warn her about how things were different in Vietnam.”
Again, I agree there is no way to fully prepare anyone, but Heidi’s apparent obliviousness makes me wonder if any real attempts had been made at all. If there were, the documentary fails to show us more than snippets of a language lesson given literally on the fly. For many of us, it would seem common sense that her family might request financial assistance, but Heidi seemed so fixated on her “dream” that it caught her completely off guard.
As for whether it was her job to help prepare Heidi, who knows? I think it should be kept in mind however that Heidi was without a support system of any kind which left her reliant upon her translator for both practical as well as moral support. Imagine yourself alone in an almost completely alien environment with your only link to the familiar being your traveling companions. Who would you pick as your new best friends? That gives an incredible amount of influence and maybe even responsibility to both the filmmakers and Mrs. Nhu.
Perhaps another clue into Heidi’s attachment could be found in what follows, “She gave me this: ‘I have to leave. I have to get out of here. I’m gonna’ go back with you.’ I was going to go home a little early. I tried to comfort her, and I said to her: ‘listen, if you stay, after a few days things will become much less pressurized for you.’”
She was losing the closest thing she had for support and understanding and her link between her two selves. Who wouldn’t want to leave such a strange situation and return to the only support system one had? Is it possible that Heidi somehow felt abandoned by the one person on which she’d come to rely? She was clearly under stress and feeling the need to escape, yet Mrs. Nhu encouraged her to stay. In the following scenes we see Heidi break down before she finally implodes.
The filmmakers want to appear as the non-interfering observers of it all, yet we are reminded of their presence when at the height of Heidi’s distress she says, “Take me away from here.” Who is she addressing and can they not see that Heidi is calling out for help? At this point, her lack of control over the situation becomes even more pronounced. I couldn’t help but feel that Heidi had somehow been set up. If not intentionally, then certainly out of ignorance.
In their contribution to Outsider’s Within, the Choy’s point out that Dolgin and Franco had “virtually no familiarity with international or transracial adoption” yet Daughter From Danang is often referred to as being a “sensitive” portrayal. Being truly sensitive to another’s situation and conveying that to an audience requires at least some knowledge of that situation and sympathy beyond one’s own motives. At times, I’m tempted to conclude that initially, Mrs. Nhu and the filmmakers were so intent upon documenting a happy ending that everything else gets shoved into the background.
All that being said I do take into account the times in which Daughter from Danang was produced. Much less was known or even considered regarding the Vietnamese adoptee perspective and many of us were barely beginning to speak out about our experiences. Just two years prior to the release of the film, the emergence of the Vietnamese adoptee community was marked by the establishment of The Vietnamese Adoptee Network in the US and the launching of Adopted Vietnamese International in Australia.
Since then, many of us have “come into our own” and have begun to tell our own stories. It seems only natural that the documentation of our histories as adoptees should follow suit and make room for our independent voices. We have already been bombarded by the voices of others as they build their reputations and sometimes their incomes based upon our stories. In the meantime, are we supposed to sit back and smile feeling grateful that we were mentioned at all? Once in a while, we are even allowed to speak yet even then, only if what we have to say fits within a framework created by someone who’s not an adoptee.
I think it’s time we step away from documentaries like Precious Cargo and Daughter from Danang as they are outdated and treat us more as subjects and/or victims rather than narrators. As the work of Vietnamese adoptees like Indigo Willing and Dominique Golding illustrate, we are capable of speaking for ourselves as thinking adults. For those who would claim to support the Vietnamese adoptee community, what better way to show that than to support our right to speak as individuals rather than as decoration for someone else’s scrapbook?
Hi Sume.
First.. thank you for this post. I cannot even tell you how incredible your timing is! I recently received this DVD from my adoptive mother. That may seem fine, however, my adoptive mother and I have not spoken or seen each other in over a year, by her choice. I should also mention that I have also started my own search for my mother in Korea. I watched the DVD about 6 times.. almost in a row. Mostly because the first few times I was watching it — I was searching for the reason why I had received this from the person I did. Searching with confusion… why was I feeling so hurt by this “gift.” I asked all my adoptee friends if they had seen the movie and what their reactions were… but no one really wanted to discuss it – and I can understand why. So, I decided to continue to watch it — over and over. Maybe I would soon become immune to the pain this movie was giving me?
I am haunted by that social worker in Vietnam talking to the mothers, trying to steal their children in a fog of lies about what is right and wrong. Showing them a picture of a “lucky” little boy who now has American parents. And saying, “so, will you let me take him?”
I have to say, I hated Heidi after watching this movie. Partly because she found what she thought she was seeking… a loving family just as excitied to find her again… only to find out that is NOT what she was looking for afterall. Mostly though, because I am jealous of her. How I wish I had a birth mother who longed for me to return to her. I have been told my entire life by the non-adoptees around me that this is who all birth mothers are — I must also have one. But, what I have come to learn is that not all birth mothers are open to a reunion. ‘How lucky is Heidi!’, I thought. ‘I’d be thrilled to give them money and to stay longer with them and return again and again.’ I’d be thrilled to be touched and hugged and kissed by her. But… after reading this post… I realize how unfair I have been to Heidi. You are right — what she was lacking was the adoptee connection before, during, and after her reunion. You are more levelheaded than I am … thank you for making sense of this movie, that has been haunting me.
Julia
Hey Julia,
Thank you for your comment. Yeah, it’s strange that she would send you that. I can understand why it would be hurtful for you to receive this from your adoptive mother. I don’t think people understand the message this could be sending to very young adoptees and/or adoptees who want to find their original families.
Regardless of intention, this video coming from an adoptive family member especially can say, “Don’t look for you original families! Bad things will happen! See what happened to Heidi?” Sometimes bad things do happen, sometimes they don’t but the video isn’t very encouraging. Quite the opposite.
Some might argue that what happened to Heidi is a reality for some adoptees, and I don’t dispute that. I just don’t think DFD is a good means by which to illustrate it. It’s too simplified.
Your envy is understandable and to be honest, I had the same exact thoughts about her being lucky to have a mother to who wanted to be a part of her life. I envied her, too and still do actually. I think the envy is natural though not always the case, as is our feelings of confusion and disdain at Heidi’s reactions.
But again, the film doesn’t give us much choice but to feel those things because it portrays Heidi as being oblivious without giving us a more complete understanding of her position. Don’t feel bad. I think in a way, we as viewers are kind of set up, too.
We are shown the possible lies and manipulation behind OBL, then led to believe it’s all going to be put right, then taken through an emotional storm. Ugh, the film is just so wrong. Just file it away under “not worth the dvd it’s printed on” and forget it.
Good luck on your search, Julia. I wish you the very best.
Thank you for this thoughtful analysis of this film.
It was my understanding that Heidi did not have a good relationship with her adoptive mother and was unfamiliar with the cultural expectations that her birth mother might have. I felt bad for Heidi as she did not find what she was looking for. But I also grieved for her birth family as they did not get the reunion they wanted either. Unfufilled expectations all around.
I think Heidi expected some love from her family and in stead of this she met greedy people who were hoping for free money from America.
Another thing to consider is when Heidi went to visit she gave expensive gifts and was wearing expensive jewelry. To her family, she must have appeared very well off and they felt that asking her for money shouldn’t be a big deal. These were poor people who saw their sister/daughter as what we would consider rich. They felt as though she should have no problem taking care of her mother. There are cultures that actually take care of their parents, not try to get rid of them or run away from them.
Thats not greed. The shows your lack of crossclutural understanding. Families support each other financially in Asia because there is no government support. If they did not they would starve. Your imperialistic attitude is very putrid.
EXACTLY !!!!
Heidi was a very young woman when she went back to Vietnam. I too was adopted when I was 3; but in the states. My adopted mother pretty much did not like me from the get go. I got in contact with my biological mother, and she wanted no part in my life. So, I can totally relate to Heidi wanting a mother figure who just plain loved her! Her biological mother comes off as “phony”; and the “I love yous”; huh? None of these people knew each other.
I have seen this documentary quite a few times and often think of this woman, Heidi. I sincerely hope her life has been full of joy and love.
If you look at it from a Vietnamese standpoint family is family. Growing up in America I really thought it was bullshit and that being family doesn’t allow one to be a leech. But you also have to be understanding of a situation instead of demonizing any party. I feel as though many of this is looked upon with an ethnocentric lens. A mother who searches for a child she did not fully willingly give up has no phony love expressed at all. They lost a part of themselves. Maybe to an American the love and connection isn’t as strong because that’s how American relationships are. In Vietnamese collectivist culture whoever you befriend or are related to you are ride or die no matter how long the time apart is.
Great post and points all around – especially on how people sometimes seem to “use” the Viet adoptee stories more so than they just “tell” them – it happens so much in our community sometimes it seems – and it’s great to have voices out there like yours pushing for our own voices and our own projects and objectives.
In regard to search and reunion, some readers may want to check out Operation Reunite – http://www.operationreunite.com/ – which is run by a Vietnamese adoptee (Trista G) and provides some great information on searching/what to expect et. – I think she talked with Heidi Bub as well on her reunion (although nothing is there on the site).
Thanks everyone.
Hey Vietk, it does seem like that, doesn’t it? Hopefully, we can begin to change that or at the very least actively discourage the exploitation of our stories. I’m very glad to see you out there, too!
Thanks so much for the link. I missed it somehow. :S I’ll put it in my sidebar. I looked through it, and Trista’s done a great job. Looks like I’m going to be spending a lot of time there myself.
It would be great to hear from Heidi again. I wonder if anyone has approached her about a follow-up or even if she’d want to after all this time.
Interesting blog.
Thanks SolShine7. 🙂
Sume,
Your analysis of the film is on the mark. Unless you have studied filmmaking, you are remarkably perspicacious for recognizing the issues so clearly.
The producers, writers, directors and photographers in any film all have their own viewpoints, agenda and, possibly, prejudices. In the end, they often will have changed the reality of the subject so radically that those filmed will hardly be able to recognize themselves. During my college days, as a fine arts and filmmaking major, I worked as a freelancer on independent film crews, and I know how they inject themselves into a situation, often completely changing things, sometimes wrecking them, but always putting their own agenda first.
Let’s hope Heidi and her family, with time, find each other.
I am not an adoptee, let alone a cross-cultural adoptee, but I still very much live in a cross-cultural world. I will not pretend that I can understand what it is to be an adoptee, but the cross-cultural part I can touch. As an American caucasian who has lived a quarter of a century outside the US, some in Europe and most of it in Asia, I am familiar with the emotional distancing, unwanted touching, stares, inconsiderate, impolite and sometimes downright rude questions, and occasional racist epithets. Racial discrimination in renting and real estate property acquisition, restaurant and retail service and so on, let alone community relations is a very close-up reality for me. More native-born Americans, particularly those of European, and some of Asian, descent should have the experience.
Hi, I’m interested in knowing more about the works of Indigo Willing and Dominique Golding, but not finding too much on an initial google. Do you have any links?
I’m teaching a class on adoption history this spring; last time I taught it I showed this film, and had my students read the Choys’ critique of it. Now I’m wondering if there’s a better documentary out there. I know First Person Plural, and will probably use that again…If you have any thoughts, please let me know! Thanks!
Hi Rick and thanks for your comment.
I have never studied filming. It just seems like common sense given what I do know about the process and human nature in general. It’s another reason why I think of film or art in general in terms of what the creator wants to show or convey to us rather than how things necessarily are. Human beings are subjective creatures after all no matter how much we try to escape it.
I agree that we should all try to reach outside our experiences and environmental comfort zones. For me personally, traveling to Lebanon opened my eyes to what’s out there, but also gave me insight into the prejudices and misconceptions that I harbored within. It can be an affective way to broaden one’s perspective and lead to greater understanding. If one goes beyond being a tourist, that is.
Hi Lori, I think it’s great that you incorporated the Choy’s critique into your lesson. I haven’t seen it yet but hear great things about First Person Plural. There is a new one coming out called Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam by Nancy Nguyen Lee. I haven’t seen it yet, so whether it’s “better” or not remains to be seen. Hopefully, it’s not a repeat of Precious Cargo.
Jae Ran at Harlow’s Monkey has compiled a list of resources. You might also want to look at those.
http://harlowmonkey.typepad.com/harlows_monkey/resources.html
These might also be of help:
http://www.youtube.com/user/adoptedthemovie
http://www.resiliencefilm.com/
http://www.uoregon.edu/~adoption/
http://www.myspace.com/shrimpcompany
http://www.darlo.tv/indigo/Vietnam1.html
The correct spelling in Vietnamese is Da Nang NOT Danang. With a simple looking up on world maps or on maps.google.com those clowns would have the correct name of the place they filmed in
Your absolutely correct PhoTai. The filmmakers are morons at best. All this film showed was Heidi’s complete and hopeless southern ignorance. Her lack of preparation was appalling. Look at the clothes she was wearing. do they have the internet where she is living? ummm… it hot there Heidi. I am embarrassed to call her an American. She obviously was never wanting when she was young and has no idea or even curiosity as how Vietnamese live. She is a immature self centered baby. Look at the games she played with her husband after her return.
I suspect the filmmakers were very aware of her ignorance prior to her leaving and let it go to capture Heidi’s shock and dismay over her “gold-digging family”.
This joke of a film can’t even come close to a Sundance award. Its not a documentary. its a Schlockumentary.
“Southern ignorance”??? Your stereotyping of the woman shows YOUR ignorance. Disgusting.
Can’t agree with Heidi’s comment enough. Despite this documentary being about 1 person you attribute it to her coming from a geographic area (the US South) that is almost 1 million sq miles and has over 100 million people living in it. You don’t have to look far to see who is perpetuating stereotypes.
Hi Sume
Thanks for your post. I’ve just watched DfD and had the same initial reaction, i.e Heidi is a selfish, ignorant so and so…
But clearly as you have articulated, it looks as though the filmmakers have taken advantage of her ignorance and under preparedness to put out what ended up being a dramatic documentary. I’ve been working in Vietnam and although being an overseas Vietnamese person myself, i still had to undergo cross cultural training in preparation to live there, and i was just going for work not a family reunion!. The biggest difference between the west and vietnamese culture i’d say is the collective family unit, and how responsibility to look after your elders is paramount. Knowing something like this would have given Heidi more realistic expectations.
Should it have been the documentary makers responsibility to ensure Heidi’s preparedness? Ultimately i’d think it should have been Heidi herself, but who knows what negotiations and dealings went on in the making of this.
I’ll just try to be less judgemental and hope they can reunite in more understanding circumstances.
Thanks for the post.
p.s all Vietnamese words are made of one syllable (or a series if one syllable words), but when anglicized often become one word…i.e Da Nang->Danang or Viet Nam-> Vietnam.
Thanks again for your comments. This post was written some time ago and since then, I’ve learned to be wary of Vietnamese words that have been anglicized. I still mess up and revert back here and there, but try to be careful.
Long, what I really think would be interesting is hearing from Heidi herself after all these years. I’m curious as to how she feels about the documentary after all this time. Coming from a similar perspective, it’s hard for me to judge her from such a badly done documentary. I hope some day she is able and willing to tell her story the way it was always meant to be told. In the end, it’s something only she can do.
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[…] sobre la adopción, este tipo de reuniones, se abordarán con más sensibilidad. Gracias Ethnically Incorrect Daughter por su perspicacia en su opinión sobre la película. He estado filmando para el documental en Ohio […]
I agree that the filmmakers exploited Heidi and were insensitive to (or ignorant of) the emotional turmoil that young adoptees face in reunion, even under the best of circumstances.
I felt a close connection to Heidi in that like her I was born in 1968, came into this world as a result of the war, was placed for adoption, and reunited with my birth mother while in my 20s. (Unlike Heidi’s experience, my parents were both American college students who met at an anti-war rally.)
The first question adoptees in reunion often ask is “Why did you give me away?” To be confronted with a demand for money is of course going to cause any adoptee to recoil in horror. I mean, after being thrown to the curb, how can she be considered to owe money to the very person who abandoned her?
After being in reunion for 19 years, I now feel that I do owe my birth mother something. She brought me into this world and has been a loyal friend to me for almost two decades. If she asked me for anything now I would give it to her happily. If she had asked me for money upon first meeting me, I would have run screaming for the door. Isn’t this understandable?
That said, the desperate poverty of Heidi’s birth family must also be acknowledged. I wonder if a small stipend, say $50 a month, would have made a huge difference. Heidi did seem rather hard-hearted in response to the hopeless poverty and vulnerability in front of her eyes.
The deep-seated anger, pain, sadness, and confusion over being given away at age seven must have blocked any compassion that she otherwise might have felt for her birth family. This is understandable to me because, like her, I have lived it.
It’s also understandable to me that in 2002 at the age of 27 after having grown up in the rural South, she was not fully versed on the cultural differences between America and Vietnam. If she had foreseen what would happen, she would have been truly remarkable. Her relatives in Vietnam were equally unprepared and surprised by Heidi’s cultural mindset and attitudes.
Not well-versed is right! In the movie, they speak of the KKK with almost NO disdain whatsoever, and their friends being interviewed from Pulaski, ignorantly refer to “Orientals” – who calls people that anymore?!!! Ugh!!!
Heidi was born in December 1968, and she wasn’t 27-years-old in 2002. It was filmed mostly in 1997 and 1998.
I really don’t think that “growing up in the rural South” has anything to do with how well-versed or not on Asian culture she was. This is the second comment I’ve seen presenting a negative stereotype of Southern Americans. I grew up in one of the wealthiest areas of CA and attended private schools, and I don’t think I would have been much more well-versed in Asian culture than Heidi was at that time.
What these people mean is that Californians would be familiar with Vietnamese Restaurants and love going out for Pho. That is what they mean as “familiar with culture.” I doubt Heidi grew up in a rural southern community, most likely middle class suburban which is a fairly uniform culture nationwide. Where I live in the southern midwest in a metro area of 200K it is pretty much that same generic culture, but go into the small farming communities and you have entered a different world with very long established, closed social circles. These are the people being disparaged who ironically would probably be somewhat more familiar with the tight nit family Arrangements of Vietnamese than the average, atomized, generic middle class suburban American.
Of course the California people who are supposed to be so sophisticated about culture don’t really get that foreign “culture” is more than spicy food and fancy temples…it also involves giving your lazy brother in law a free ride through live. I work for a company owned by an Asian Immigrant. His wife made him bring over her lazy, unskilled brother and his bossy, loud mouthed wife. Not only does he give them a free ride through life, but a “Cadillac” version paying his family a quarter of a million dollars a year (the company payroll accidentally went out to us in an email.) This guy does absolutely nothing but chill, watch NBA and college roundball, and hit on girls in his gym shorts. I wonder how he really feels about having to support this dude? In those countries you are expected to do this, but here we already have that chunk of money that would go for this taken from us in our taxes to support such people. I don’t know which is better, paying a lazy brother in law who at least will kow tow and worship you when needed on occasion? Or some lazy section 8 fatherless family whose hoodlum kids come to rob your garage while you are away?
I am an adoptee, though not a transculture adoptee. I have been reunited with some of my family, after a long search, for 7 years. I will say that many of the emotions that were shared in the film are very common in many adoption reunions. Unfortunately, there were also many adoption reunion “red flags” in their reunion. These red flags need to be dealt with in order for the reunion to progress. But Heidi feeling that she was the parent, and her mom was the child, feeling smothered, seeing the highs of the original reunion moment, and the lows later on, seeing her “close the door” in the end, but not “lock it” all of these are very common in reunions. When you add the cultural differences, I can imagine the stress that both of them were feeling. Most professionals who help with adoption reunion issues would never urge her to go in and stay for 7 days with her newly reunited family, much less with no help and support. Most recommend a very controlled and limited first visit, and then build slowly from there. Additionally, it is not really the best idea to meet everyone at once. Reunions are rollercoaster rides, and here Heidi was sent to a new culture and had little ability to communicate to others, and no one to be there for her.
I would love to see Heidi get some help from adoption reunion support groups, and maybe she would see that her feelings are normal and she can still work through them and maybe find a comfortable place. Some comments mentioned the games she played with her husband when she returned, but this too is “normal” adoptee behavior. Many adoptees have a hard time being able to trust, to be close, to share. Her husband has his work cut out for him.
I am a search angel, I help to reunite families, so I have seen this many times. I do wish that Heidi would be willing to try to deal, and maybe as somone mentioned, agree to send a small stipend as this would help her family financially, and her mother emotionally as well. I also believe that ultimately it would help Heidi. I believe her mother, who already had such a burden of guilt, will now feel even more guilt and I would love to see more communication and reunion support on both sides. I agree with the blog post, the story was very eye opening, but the way this reunion was set up almost guaranteed a failed reunion, and I feel that a successful reunion should have been the primary goal of all parties. Hopefully they will get some support of people who help with reunions.
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I would like to respond to David Westsmith’s comment, regarding Heidi: “She obviously was never wanting when she was young and has no idea or even curiosity as how Vietnamese live.”
I completely agree with Elena who writes: “It’s also understandable to me that in 2002 at the age of 27 after having grown up in the rural South, she was not fully versed on the cultural differences between America and Vietnam. If she had foreseen what would happen, she would have been truly remarkable. Her relatives in Vietnam were equally unprepared and surprised by Heidi’s cultural mindset and attitudes.”
But I also would like to add that one of the reasons why Heidi was pushed, within herself, towards an ideal vision of reunion with her birth mother is precisely because she WAS left ‘wanting’ when she was young, as determined by her need to conceal her ethnicity and to assimilate and pretend that she was not half Vietnamese, and especially by her failure to establish a close bond with her adopting mother, with whom (I believe) she wasn’t in contact with anymore.
I see Heidi’s intense desire for reconnection with her birth mother fueled partly by her needs NOT being met, by family, in the United States.
Perhaps the more closely bonded an adoptee is to her/his adoptive family, the less needy/vulnerable the reunion, and the desire for a certain kind of acceptance/love from the FIRST mother who gave you up.
~
I agree that it was completely unprofessional and unethical for the film crew to handle the reunion as a spectator event, instead of providing the type of support mentioned by a previous poster, BSR. The language difficulties alone and Heidi’s obvious need for a translator makes the way the film crew handled things seem terribly culturally insensitive and socially ignorant.
In the exchange over filial support between Heidi and her family, the film crew was on the wrong side, rather than these family members desperate to have certain kinds of love and support from each other, but missing the common vocabulary of cultural expectation.
Might we also question how the filmmakers’ presence may have exacerbated that economic divide between Heidi and her family in more ways that just the obvious. Sure, they made the situation so much worse by continuing to film the failed request for money and by editing the film as an unfolding spectator event. However, if Heidi shows up with all these film people, doesn’t she seem more wealthy and connected than she might truly be?
Given that Heidi wasn’t living the high life or anything, there on that Army base, the filmmakers (director, producer, etc.) should have been the ones set up to send Heidi’s family money. That might make the DVDs worth the plastic they are printed on.
Hello everybody,
I was born and raised in Vietnam. I spent the first 21 years there and spent three of those years as an infantryman in the ARVN. I’ve spent the past 35 years in the US and am a naturalized US citizen. I can say that I am familiar with both cultures, was there in person, and today speak both languages to see it from both sides of the coin.
Unlike some other opinions stated above, I find this documentary to be quite straight forward and free of the usual cake icing (political correctness) so rampant in American culture. No, I do not find the film makers setting up an ambush on either Ms. bubb or her biological mother.
This film very much illustrates the vast difference of culture between the US and Vietnam. The complaint about Ms. Bubb being abandoned by her biological mother describes the ME attitude in American culture. It appears that complainants failed to understand Ms. Bubb’s mother had to engage in prostitution to feed her children and during the course of business Ms. Bubb was conceived. American culture has contempt for prostitution. Vietnamese culture’s contempt for prostitution was/is ten times as strong.
I personally do not consider that lady a prostitute but rather a strong survivor, who had to do what it took to care for her family. I deem her to be honorable and respect her by the fact that she had the courage to bring Ms. Bubb into this world instead of opting for an abortion. She fed and clothed the young Ms. Bubb for seven years. Given Vietnamese society had nothing good to say about a woman with a half blood child but yet this lady and all her other children had the guts and grace to circle their wagons and took care of Ms. Bubb for seven years, that speaks volume of their character. Ms. Bubb was given up for adoption only because of the fear and conviction that she would be “eliminated” when the reds came to town. I was there, I knew/know how true that fear was.
Ms. Bubb, on the other hand, visibly illustrates the prejudices and social mores of American culture particularly culture of Southerners. Ms. Bubb is all about the ME….looking for something that her adoptive mother did not give her. She was looking for a tourist trip to Disneyland and the high of a romanticized reunion. Ms. Bubb was disappointed with the reality she encountered. She perceived of her self as a victim who was “abandoned/given away” instead of putting herself, as a mother, thinking about that heart wrenching decision a woman had to make due to vicious historical circumstances. The social security system and the 401K in America has managed to destroy the true family “values” even though we hear that words out of everyone’s mouth all the time. It is not uncommon to see children quickly ship off their elderly parents into nursing homes and hospices to die a lonely death. It is also not uncommon to find young children being abused by parents and the cycle repeats itself over and over…..because it is all about the MEism.
Do I feel disgusted with Ms. Bubb? yes, that was my initial reaction right after the film ended. But after some soul searching afterward, I found her to be pretty much a victim of circumstances and history. That was how she was raised by her adoptive mother and the environment she was in. That was all she knew. One thing for sure, she is much better off today thanks to the “abandon” act her mother did in 1975.
I have been married to a Filipina lady for 28 years. For the first 22 years of our marriage, we sent her parents an average $600/month stipend. That did not stop until they both passed away. That is a responsibility I deem my wife has the moral obligation to fullfill and I share my life with her thus the shared “family values” on my part. I would be very surprised if my American born children would do that with their parents one of these days in the future.
I hope other adoptive children would look at this documentary and these discussions before setting sail looking for their biological parents.
WOW. I agree. I really felt so angry at the way Ms. Bubb was raised – did you catch the part in the movie – where Heidi and her husband say they don’t “agree” with the KKK but they do have friends in it. I can hardly believe that they are almost sympathizing with the KKK clan! What’s more is that her adoptive mother made her keep it a secret that she was Vietnamese! Then she complains about her mother – who can’t stop crying the whole film – and says she is too affectionate? I just can’t bear to ever watch that film again. It hurts too much.
I completely agree with your comment. I have grown up in the US all my life. I have parents that have been married for the past 46 years. I grew up poor and know the value of hard work and money. Our society is self-centered and Heidi is a product of our society.
However, I do feel bad for Heidi. She grew up with little affection and tenderness. So when faced with this, close-knit, warm, affectionate family/mother, she got overwhelmed. If you look at her face when her mother hugs her at the airport, she looks very surprised by the amount of emotion that her mother is showing. I hope that Heidi will take a chance again, before she loses it.
I watched this movie over 3 hours ago and I am still crying. I ache for all the children and the families that have experienced this horrible tragedy.
I came across this documentary film last night and I have to thank you Mas360. You are completely correct in your assessment and you’ve pointed out all the key points I wanted to say.
Whoa! You couldn’t have said it any better! I was angry at Ms. Bubb for the way she acted and just left things closed. I can’t come close to knowing how she may have felt being adopted but she should have at least had some knowledge and understanding about different cultures. It sickens me that she picked up the “southerners” mentality.
Thank you for this post. You are spot on with all points. The most glaring thing I saw in the movie was the lack of compassion on the Americans’ part, including Heidi.
Thank you Mas360! You are spot-on in your assessment of the whole situation/documentary. You have saved me alot of time writing a response!
I agree. The Daughter from Danang didn’t deserve her Vietnamese mother. To not understand her family was/is living in abject poverty and that as little as $20 a month could make a monumental difference was unforgivable. The filmmakers have set up a fund to help her family which I intend to contribute to monthly. Here is the information I found at the production co’s website. NOTE: Interfaze is a non-profit production house.
Checks or money orders should be made out to: Interfaze Productions – Mai Thi Kim (Heidi’s mother)
Send contributions to:
Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco
Daughter from Danang
Interfaze Educational Productions
2600 10th Street, Suite 411
Berkeley, CA 94710
I’ve seen the movie last night through MBC Dubai. After watching the film I became furious, I thought it would be a happy ending. I had a lot of questions about the film, how it was made, what were the circumstances, etc. etc. It bothers me a lot, I wake up this morning still confused and finally google brought me here. Thanks to all of you wonderfull people out there who took time to share your thoughts, your feelings. I do appreciate your effort since not everyone could come to the right conclusion as you did. Thank you for what you are doing, and please keep it up.
what on this earth makes you think that you came to the “right conclusion”? Get over it life does not have a happy ending nine times out of ten! i love the sad ending its the best part of the whole thing!!! y cuz it was OVER!!!! how can i put this in a nice way….. GET OVER YOUR SELF!
with love from
the kid
Hi U. Abaya, Heidi has been raised to be very selfish.
WOW. I just finished watching DFD. I cried my EYES out and was completely appalled at some of the things I was hearing – especially that social worker practically begging to take those children away! It makes me nauseous to think of.
I really appreciate reading all of your posts. It really helped me see Heidi Bub in a more positive light. After the film, I was so angry at Heidi! All I could see was her mother’s face – a flood of tears – and to think Heidi said she had “shut” but not “locked” the door! I was so angry at her.
On the other hand, after reading your post I can now more fully and better assess the situation. Heidi was NOT prepared at all for this! On a sheerly superficial lever, she went into a completely impoverished country with a huge diamond on her hand the whole time! I know that is completely not her fault, but I think everyone could have been given a lesson in cultural sensitivity here! Also, more importantly, Heidi’s relationship with her adoptive mother sheds light on how she reacted to the whole reunion. It seems Heidi was longing for (she even says this in the movie) someone to parent her, someone to feel loved and comforted by, since she hadn’t had that her whole life. It seems like she was met with this at first (all the affection) but it all came crashing down when the mother became overly affectionate and what Heidi saw as clingy. Its like that wound was torn open again – and she was completely alone, vulnerable, and…orphaned. She even says in the movie she all of a sudden became the parent when all she was looking for was to be the child. I think this movie reveals deep emotional scars on all three women: Heidi, her adoptive mother, and her birth mother.
Even though I can more fully understand the background of it all, I am so incredibly saddened that Heidi “shut” the door. Couldn’t she recognize that she maybe hadn’t been prepared for the cultural differences? Why couldn’t she take her mom home for a while after she had grieved for her all these years?
I don’t even know what to make of this film – it just breaks my heart. I appreciate all the posts – lots of food for thought.
I am astonished at how selfish, self-centered and ignorant the Amerasian girl is who visited her Vietnamese birth mother and family. I understood her to be college educated, yet she was profoundly ignorant of Vietnamese culture, values and tradition. You would think she would have researched such things before making the trip, so as to be prepared to properly greet and interact with her birth family. But no, all she thought about was herself. I was particularly sickened by her response to finding the poverty conditions in which her birth family lived; it was not a response of compassion and empathy, but all about how SHE could never live in such conditions, that SHE preferred living in the American luxury she’d grown accustomed to and that SHE could not wait to return to–her response to their poverty was all about HER!
I was also astonished at her response to her family’s discussion of her doing her part to care for her aging mother. She was so full of herself, she perceived this perfectly normal (to the Vietnamese) discussion about doing her part to care for her aging mother as being somehow offensive. Again, it was all about HER, with no regard for her aging mother’s needs and the burden this posed on her much, much poorer half-siblings.
Unlike the Amerasian girl in the film, there are many Americans who make monthly donations to poor families in the third world who they don’t even know personally; yet they see the need, and feel privileged to be able to make a difference in the lives of their less fortunate brethren. Although the Amerasian girl in the film was a blood relative of these people, she resisted the opportunity to make a difference in her poor birth family’s lives. Americans like her make Americans look bad.
Finally, I, too, gave a child up for adoption many years ago so that she would have a better life than that which I could give her at that point in my life. I made sure to read a few books about adopted children and to talk to a professional before meeting her, so as to best prepare myself for as many possible scenarios as I could (e.g., expressions of anger, resentment, etc.). I thought of and sought to understand HER, FIRST and FOREMOST, and it worked. We found each other when she was 20 years old. She was welcomed into the family by everyone–including her two younger half sisters, who were born of my first marriage and whom I was blessed to be able to care for and raise. I have been able to help the daughter I gave up for adoption with many, many problems over the years–which help I jumped at the opportunity to give her when she asked because, well, in my mind and in my heart, it was not about me–it was about her and her need for love, support and all that I could give her.
In view of the above, I surely pray that the Amerasian girl’s birth family in Vietnam does not think that all Americans are as selfish, self-centered and ignorant as this Amerasian girl apparently is. Some of us in America do think of others, FIRST; some of us do seek opportunities to be of love and service to others in any way we can–whether we’re blood relatives or not.
My thoughts were almost congurent with yours. i have never given a child up for adoption. On that note, my ignorance may show through and please accept my apologies if they do.
Heidi said that her adoptive Mother was emotionally unavailable. Then she wishes (and I always say, “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it”) for a birth Mother’s love and devotion. She got it. Her birth Mother gave her up due to the necessities and cruelties of the USA back then, looked for her, then was very smothering with her affection. Before Heidi went to Vietnam she should have done some research on Vietnam family cultures and found some Vietnam families in the US to talk with to find out what to expect culturally. I don’t know if it was the documentary or if it was just Heidi, but she truly appeared to be a spoiled brat who only is about HER. Even when she was talking with her husband about her trip, it ia all about HER. I am hoping that when she looks back at this documentary that she sees that this was not a good side of her. I hope this is not who she truly is.
Many US people, not just Heidi, will send money to 3rd world countries and not want to help the homeless people in our own communities. She was saying that they are strangers, but we help strangers all the time. To send money to them, maybe $25 a month, would help her biological family out immensely. She probably made money from the documentary that she should have shared with this family after taking film crews into their lives. Too bad her birth Mother gave her up, she would have then been accustomed to helping her family out.
I truly hope she is now grown up some, as I think the documentary is made when she is younger. No one owes her anything. I have a feeling at the point of the documentary, she thinks everyone owes HER something – her birth family, her adoptive family, her husband. Not how it works in the real world.
I just watched the movie and I am so grateful that I found this blog because my thoughts were really raging…
I so wish if someone could find Heidi, someone who understand more about the process of reuniting and teach her, to make her understand the cultural differences.
I very much hoped when they showed 2 years later that she got into her senses and at least try to know her family better and keep contact.
I cant believe there is no one around her, a friend or her husband who could have reminded her that it is her birth-mother who she “shut the door on”. I felt like she lies to herself about not “locking” that door though.
I am not an adoptee but lived most of my life in poverty which I could leave 4 years ago thanks to my marriage. My mother still lives in Europe in the same tiny place where I grew up. It is very difficult for her and I am not in a position to help her (yet – I do wish to support her as soon as i am employed). If I would be in the same situation as Heidi I think I would at least say I will think about it, not become mad. My experiences with Americans showed they would rather be very polite and promise to think about it or talk about it later rather than openly refuse things so Heidi was apparently raised quite differently.
I don’t blame her if she really doesn’t have the means to financially help but I think the least she could do is keep in touch, maybe send photos of her kids and let them know her heart goes out for them but she cant help financially.
For me it seemed like her birth-mother would be already grateful just to know about her and the siblings were more pushing the money agenda.
Thanks again on your analysis about the movie.
I hope that she will change her mind, wish her all the best.
Also I do hope Julia and all the others looking for their parents will succeed.
We must have watched the same PBS Special. I cried until my husband woke up. I have read several criticism concerning the film documentary. Doesn’t everyone have a bias, motive, or slant? When you watch a wild life documentary and the animal is hurt and the film maker doesn’t pick up the baby cub and comfort him. He/she films the cub being battered by the elements. Heidi may have gone out there with or without the film makers, and I don’t know if it would have made any difference. She did not appear emotionally prepared. In many of her comments, I could hear her anguish of trying to fit in while she was growing up. I don’t think it every stopped. Her trip to Viet Nam was an attempt to be accepted and loved. After the initial meeting, she was itching for things that were familiar and “American”. Nobody can make you happy…nobody can make you feel fulfilled…nobody can give you purpose…we have to do all these things ourselves. In regards for her mother, I’m not sure if she would have been better off not knowing/hearing from her daughter until she was prepared. It seemed her mother became deflated and sad toward the end of film. Here waw a woman who may have been looked down upon by some of her neighbors but now her daughter from US has come. Imagine how overjoyed and proud she was of her daughter. She appeared to be prosperious and loving. She showed off her daughter every where. I can not comprehend the shame, sadness, and heart break she felt being rejected by her daughter. When your children don’t respect you, then why should anyone else do so? I understand Heidi is trying to locate her father. I wish her luck but urge her to “open that door” she was so quick to close. please excuse my typos…Its almost 4am
After watching DFD I really dislike Heidi – I understand her reactions though – I mean she did grow up in the south, in a town where the KKK was founded, had a dysfunctional relationship with her adoptive mother and grew up with an enforced “whiteness” all around her. There is a girl scout women in the film who says “we made her a southerner real fast” – I mean who can blame her for the conditions in which she grew up with right? However, the reason that I DON’T sympathize with her is the fact that she OTHERS her Vietnamese heritage and looks down upon it based on the stupid ideology in which she was raised with. I can understand doing that with people where there is no bond at all but the women in the film GAVE BIRTH TO HER and it was clear from the film that she and the rest of the family tried everything to accommodate and make her feel loved – so why reject them and turn your back on them. Also, for a grown women she must be so naive and selfish to believe that she can just appear and disappear of people’s lives like that – specially in and out of her biological mother’s life. I concur that the film did not do her justice however, I believe what she express is her real way of thinking – after the two years she said she stop all forms of communication and she kept referring to the experience as a “bad experience”. I am curious as to know what was bad about it? Was it the fact that it made her feel responsible and added a financial and moral burden to her or was it the fact that she couldn’t handle the idea that what she had grown up repressing and hiding was her after all? That poor Vietnam she saw IS PART OF HER – I just think she couldn’t handle that and thus decided to go back to America where she can pretend she fits in but she well knows that she doesn’t. After all, to the average eye on the street she would always be the OTHER and how sad that she cannot our of respect for the women that give birth to her acknowledge that! I too wish she would not have taken that trip – but not for her sake but for her Vietnamese family!
Heidi reminds me of a daughter of one of my mother’s friends. She wore cowboy boots and western jeans to show how “country” she was. She highlighted her hair until it was a unknown color. She had a slight country accent (but she was from the burbs). While she was married, she would not allow her mother through her door. After her divorce, she blamed her mother in law and husband for how badly she treated her mother. They would say that she didn’t look like her mother’s daughter cause she looked so “white”. Basically, they turned her against her mother. All I can say is grow a back-bone and show some respect. Obviously both these women need a lesson in respect and duty. When your a child you can blame your parents, teachers, peers and life, for the bad choices you make. Once you are an adult, all the decisions and choices are all on you. Her biological family was a little shocking with the “financial talk”, but I think they felt like they wanted matter straightened up before she left. While I do not think they had a right to expect her to support them, I don’t think it was unreasonable to ask for assistance. She was not a baby when she left. She was 5 or 6, and she had some memory of her family. I think they expected her come back into their lives one day…. Anyone else thinking of contacting a parent or child after so many years should first get their act together. And this is coming from a person who has experienced “relatives coming out of the woodwork.”
Hi Sume,
Thank you for your post and honest, I watched this movie just now and I was a bit enrage on how it was “setup”. At one point in the movie I heard Nhu, the translator said to have prepared her as best as she could but that was not present on the film which left me to believe if Heidi was at all prepare for the trip to Vietnam. I do hope Heidi does feel better about the whole experience to Vietnam than what was portrayed in the documentation.
I find it quite odd why Nhu would leave Heidi there by herself especially if Heidi’s trip was only 7 days? That raise the question of whether they did this on purpose to leave her feeling distress? Another perspective on the film, which seems to be made into the climax is the family asking her for money. I do admit that Vietnamese are poor and especially when they portray the homes of Heidi’s sister and mom, having lived in Vietnam myself I know their condition, the film producer and Heidi should know their state as well.
This film seems to portray Vietnamese as greedy and only exploit any foreigner for extra dough. It’s easy to see that since the film shows how the mother brought Heidi around the neighbor hood as if to show off, and yes it is true that she was showing off her daughter because she was proud! But the climax of it all seems to address why the mother was sticking with the daughter so closely, to get money. I do not like how this was present one bit.
On the other hand, Vietnamese under the reign of communism are living a harsh life that is quite unimaginable to the western world, the film are not even close to portray that lifestyle. There are people who live under those conditions like the sister, with little shelter and their shower does consist of bringing in water into an area and pour it on yourself! That’s the poor Vietnam. But what some of you might not know already is that the Vietnamese communist (lower case c is left intentionally) are taking over these houses of the poor in order to build recreational playgrounds for foreigners and rich Vietnamese while compensate little or none at all, leaving the family homelessness.
Sorry for the lengthy complain, but my point was that, the condition in Vietnam are so unstable, especially for the poorest ones whom are being shoved around by the government. Imagine living in your own beat up home with little food day-by-day to eat then having to worry about losing your house at well? Yes, that is the reality people have to face in Vietnam! I was shocked to see the family asking for money outright, but after some thought and having been there myself, I understand the situation and there was quite a bit of misunderstanding all around! The film quitely move on without any explaination from Ms. Nhu! To make the viewer understand what you might have knowledge of after reading my frustration with this film.
I am glad to have seen this film, not because it was good, but it open my eyes and make me a better critical thinking. There are millions of nonsense film like this where it was used as a propaganda of some sort to sway our thinking and for the film maker to have their agenda met.
What’s sad is to see how heart broken the mother was after Heidi left Vietnam,
I saw Heidi’s reaction as a result of wanting unconditional love from her birthmother and family. From an American perspective, I can certainly see how the fact that they expected money would upset her as it changes the whole dynamics of the relationship. She was a child when she left, none of this was her fault. She came back looking for unconditional love and she didn’t find it. She found expectations and obligations that she was not prepared for.
Yes in stead of love from her family she met greedy people hoping for free money from America. Everyone at Heidi’s place would leave and stop contact with such people.
I think Heidi’s reaction towards the end of the movie makes complete sense. I understand the desperate needs of her family origin; however, I also think their demards on her must have been overwhelming. No matter how it is rationalized, this young lady was abandoned by her own mother even if it was through some sort of manipulation from the system. Reality is, in the Far East at that time and probably very much still today bi-racial children are treated with contempt and not accepted in society and neither are their families. In this story it is presented very much different than the true reality. In this story the focus is on how families in Viet Nam herald these bi-racial family members as the saviors of their family left behind. There is likely some truth to that; but, that does not change the fact that mixed heritage is a huge negative in those countries almost always. Even when Heidi first met her birth mother she was asking Heidi to take her back to the U.S. with her. That is an undaunting task financially, as well as emotionally. Heidi’s adoptive mother was extremely physically abusive, distant, and emotionally abusive and controlling. The arrangements for the trip to Viet Nam obviously were not laid out well, nor prepared for properly at all. If there had been any kind of proper preparation there would not have been a crash course on the plane to learn a few words. That flight should have been a transitional time in which Heidi could have been benefitted to be able to use to get her mind around what was up ahead if her feelings had been considered. For it to be rationalized later by the remark that she gave me a silver star engraved with “You have made my dream come true” was so self-serving and placing the blame on Heidi as to how things took a turn for the worse. The melt down took place after her guide and surrogate mother abandoned her in a foreign country in which she did not even have any telephone converstations with her husband and children back in the U.S. isolating her even further. How was she to make sense of the whole impact intensified in a condensed one week stay being emersed into an existance so profoundly shockingly foreign to her. I would think that emotionally Heidi must have been shocked all the moreso by being abandoned by the woman who was supposed to be her guide. Was it made clear in the preparations for this trip that she would be left in Viet Nam all alone? I feel badly for Heidi in the way all of this was arranged, as well as presented thereby alienating her from her connection with her family of origin, and obviously from a mother whe expressed in the end of the movie how it was her love for her child that meant the most. I think that got lost in the shuffle of the film makers attempts to exonerate themselves. I think Heidi and her family of origin paid the price for their errors and lack of insight and proper preparation on this endeavor. I feel sorry for both sides. Her birth mother went into even greater depression after Heidi’s departure. Who knows what was said and what happened that is left out between the scene with the family and when she was obviously back at a hotel. To me, it would have made a great deal more sense if the film makers had arranged for Heidi to stay in a Hotel each night, or had that available for her so that she could have some alone time for herself to digest it all in between her visits with her family of origin whom she had not seen since she was merely 6 or 7 years of age. Come on, give the girl a break. To a young child, she was the one abandoned. Cast off. All her life since then she had believed she was sent away because she was a “bad child”. Then, after less than a week with her family of origin they are expecting her to eak out financially to help support them, and to rescue the family to the U.S. starting with their mother. It was presented to Heidi in an inaccurate translation as to what the expectations were that were being abruptly put on her at the very end of her visit with them. No one had guided, nor helped them with these matters. No one trained in these issues. No wonder Heidi felt as tramatized as she did. No one was helping with any of this in such a manner as to help heal the wounds, the very deep wounds of betrayal. Instead, more wounds were inflicted on her, and her birth mother, and family of origin. I think this movie brings out how these ones were victimized then, and even still to this very day in the incompetent manner in which things were handled and continue to be. I think of how all those children were herded onto the planes without anyone to be there for them for the huge long flight to the U.S. Bottles being shoved at them of which they didn’t have a clue as to what they were. How isolated they were after being ripped from their mother’s loving arms, hours on an airplane going who knows where and why. Being handled like… cargo, instead of children.
The movie started off showing Heidi in a setting which portrayed “her” as having money she does not have “as if” she had the financial resources to have helped her family in Viet Nam, as well as concluded the movie with her at the residence of her adoptive Grandmother. We know nothing about what happened to Heidi when her adoptive mother threw her out of the house, nor what happened to her in between that time and her being married to an enlisted guy in the Navy. They had two little girls. Where had they been stationed? Etc. Heidi and her family of origin got taken advantage of AGAIN for others to benefit and profit from the tragedy of what they had already been going through. Heidi handled it the best she could. I hope she watches this movie again and again when she can handle it and see how her mother in the end of the movie stated very clearly from her heart what mattered most to her, how Heidi felt and how much she loved her! I think so much more benefit could have come out of this, and hopefully as the dust continues to settle as to the was in which this was poorly arranged and continued to be mishandled it would be nice to see a better resolution between Heidi and her original family than what has thus far.
After just now viewing this documentary I’m extremely disturbed. My heart goes out to Heidi, her birth mother/family and her now family. The pressure they were all under was simply awful! Being in such a situation, w/o support is unconscionable [is that a word?]
I hope everyone is able to recover and grow from this point on.
Kindest,
Emily/Momily/Gramily
I feel sympathy and compassion for all involved. Heidi needed a fairytale reunion to try to heal the pain she felt from her American mother’s rejection but did not understand the improbability of such a fairytale ending.
The Vietnamese family had cultural expectations of this American woman who was not prepared to engage in their culture or family. (Truthfully, those expectations are more the norm in the world than those in the U.S. My friends from African and Latin backgrounds are wholly expected to provide for their parents in old age and have no problem with that, its how they were raised and what they understand and value.)
This was more than a culture clash, it was a sad tale of two women who desperately needed something they couldn’t quite have.
One point I would like to make after reading all of these comments about Southerners in the US. I grew up in the deep South and my parents were not educated people but were tolerant and accepting of all races and religions. When I got my first job as a social worker I began supporting a child in a foreign country and am fortunate and blessed to be able to provide support for 10 now. Not all Southerners are self centered, ignorant KKK sympathizers. I feel little if any empathy for Heidi. With very little effort she could have educated herself about the Vietnamese culture at some point in her life. She was a mother herself and should have felt some sympathy for the situation of her birth family. A small amount – probably her Doritos budget – each month would make a huge difference to their lives. I believe most people in her situation (finding their birth mother living in grinding poverty) would have asked immediately “What can I do to help you?” whether it was in Viet Nam or any nation. This woman was so narcissistic that she saw only her needs. We all have unmet needs from childhood whether adopted or not. This is no excuse for callousness and heartlessness. My heart ached for her birth mother who acted out of love and continued to put the needs of her daughter first. I wonder how own her children will treat her one day. What a role model she has set for them.
I agree with you. As a mother, I don’t think she ever put herself in her mother’s shoes. She was only in Vietnam for a few days and she was missing her kids very much. Imagine the pain that her mother felt to not be with her for 22 years. I try to understand why Heidi reacted that way but I don’t think I will ever understand. All I keep seeing is the heartbreak on her mother’s face at the end of the film. She has lost her daughter again for a 2nd time. I hope Heidi writes her back. If she doesn’t want to send money, then don’t send it. Her mom has survived without money all her life. All she wants is Heidi’s love.
I’m thinking being abandoned at age 7 and having to deny her race everyday has turned Heidi into a sociopath.
She makes everything about her being the victim, I’m beginning to think that everything she said about her adoptive mom was probably lies or exaggerations in an attempt to gain sympathy.
I believe that Heidi was naive. She should have done her own research before leaving for Vietnam. She is a grown women, that in my opinion, acted like a child. She is selfish and inconsiderate towards her biological family. She wouldn’t be here (or have her own children) if it wasn’t for her birth mother. I don’t understand why she couldn’t provide some security to a women who clearly loves her and is in so much pain. It is sad that she wouldn’t even write to her. Even if she feels that disconnected she could go out of her way to send a card and know that it would make a world of difference to her mother. I pray that her children don’t grow up and turn their backs on her one day….Karma
I got really upset after viewing this movie. I to went to Vietnam, loved it there. I did my research as to what to expect. The people are wonderful. Her mother gave her a better life,how, painful to give up a child, but she had to do it survive as she had other children. What pain she puts her birthmother thru. Would sending them some money every month be to much to ask? I feel really sorry for Heidi I will not recommend this video to anyone.
I find it sad how Heidi just left her family, and didnt even leave them with a little bit of money. and how they send mail to her, yet she doesnt even respond back to them at all. The letter just sits there on a desk, looked at but not used. Heidi is really selfish.. she should just go lie down.
I was more upset about what appeared to be the lack of translation toward the end, where things were getting heated. Who knows, maybe there was more back and forth translation that was going on that was edited out for time, but at least from the subtitles it seemed that Heidi’s family members knew they were making her uncomfortable, and that she was feeling pressured for money- I imagine this was especially scary for her being on her own with them and being only 22. For example, the subtitles indicate that the brother says “feel free to say yes or no” to the request, but I don’t hear the translator say that in the scene.
What came across for me was that her mother genuinely loves her and that Heidi had a hard time hearing that because, with the language barrier and the stress, all she could hear was “you owe us,” maybe similarly to how her adoptive mother told her “you owe me.” It broke my heart to see her mother crying at the end. I hope, with time and clearer communication, the two of them were able to make a better connection.
Hi, thank you for this wonderful and thoughtful post. I’ve recently had a chance to sit down and watch this documentary. Well being a full Vietnamese and living in Vietnam until I was 4 and moving to the states with my family, i really cannot fully understand Heidi, still raised by my biological parents, I have the Vietnamese mentality yet the Americanized perspective.. I’ve lived with my family and have not yet experience of even seen poverty, but my parents have. Heidi’s reaction to me was rather normal than expected. She traveled back there to find her birth mom and was fully blown away by their condition and their plea for help. I mean even till this day my family has been receiving nonstop phone calls and mail weekly asking for money and help by the relatives we have left behind. To me i think it is the Vietnamese mentality and how they view family duties. I mean you have probably heard this before, “I’ve raised you and fed you so now its your turn to do likewise for me”. i mean i get that from my parents all the time and really when it comes down to it, it is all about money. it is sad to admit that but it is true.
Vietnamese people who’ve lived through poverty or still living in poverty will not hesitate to ask for help or money and the people who are not living in poverty sometime feel the obligation to help. Heidi will probably not understand the situation because she was not raised in a family that needs constant financial help. I mean I would feel rather insulted if it was I who went back to Vietnam to seek my family end up being pressured for that kind of responsibility. Although her mom did give her up for adoption for a better life, I don’t think she should be held responsible for the “debt, and opportunities” that she supposedly owe her mom. But that is the mentality that most Vietnamese people have. They believe if they have any kind of “resource” in America then that “resource” should be able to help out.
This film does show a huge misunderstanding because both Heidi and her family have different views and was raised with different ethics. What was considered to be very normal for Vietnamese people was rather insulting to an American raised person. In the end the situation was nothing like both sides expected and I really don’t hold anything against any of the sides but I was disappointed with the heated ending. A mother will never reunite with her daughter again because she was chased away by the financially unstable chaotic family and she will never get to really understand her mother’s great lost. I can feel the sincerity in her mother’s tears in her search for Heidi, but like I’ve said. This situation will never be solved because Heidi will not be able to comprehend what the family really wants and the family will not be able to comprehend how Heidi feels about them pleading for help.
Katelynn Vuong, you are right on the money!
I think what Heidi does not realize is that they are family. Family members do not calculate money matters with their family. In her position she was better off than how they were living, and without her mother she would not have been alive. So no matter how her mother has treated her she must think about the responsibility of a daughter she must fulfil.
I just watched Daughter from Danang and could feel both Heidi’s and her mom’s pain. They both were doing the best they knew how, from within the context of their upbringing and culture.
I could understand Heidi’s reaction to the plea for money. The documentary shows how she hasn’t experienced a lot of love in her life and to me it seems a search for love and the yearning to fill a hole in her heart, from the perspective of the young child that was taken away from her family, were the driving forces in her that sent her on her trip.
Instead of finding the motherly love that takes care of a child, she perceived she had to be a care giver, a mother, for her mom and siblings. I imagine this experience confronted her with the unresolved pain of not having had a nurturing mother while growing up with her adoptive mom and the desillusion of not having that yearning fullfilled when meeting her biological mom. My compassion goes out to both.
the whole movie just seemed so tragic…I really do feel for Heidi and her Vietnamese family…there seemed to be so much confusion involved and no one there to explain or alleviate it…
I get the feeling that Heidi would have helped if it was explained to her outright what the culture was but she was ill prepared as was her family
sad all around
I just saw this movie and thought that all involved were living on a wing and a prayer… From Heidi’s mother, Adopted mother, Heidi, etc. Years, sometimes do not heal wounds, and sometimes it is better to just let “laying dogs lay”.
When you make a life changing decision, it could make a life change. Good or Bad.
All participants were victims, of the Times, Situation or circumstances.
Heidi is a spoiled brat who wears her HUGE diamond wedding ring to her impoverished homeland and around her Vietnamese family who is so obviously living in squalor.
She can’t stand her family and can’t wait to leave. She cries like a baby when her family asks her for financial help. Her mother’s suffocating kindness and adoration is met only with distant, nervous laughing by this privileged, oblivious cunt.
This woman is the personification of everything disgusting about America.
You clearly see thing ONLY one sided and have no empathy at all.
And she goes back to America and refuses to have contact with her loving Vietnamese family because they’re put HER out and made HER life so difficult, and upset HER. What an unimaginably selfish person.
Here’s my HUGE diamond ring and some expensive presents I’ve brought you from America, but NO WAY am I going to give you any money, even though you’re obviously living in squalor and can barely feed yourselves.
I can understand the whole part about her being an undereducated, non-traveling white washed American who isn’t comfortable in Vietnam. But simple human compassion would dictate she be nice to her Vietnamese family and genuinely accept her mother’s heartfelt love.
Of course, when she gets old, her American children will just lock her away in a home and never visit her. She’ll grow old helpless and alone.
Heidi is a disgusting person. Those of you who sympathize with how she’s feeling are brain dead.
My oh my, all the America hater have come out here to chastise poor Heidi for a perfectly reasonable reaction in such a strange situation. What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if instead Heidi had been born in Tennessee and given up for adoption to say somewhere like California and then gone back to find her birth family only to get hit up from the git go by a whole bunch of able bodied adults? I know exactly the dialog I’d see on the internet, “Oh what a bunch of redneck bums, can’t they get to know their poor long lost family member instead of use her for money.” Maybe American culture is the way things should be. Who wants to go through their whole life being constantly pestered by every last relative for money. Who wants people constantly pawing all over you? I value my personal space and don’t want to “touch” any family members. I can’t even stand the custom of shaking hands let alone that European habit of men kissing each other on the cheek as a greeting. I do think Heidi should have held her composure and politely made an excuse such as “I’ll have to discuss this with my husband” rather than lose face by breaking down in tears. But under the emotional circumstances, going there simply looking to meet her long lost mother and getting pressured for money like the chump engaged to a Thai bargirl in Stephen Leather’s Private Dancer must have been heartbreaking to Heidi. Their behavior just confirmed all the stereotypes Americans have of Third World people pretending to love you only to be just after your money.
I don’t think the filmmakers deliberately sought to set Heidi up, I believe they naively thought everything would have turned out happily. They, in my opinion were the ones who had the means to give the family some money, at least for their appearance on film. Besides, Heidi DID give them some money, but they wanted more, indefinitely. And to top it off, the father fought for the communists and then wonders why they’re so poor. Let uncle Ho Chi Mihn pay the checks. Clearly the visit should have been orchestrated by someone with experience in these kinds of situations. Where the initial meeting could have been limited in so Heidi could have some privacy to reflect rather than being thrown into a hovel for a week without any lifeline to what she was comfortable with. Perhaps the mother could have been flown to one of the many resorts in the region as we say during the Tsunami so they could have gotten to know each other on neutral ground where Heidi could have felt more at ease. Even without the financial pressures, or a family reunion, Heidi’s itinerary would hardly appeal to all but the most adventurous tourist. All in all Daughter from Danang was an immensely powerful movie and its dark ending was very real, raw footage of true life.
What I must say here is you must be a very stupid, one-dimensional, ignorant, insufferable, prejudiced and full-of-shit cunt in real life. Shut the hell up if you don’t know anything about Vietnamese people and our ways of life.
Alex,
I realise this is an emotional issue. You obviously have a passion for this subject. Some of your comments are completely rude & mean and the one above is absolutely out-of-bounds in a way I can only describe as ‘off the charts’
If we can discuss and share our opinions in a welcome and open forum, we all might come away having learned something and have a deeper understanding of ‘the other person’s’ point of view.
You obviously have knowledge that many of us don’t have, having lived in Vietnam for 22 years. But all the knowledge in the world will do you no good if you only use it as a weapon to beat others with.
When you find yourself in a situation where you know something someone else does not, be a teacher not a preacher, especially a profanity-laced one! (I don’t mean that as a slur against religion).
Teach and inform others in such a way that people walk away glad they got a chance to meet you.
Allen
I’m Simon, I’m from Malaysia and I’ve been to Vietnam : all the way from Ho Chi Minh going up to Hanoi on an adventure 4×4 cruise with the rest of the convoy. After watching this show, I just couldn’t sit tight but to search more in Google to contact Ms. Bubb. Anyhow, I managed to stop here before I continue searching for her.
First, I would like to share my own experience so you would understand how I feel for Ms. Bubb and her biological mother as well as her actual relatives in Danang.
I was born a mix of chinese & Scot. My mom was adopted by another chinese family when she was a kid during the Japanese Occupation in the early 40s. In 2002, I managed to track my mom’s history back to her babyhood days and I was told by an abbess who ran St. Mary in the state of Perak (a school for orphans back then), that according to the almost-ruined records, she was sent to an Abess who was leading the school. I was amazed to find out that, that man, is in fact my Grandfather. A Scottish Sergeant of The British Commission in Malaya by the name of Henry Munroe, who claimed that his chinese wife (from China) was killed in the war by the Japanese. Stated in that piece of memorandum that this great-grandpa of mine would have to be recalled back to The Great Britain and he will return to Malaya to reclaim my mother unless his life had been sacrificed for the efforts of World War 2. Well, he never came back for my mom but the history is clear that he’s watching over me in heaven right now.
That’s not just the only thing for my life, yet. I lost both my parents, mom died due to uterus cancer in December 19 1996 and dad died due to myeloma in May 15 1999. I was all left alone, abandoned by the well-being yet filthy rich relatives. I end up living amongst the streets of Kuala Lumpur by begging about for food, sometimes I gotta check the dumps for wasted food, to fetch water from houses to house to quench my thirst and to find a work to survive. It was the turn of the tide, when I managed to find a job as a hard labour and from there I kept climbing. Jobs after jobs, I’ve become successful man as I am today, from zero to hero. With the cruel social life experienced, I totally understand what hell is like on earth.
Ms. Bubb might have seen worst in Danang or perhaps in other places, certainly not in The States, but she just couldn’t understand how it feels to be really poor. She knows deep down inside her that she couldn’t give her up, but she still have to move on with her life back in U.S. though it really upsets me when she’s not even willing to come up a deal with her husband to send a small sum of stipend to her mother and her sis, in order for them to live with better comfort.
During my past adventure around Indochina for 5 months… I could clearly remember that I only got to pay a sum of $5 for a steak in a restaurant… and a can of beer would only cost me 90 cents! I had even stopped by a cafe for a tea break but end up having so much meal I couldn’t even drive comfortably as the food was kinda awesome to my asian tastes of herbs and spices. Now, give a good guess how much I’ve paid for that meal alone? $18 to be exact, but I just paid them $20 and let them keep the change as tips!! Do take note that the $10 back then are equivalent to MYR35 in Malaysia. Even though Vietnam is just my neighbouring country, but I was being treated like a King over there, sometimes like Santa Claus as I was giving away food and candies to the kids and the destitudes. Really, I couldn’t bear looking at them suffering like I do when I was young… so much more to that, I think I suffered worst than just them compared to my history.
While watching on the part of Ms. Bubb’s sister’s house.. I’m not surprised by the condition of their lifestyle but then again, I don’t think I can afford to have a stomach upset during the night because there isn’t any light or lamp. Seriously, her sister’s house has a toilet but with no lights or lamp!! Have you ever imagine that? WoW!
To Ms. Bubb, I would say that whenever we are heading to a foreign country, no matter where you come from, just be prepared with the different culture you may face. It does take a lot of mental strength and willpower to overcome any new yada-yadas and surely you’ll feel awkward in any circumstances which you might face through. But as a chinese myself, we’re damn good in business, that’s because of our chinese historical of sharing and earning traditions since 4000 B.C when the chinese we were already started writing and calculating in terms of business. Read more of The I-Ching, and you will know for sure how Donald Trump dominate the multiplications of ‘thousands of millions’ of dollars for for his own economical empire.
I’m proud to say that as a chinese, we’re great especially in calculations and money! That’s damn right, I said that for real. But then again, I’m also to proud to share because I’m a true Asian. Not sure about immigrants but hey, I’m no racist too. I’m not surprise when her mother asks for money or to take care of her, I think it’s a very common thing for Asians except for mine cuz I felt that the money and some home appliances left by my dad were robbed off by my relatives back in 1999! Afterall, I’m glad to have my two hands and my two legs to keep working for what I want and what I need, as long as my brains is working fine.
By watching this video, especially the part when her mom withstands her cries quietly next to Ms. Bubb, I can simply imagine this : for all those time when she suffered during the war just to keep her siblings safe, by sacrificing her own pride just to have enough money for food by selling off her pride to the American soldier’s pleasure, and then again to suffer the pain by conceiving another baby for the sake of survival instinct.
To suffer beyond her cries and tears each time when she receives her letters from her daughter that says no to stipends, help or otherwise money, is totally too sad for words! Ya know, if I were Ms. Bubb I could have sent her $50 every month and she would live a much better life than present, at least to live a better yet as proper life as we do today. I really do hope my message is clear to Ms. Bubb when I manage to
For those of you who dislike Heidi, let me try to justify her reactions and explain the Vietnamese culture.
I am a Vietnamese immigrant who currently lives in Little Saigon in California, which is the highest accumulation of Vietnamese and Vietnamese immigrants in America. My parents fled Vietnam in 1988 and I was born during our escape. It took us over 2 years of living in refugee camps in Thailand and Philippines to finally come to America. When we came to the states, we had no money, family, friends, or anything to rely on. My parents had to work numerous jobs just to put food on the table. We lived off food stamps and well fare checks. We were SO POOR! Vietnam has been and still is a very poor country. The people live in such extreme poverty. So in Vietnamese culture, it is believed that everyone in America lives in mansions and drives expensive cars. “The streets are paved with gold” would be an appropriate metaphor. Every now and then, my dad’s family (who still lived in Vietnam) would send letters asking for money. But let me ask you this. How much extra money do you have laying around when all your clothes come from donations at the local church? They would always say that we live in America and are automatically better off than them. So we have to give them money. But my mom worked 2 jobs just to send my dad to school to learn a skill. We couldn’t even take care of ourselves, let alone taking care of them! Since then, my parents have made a decent living to give me a nice life. We are not rich, but we’re comfortable enough to get by. Once I graduated from college, my dad wanted to return to Vietnam to be reunited with his mother (who he had not seen in over 22 years). Just last month (Nov-Dec 2010) we went back to Vietnam for the first time ever.
I thought it would be all rainbows and sunshine like how Heidi thought it would be. Let me tell you how wrong my expectations were. On our first day in Vietnam, we had a big family feast. Everyone from siblings to cousins to even cousins’ cousins came to see us. We are more financially secure now, and we gave $5000 to the family. IMMEDIATELY, they said “That’s it?” They wanted more. We told them that in order to make the trip back, we had to borrow over $10,000 from the bank. (Our plane tickets alone cost $4000 for the whole family). My parents are still paying the mortgage off our house for another 15 years, and they also have to worry about my college tuition and grad school tuition. It’s not like we’re made of money! They should have been appreciative that we were able to find a way to give them something (even if it meant putting my parents in further debt). We kept explaining this, but they kept saying that since we live in America, we had money. In Vietnam, when you buy a house, you pay it off all up front since it’s probably a couple thousand dollars. In California, houses go from half a million to a couple million dollars and it take several years to pay off. If you miss a payment, you can lose your house. In America, the banks own everything. Americans have to pay bills to keep their property. But in Vietnam, the banks do not own anything. The people own land. There are no bills like that. Yet after our explanations, they were not happy with the amount we gave them (even though we took a bank loan to get them that money).
The other people in Vietnam were no different. They knew that we were from America just by our behavior. They charged us extra for everything. When we went to buy fruit, people would charge us more than what they charged the locals. Countless homeless people approached us asking for money. Our tour guide said that if we gave one person money, more people will come and ask us for money. So it was best to just ignore them (as cruel as that sounds).
When I took my 17 year old cousin to eat lunch with my own money, I ordered a regular bowl of noodles while he order 2 bowls of noodles and a bowl of beef and this and that. I’m a 22 year old adult. I believe that it’s rude when someone else is paying for you that you order more food and more expensive things than the person who is actually paying for you. I was so ticked off by this. The bill came out to be 64,000 Vietnamese dollars. I gave my cousin 70,000 Vietnamese dollars, and he kept the change!!! HOW RUDE!!!
My mom asked her sister in law to buy us some Vietnamese food so we could bring that to America. My mom told her to just add up the total costs of the food and she’ll pay that amount. But the sister in law took into account gas money and service into the total amount. So if the actual food total was $20 USD, my mom was charged $30 USD and the sister in law pocketed the extra money. MY mom had no problem compensating her for money, but the least they could do was be honest about it.
We went on a tour and used up most of our money. When we came back from the tour, my parents wanted to have a final family get-together before we returned to America. It would be several more years before we would be able to save up enough money to even think about returning. We told them that we had no more money to give, but we just wanted to see them one last time. And what happened? Only one of my dad’s sibling showed up. They knew that they weren’t going to receive any more money. So it was pointless to show up. I felt so angered and pissed off. THEY WERE USING US THE ENTIRE TIME FOR MONEY!!!!
Now before anyone says that maybe it’s just my dad’s family that was like that, let me say that you are wrong. At the airport, every Vietnamese American (from Oregon to Texas to Florida) had the exact same experience. Since returning, I have talked to several Vietnamese people living in California who have returned to Vietnam, and their families act the exact same way. It’s pretty much a consensus that people in Vietnam use us for money. Most of us (no exaggeration) have no intention of returning. Our taxi driver from LAX (who was also Vietnamese) hates returning to Vietnam. He says that every time he goes, he comes home in debt. But he has to go because his wife’s family live there.
While I agree that you should take care of your parents when they get old, there should be an extent. You need to be able to first take care of yourself and your children. My parents need to give me shelter, food, and education so I can have a good life. They can’t worry about their relatives when they have to first worry about paying the bills. We are not made of money!!!! We will what we can, but they have ridiculous financial expectations since we live in America where they think “the streets are paved with gold.” They want to live like kings off of our money while we struggle and work in America.
I sympathize with Heidi. I felt her family just used her for money. I expected love and a feeling for unity from my family. All I got were “we’ll give you love if you first give us money.” I feel that her actions were justified. She just wanted a romanticized family reunion. But what she got was “where’s the money?”
Let me also add in this. We visited some old friends in Vietnam who had relatives living somewhere in America. They send them money every month. $20 USD goes very far in Vietnam. So these people live in very nice houses and have LCD flat screen TVs and multiple hondas. They are well better off than us. They don’t work. They just live off of the money that their relatives have to struggle and work for. It’s like that old saying. If you give a man a fish, he’ll live for a day. But if you teach a man how to fish, he’ll live for a lifetime. By sending money back to Vietnam, you just make them lazy. They like like kings off of the money you struggle to make. That is what pisses me and the Vietnamese Americans in California the most. We don’t mind sending them money since they’re poor. We just don’t want to be looked at as money bags and dollar signs. We want to be looked at as family members. We don’t want to be exploited for money. I sympathize with Heidi. After seeing the reality of it with my own eyes, I have no intention of returning to Vietnam.
Ok seriously I don’t know when you visited Vietnam but you sound exactly like an idiot to me.
1. And I am so sure that your parents’ relatives and the relatives of those people you met at the airport are horrible Vietnamese but by all means, they do not represent Vietnamese people. Not At All. I migrated to Australia and my family and many of my friends’ families never , never ever ask us for money. They may think that we are better-off, yes, they may expect to have some presents, true, but that’s all they want. Some presents to show that we think about them and love them. And I don’t mind that at all because they have always been showering me with love ever since I was born. They never ask us for money or anything because they are happy with their life even though they are not rich, they can still afford to live comfortably on their own.
2. “It costs us a couple of thousand dollars to buy a house” in Vietnam => oh my gosh, where on earth you are living? Are you from Mars? I couldn’t believe a highly-educated girl would be so ignorant. Vietnam real estate market (expecially in Hanoi and Hochiminh city) is amongst the most expensive markets in Asia and in the world. With 100,000 dollars, you can buy a small, tiny unit in the central area. My 47m2 three-story house in Ha Noi is like 500,000 American dollars. Most of the Vietnamese younger generations will never be able to buy a house in Hanoi or Hochiminh city if they don’t get help from their parents even if they earn, let’s say 2000-3000 dollars a month without tax. And the minimum wage is like 200-300 dollars a month. And seriously, sending your relatives $20 a month is like nothing to the current Vietnamese living standards. There’s no way that your friend’s relatives can live in nice house and watch LCD flat screen TVs with $20 a month (seriously, you must have brain tumor here to think that it could afford a LDC flat screen let alone a nice house). My guess? Your friend’s relatives must work so hard to have that house and all other amenities definitely not from sitting around lazily waiting for the money from your moronic narcissistic American self-centered friend (who must be just like you).
3. A lot of Vietnamese people don’t think that Americans are filthy rich, rather young Vietnamese people think it’s a much better time to stay in Vietnam and get rich because our reform policy has created so many golden chances for daring and talented people to become rich and powerful. I do admit that some ignorant Vietnamese people still think that foreign countries are rich and all, but a lot of others think that it’s just the same or may be it’s even better to live in Vietnam because you have full potential to be whatever you wanna be if you are hard-working and talented enough. A lot of highly-educated people went overseas and ended up working labour work such as cleaning, selling breads, ironing clothes,etc. Well there’s nothing wrong about that but if they stay in Vietnam, they must be in another position, may be a manager, a supervisor, etc.
4. You are such a stingy bitch, seriously, 64,000 VND was like at most 3.5 – 4 US dollars, and your cousin kept the 6000 vnd change which was like 35 US cent. Oh my gosh, your family must be extremely needy, I guess. And your cousin is not rude, he’s just a little bit naive I guess since he assumed that you could definitely pay him a couple of noddle bowls.
5. Seriously, to end this note, please do not embarrass and insult your own country of origin anymore because of your shameless ignorance and attitude. You really created the wrong impression about Vietnamese people and cultures and no matter how you want to call yourself American, you are still Vietnamese genetically.
People, you gotta understand that the Vietnam Economy isn’t as stable as Singapore, Thailand or even my country, Malaysia. U.S is already so far developed. Based on my calculations, the cost of living between U.S. and Vietnam are respectively 7:1.
(http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Vietnam)
If I have to send a small stipend to my mother, I don’t think that would be a troublesome issue for me. Based on the time when the film is shot, the conversion rate between U.S and Vietnam is USD 1.00 USD = VND 15,280.00.
According to my vietnamese friend, a can of coke back in 2002 would only cost VND 5000 which is equivalent to about USD 0.35. I wonder if it’s really that hard just to send 50 American bucks to her mom each month. In another calculation according to my Vietnamese friend, he could start a market stall with only USD2000 and that’s basically 3 months’ average saving ratio for an average white collar worker in the States.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not on anyone’s side. I do sympathize with Heidi and I do sympathize with her biological family’s condition as well. However, I managed to figure out a way to fight poverty when it comes to such situation. I would keep a good balance between poverty and wealth if my family seeks help from me. 😉
Just watched the documentary and the non-happy ending definitely takes you by surprise. I think its such a tragedy when people don’t find a way to connect through the barriers of communication and backgrounds, and especially cultural barriers. I feel for both sides. I wish that they could find mutual acceptance and understanding. I really pray that they do.
I’m surprised how many people are bashing Heidi. I thought her reaction was perfectly reasonable. She was experiencing total culture shock, surrounded by strangers, with no familiarity and no support system. She spent 7 days in Vietnam, and a few days into her trip, she gives her sister some money, and is immediately asked for more, instead of being thanked. She’s barely off the plane before her mother’s talking about Heidi taking her back to America. These are people who are complete strangers to her, though they are blood related. I think it was pretty easy for Heidi to imagine that they were more excited they had a meal ticket than a long lost sister.
Yes, she’d have had a better experience if she’d been prepared for the cultural differences. But to pronounce her a bratty, selfish American based upon her reaction is presumptuous. She doesn’t owe her Vietnamese family anything. If they’d gotten to know her, shown her some support, built a relationship, I’m sure Heidi would have willingly sent some money to them of her own accord. But to ask her to *automatically* understand that being half-Vietnamese means an obligation to support her birth family is unreasonable. There is nothing wrong with reacting according to one’s own cultural background. Just as there was nothing wrong with the family asking, in their culture, Heidi was within her right to react as she did. One way is not better than another. Again, Heidi was not raised by this family. She doesn’t know them, at this point, any better than a stranger on the street.
It’s very easy to reprimand Heidi for her reaction, but we should keep in mind that she’s a product of her environment.
She wasn’t a Vietnamese girl who went abroad to college and now coming home with an “American” attitude. She was raised in America with American upbringing and value. The American culture is about independence; to be self-reliance. To have someone clinging to you asking for money–no matter how subtle—is very upsetting.
On the other hand, her Vietnamese relatives knew they have only one week to a) get to know her, b) show her that they accept her and c) ask her for money.
They had to work fast for there wasn’t much time to develop a relationship. She was their only hope for a connection to a better life. That was a lot of responsibility for Heidi to take on…but they didn’t see any other way.
It was a frustrating documentary to watch, but extremely insightful.
Ok, one thing, here is the mistranslation. Her family explained to Heidi that in Vietnamese tradition, it’s the children’s duties to take care of their aged parents, and then they asked if she can support her mother by giving her some money monthly, it would be good, but if she can’t. it’s ok. They just want to be frank with her about that matter but the stupid translator didn’t translate it fully back to her and instrumental to that climax of the documentary. And seriously, did you even have any critical thinking in you tiny brain or you just believe whatever they show you? This is obviously a set up and heavily edited movie from the fucktard directors and producers. They sacrifices the truth to make a controversial documentary full of lame and distorted reflection of Vietnamese people and Vietnamese cultures. You should feel ashamed for being so one-dimensional.
You should feel ashamed for not being able to present an alternate point of view without calling people names. If you have a problem with the way Vietnamese culture was presented, take it up with the filmmaker, but insulting people for having an opinion based up on the point of view portrayed in the film is completely immature. You’re certainly not doing anything to win anyone over to your point of view.
She was raised by them for 7 years.
Very well stated! I agree 100%.
TROI OI!!!!!! i just watch this,,, they make us watch at school
do ma this girl dont even look viet
I am a white Southerner who has a great affection for this story and everyone involved in it.
My high school sweetheart (and love of my life though we are not together now) is an Amerasian woman (Vietnamese mother/American Father) born in 1966. Fortunately she was able to immigrate in 1972 with her half-sister & mother and grew up in rural GA as a pretty much intact family unit. My emotions run deep on this subject.
I have a few things to say
1) I think Sume’s critique of the film is pretty much dead on. No need to repeat all her points but let me say that after watching D of D a 2nd time (2 years in between) I am FAR MORE sympathetic to Heidi.
2) MAS360 made some very good points as well. Though no one can truly be prepared for a cross-cultural reunion like this, Heidi seemed PARTICULARLY ill-prepared and hopelessly naive. Several people have suggested this is a product of her, to paraphrase, ‘ignorant southern upbringing’. I will address that below.
3) Someone made the point of how alone Heidi felt, especially after her 1st interpreter left. This is a point I did not appreciate the 1st time I watched this film. As much as money is an issue, she REALLY, REALLY needed to make that trip with a very good friend if not her husband.
It was naive on her part but courageous. Most women I know won’t go to the movies by themselves. Heidi basically went half-way around the world to a foreign land and culture on her own. There was not one person around Heidi that had Heidi as their primary concern. Big mistake and a lesson to any one in Heidi’s position in the future.
I can’t imagine how alone and threatened Heidi felt when the situation started getting very uncomfortable. She must have felt very vulnerable and alone. The closest person that had her interest at heart was 10,000 miles away.
I do not defend all of Heidi’s decisions/reactions. I am however extremely sympathetic.
4) I totally defend Kim’s decision to give her up and do not view it as abandonment in the least. Nor do I condemn the American efforts to help as many Vietnamese children and adults escape the coming brutality, torture and executions that were coming down the pike ASAP.
The American efforts may have not been couched in the best terms and formalities but people’s lives were very much at stake and the days and hours were running out. Those Vietnamese parents who gave their children up knew better than anyone else what cruelty and brutality their own culture was capable of toward people in their children’s position.
(I say that as one who admires the Vietnamese culture on the whole, but the truth is the truth. Had each one of those parents been told “You will never see your child again if you give them up”, I have no doubt they would have wept and wept but ulitimately 99% would have given them up to both spare them a cruel fate and simultaneously give them the hope of a much better life.)
5) I am a middle-class, white southerner, 44 yrs old. I take pride in my southern heritage, the overwhelming majority of which I take great pride in.
The inclusion of the KKK in this documentary and the subsequent suggestions in some of the comments of this blog that it played any sort of major (or even minor) factor in the development of Heidi as a person is ludicrous.
Let me let those who have little 1st hand experience with day-to-day southern culture in on a well-kept secret. The KKK is almost non-existent. It is NON-EXISTENT as a politcal, cultural or moral force. It factors into southerner’s thinking about .000000000000001 %.
If it weren’t for Hollywood and, forgive me, but ignorant persons outside of the south who continue to breathe life into it, it probably would not exist at all.
It seems there are many people and groups who get something out of propping up the KKK as some kind of foil. Perhaps a foil that makes them feel better and superior about themselves and their own morality.
Suffice it to say filmakers like those who made this film, either out of ignorance OR deliberately as a visual provocation, CONTINUE to exaggerate the importance of the KKK a thousand-fold and in doing so ADD to the general ignorance of the culture, not to mention continuing to sow the seeds of ill-will among different groups.
6) Lastly let me say much has been said about explaining Heidi’s feelings, words and actions thru the lense of Western culture vs. Eastern culture. And that conversation is appropriate and expected.
But I would add this: Do not discount what she feels, says and does as being a product of Heidi herself. She is, within the context of two cultures, a unique individual. Like all of us she is uniquely her own person, there is not another person on the planet exactly like her. Her choices are just that, her’s.
I pray what we have seen is only Act 2 in a 3 Act play and the ending, yet written, will be much happier and satisfying to everyone involved. We are all God’s children and our similarities far outweigh our differences.
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts.
Wow! Thank you for such a well thought out response to this critique! I was born and raised in a wealthy part of CA, although my family was not what you’d call wealthy. At 18, I moved to the South, and I can attest to the fact that the KKK is about as prevalent here as quicksand. The fact that others believe it to be something that’s still relevant here shows their ignorance.
I have seen several comments on here trashing Heidi with negative stereotyping of southern people. I wonder if it’s just the “white” Southerners they speak of with such disdain. I have lived here so long now that I consider myself a Southerner, and I take offense to the stereotyping. I wish those still blinded by their ignorance would wake up.
Thank you Heidi, I appreciate the kind words. I was originally her 12-15 yrs ago under Allen Troup, I think I am coming up as trooper66 now. Wish you well!
Thanks for this blog. I went searching for more information on Heidi’s post-Vietnam visit. I’m watching this on Mother’s Day and all I can think of is the pain I feel for her birth mother. I’ve been lucky enough, as an American businesswoman, to find myself working for a company started by a Vietnamese American. I traveled to the country for the first time last year, and so love and appreciate the culture. I’ve also been”adopted” by this large and wonderful group of people. My father died in an assisted living facility just months before I joined the company. When I saw how elders are treated by the Vietnamese–not just in Vietnam but in this country, as well–I was deeply ashamed. None of us cared for our father at one of our homes, though he desperately wanted to join one of us. Wouldn’t fit in with the lifestyle.
I hope Heidi does try to get in touch with her mother and family. Love is love and blood is blood. Twenty dollars a month, the value of a couple of cups of Starbucks, goes a long, long way for a poor family. I also hope Heidi considers counseling.
Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, lost, found and somewhere in between.
Finally, a sensible judgement of Vietnamese cultures and values. I love you Bea, despite all the negativity about our cultures (which just happens to any cultures, there’re positive, and negative points in every culture), Vietnamese people are in general really warm, friendly, kind-hearted people.
And I just have to explain this to everyone (since I’m bilingual and I was born in Vietnam and lived there for 22 years): There is a mistranslation in the climax of the documentary that really worsened Heidi’s feeling. Her family explained to Heidi that in Vietnamese traditions, it’s the children’s duties to take care of their aged parents, and then they asked if she can support her mother by giving her some money monthly, it would be good, but if she can’t. it’s ok. They just want to be frank with her about that matter but the stupid translator didn’t translate it fully back to her and just say: “They want to be frank with you whether you can give your mum some money” which is totally different in meaning.
And I just have to explain this to everyone (since I’m bilingual and I was born in Vietnam and lived there for 22 years): There is a mistranslation in the climax of the documentary that really worsened Heidi’s feeling. Her family explained to Heidi that in Vietnamese traditions, it’s the children’s duties to take care of their aged parents, and then they asked if she can support her mother by giving her some money monthly, it would be good, but if she can’t. it’s ok. They just want to be frank with her about that matter but the stupid translator didn’t translate it fully back to her and just say: “They want to be frank with you whether you can give your mum some money” which is totally different in meaning.
I watched this documentary and was unprepared for the turn of events. It brought tears to my eyes from the opening scene to the scene near the end where Heidi’s mother struggles to eat rice as she is clearly reflecting on the pain of the present and past.
I bit of background on me, to give some context as to where I am coming from: I am a Vietnamese refugee myself, but spent nearly my entire life in Canada. I am 27 years old now, grew up with both my biological parents, and had quite a mixed (and confusing!) upbringing of both ‘Western’ and ‘Vietnamese’ customs. I grew up often times internally struggling to find where I fit, but kept it quiet and to myself, very much as Heidi was portrayed as doing.
There were many moments in the film where I flip-flopped between who I sympathized with – but ultimately I have found that each situation had it’s unique context.
For example, I admit I cringed a bit when Heidi’s biological mother immediately asked to bring her back to America, because I knew many rural Vietnamese believed that USA was the land of automatic wealth. I could see Heidi’s slight discomfort, but I believe she didn’t take it seriously at first. I didn’t want to see it happen, but this would foreshadow the awkwardness to come for Heidi.
I wish someone would have explained to Heidi, and to the viewers, more about Vietnamese culture – particularly the custom to be very frank and forward about things within the immediate family, but put on a very polite demeanor to those who you are not close to. As my mother puts it, “no one outside will ever say anything ugly to your face”.
By visiting her biological family, Heidi openly acknowledged to them that she was now part of the family. Heidi’s biological family struggles with poverty and they feel the need to inform Heidi (awkwardly) of the central Vietnamese mannerism of duty and honour to family and ancestors. It is never a totally comfortable or polite situation to ask someone for money, even within a Vietnamese family – however, one must remember these people are desperately poor, which aggravates the situation. I felt the eldest brother, as is customary, took on the responsibility to assume leadership in collecting the finances for caring of the mother/parents and requested assistance from Heidi – as he would also request from the rest of the siblings too. One would rarely want to ask for money for their own self, as this is shameful, and the debt would no doubt be repaid.
I wished that these cultural nuances would have been explained to Heidi, her Viet family, and the viewers. What was totally lacking here was true understanding, which only polarizes the two ‘opposite’ ‘Western’ and ‘Viet’ cultures even more. Greater understanding would have highlighted how similar the two cultures are and that all our mannerisms typically originate from common emotional places such as compassion, respect, love, etc.
Heidi’s reaction, and rejection of ‘Vietnam’ during the climax in the film is understandable. Her feelings of doubt, isolation, unfulfilled expectations, insecurity, and discomfort (physically, emotionally, mentally) combined with her own personal history created a very emotionally distressing, overwhelming, and wounding experience as others have articulated. But I am very sad to see that at the end of the film, she turns her back completely (though she says she has not) on ‘Vietnam’, her Vietnamese family, and her ‘Vietnamese-ness’, and did not have the courage to give it another chance – but I can see that sometimes things are too uncomfortable to pursue.
The greatest overarching disappointment I had with the film was the neglectful translations (I am ethnically Vietnamese and fluent) and the lack of deeper explanation from Ms. Nhu, the journalist who played the ‘expert’ role in the film. It just gave that additional unfulfilled “argh…they should have done more” feeling. Not only did it seem as though both Ms. Nhu and the other translator appear to poorly translate or omit translations altogether, a lot of captioning was incomplete or missing as well. As I watched, I wanted to reach out and tell Heidi what so-and-so said, or what viewers were not shown in the captioning. It makes me wonder how many interactions were mistranslated that were not shown on film.
I am still contemplating whether I should show this film to my mother 🙂
I want to thank everyone for their comments on this thought provoking film. Many of you have added depth and additional perspectives to the complex emotions I felt for Heidi and Kim, and I have come away very grateful that these issues have not touched my life directly. I share Allen Troup’s hope that a third act brings a happy ending to this story.
I was appalled at Heidi’s behavior. What a selfish redneck cow she has become. Typical military wife.
Alex Nguyen
I think you have provided the PERFECT example of what Nguyen was referring to. You epitomise the very worst aspects of vietnamese culture and society.
Nguyen’s post was ABSOLUTELY on the money. You really think its ok for her family to receive thousands of dollars and merely say “is that all”??? You really think its ok for people to take advantage of you by ordering a ton of food knowing that you are paying the bill?! You think its perfectly acceptable to pocket the change of someone elses money without even asking?!! And then you have the unmitigated gall to suggest that Nguyen was “a stingy little bitch” because she finds this rude!
Your character really shines through in your posts, and its no surprise to me that someone like you would regard all of these as perfectly normal and acceptable. I myself experienced this behaviour, and I can promise you they never did it again.
Your posts are insulting hate filled anti western rants, full of disgusting foul mouthed abuse and puerile name-calling directed at anyone who tells it like it is. You are a typical key board warrior, a pathetic little man spewing out a stream of bile while hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. Would you say these things to their face?! Not a chance in hell. Having lived in Vietnam for 15 years and unfortunately, I have met too many people like you.
Even my Vietnamese wife is embarrassed at your posts. Her exact comment was that your must parents must be ashamed to have raised such a rude and hateful son. I tend to agree. So do your country, your parents and the rest of us a favour and go hide under a rock, and leave the forum to adults who have the grace and manners to conduct a civilised debate.
I’m coming very late to this, but I am intrigued by the conversation mostly because there is a similar documentary concerning a Lebanese adoptee from the Netherlands who comes back to find some clue as to his family called “Children of the Cedars”:
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2009/05/2009526141313621912.html
There are scenes in this documentary where Arthur, the adoptee, visits places of squalor (the Palestinian camps of the south), and later is introduced to a woman claiming to have given up her child (a poor Egyptian migrant worker). There is a painful unspoken realization here, when Arthur rejects the possibility of his being born of these people, that reveals the word that no one has mentioned in this discussion, and which no one in the United States is prepared to discuss, and that is the word “class”.
Part of our acculturation as adoptees is into a bourgeoisie class that denies class as a definer of difference. So Heidi goes back to her family and is hard-pressed to “step down” from her class position as it were. The rather heinous statements made here that sending money abroad is somehow an incentive to laziness reveals this class difference, and also points out the individualistic and non-communal aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture that make the adoption of children from such community-based cultures a criminal act of missionarism and colonialism.
In my return to Lebanon, I have tried as much as is feasible to step down from this baggage of class that I grew up with and which made life hell in the U.S., since race and class map each other, and one is exclusive of the other, such that “making it” still means facing the glass ceiling of race discrimination. Not thinking about it this way produces the awful moments when Heidi, and Arthur, “revert to acculturated form”, meaning, their class acculturation comes to the fore and they see themselves as their adoptive parents have “made” them, and not as their true families might see them.
This is what is so painful for me when I watch Daughter From Da Nang; there is no vocabulary, no framework, no ability for Heidi to process her “difference” from those who engendered her. And I have to say that I agree that this is the goal of such mediated exercises on adoption, promoting the dominant discourse that would have us think that it is impossible to go home.
I have to side with Heidi in this case. A few years ago my whole family (except for myself) went to Vietnam to visit family, and they all came back miserable. Our Vietnamese relatives apparently used the visit as a excuse to gouge them for money. I didn’t realize the extent of this until yesterday when my mother asked me to help her get out a new phone number because we are being bombarded with called from Vietnamese relatives asking for more. They weren’t asking for something like $200 a month (the number being thrown around most in this thread), they were asking for $200,000! I was so disgusted that they’d want us to sell our home to pay for their weddings that I had to google the net to find out whether this was typical Vietnamese behavior, and sadly it seems to be completely true based on all the stories I’ve read from sites including this one.
However, I did feel badly for Hedi’s mother, and if I was in Heidi’s shoes I’d keep in contact and try to support only the mother. This way I’d feel like any love and support is not being exploited.
I don’t understand the contempt or dislike so many felt for Heidi. I felt very sad for her. She seemed very confused and looking for something that couldn’t be fixed by other people. It had to come from within her.
I imagine she was in a state of intense anxiety and near panic when she fled back to America and her husband and grandmother. I can believe that she went to Vietnam convinced that she would have one of those deliriously happy reunions that we see on TV that we never see past the first euphoric greeting.
Since she had not been an infant when she came to the US, she probably exxpected to immediately remember the language, everything would seem familiar and her family would be thrilled to see her but would treat her with the emotional and physical distance that her adoptive mother treated her with.
You have to remember that she was seperated from her mother in Vietnam as an older child, she may not have been having the milk and cookies and hugs childhood before that happened, she had no father, she was sent to a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, she was adopted and raised by a woman who should not have been adopting anyone and certainly not a child from Vietnam. So she probably had intimacy and abandonment issues that would take years of therapy to fix.
As someone who grew up with what appeared to be a lack of familial expectations and physical affection from her adoptive mother and in a small family, it would seem very suffocating and claustrophobic to suddenly have a large group of people who are basically strangers to be touching you and wanting to be with you all the time and then hitting you with a lot of expectations of what your responsibility to them is just because you are related to them.
I can imagine the reaction of most of the people posting here if they went to their buddy Bob’s house for Thanksgiving and his family said everyone had talked about it and they decided that his mother is going home to live with you now. And by the way, did you bring your checkbook?
I don’t know why Heidi is getting beaten up because of her reaction to these things coming from people who were strangers to her. And all the biological connections aside, they were as much strangers to her as the people living next door to them were.
It has been a while since I saw this documentary but I seem to recall that one of her brothers was more sympathetic to her reactions to things because he was younger and had more exposure to other things and other ways of living than her older relatives had.
I expect that Heidi went to Vietnam looking for love and felt that what she got instead was people who only wanted her for what they thought she could give them.
I think there were cultural differences, generational differences, family issues, adoption issues. So many things.
There were a lot of expectations all around and I think it was asking a lot to expect Heidi to be the one to meet all of them.
She seemed very young and insulated to me so a lot of her reactions didn’t seem unusual.
I felt that Heidi was struggling to figure out who she was and it was probably a big shock to realize that she really is Heidi Bub and not little Mai.
Lisa, good insight. Here we are, living in the opulent USA, the luckiest people who’ve ever been alive on this planet, with a lifestyle that royalty-of-old would envy, but are beset with ego-trips and narcissism: “I got mine now you get yours.”–the era of the individual. This is the lens through which Heidi sees the world. It’s her psychological and cultural conditioning. This is materialism and scientism. In Vietnam, the lens seen through is the Confucius value of the family and the Buddhist tenet of loving kindness and the interdependence of all things. Yes, “culture clash.” What an overwhelming situation for a naive girl!
What’s inside Heidi? Was she exposed to Christian values? Why is she so obtuse, so insensitive to the needs of her birth family? Can it be that those of us with more are loath to share with those who have less? Look at what’s going on in our country where the 1% control most of the wealth and are adamant in refusing to pay their share in taxes to support the infrastructure of the country. This is the pathology that this film confronts: paranoia that someone is going to take something away from us. This is living a life of fear rather than Freedom.
Heidi suffered the shock of separation from her mother’s love at an early age and now she’s shocked at the prospect of being separated from a portion of her money in order to support her old birth mother. I sympathize with Heidi’s trauma as well as her families material desperation and expectations.
Heidi’s Vietnamese family is rich in family values and dignity: in beauty, truth and goodness. They’re also struggling materially. Heidi, like most of us in our materialistic, mall-culture, seems blind to the richness of the inner life of her birth mother, and thus appears immature. No blame. This is simply where we are as a culture, alas. We have yet to learn the joy of “paying it forward,” passing on our good fortune to others. Hey, it’s “the golden rule.”
I look forward to a sequel to Daughter from Danang, where we’ll see that Heidi has had an epiphany, has “grown up,” and is now acting as a hero to the people of Vietnam and “paying it forward” in some beautiful and generous way.
I too pray for that epiphany
I think that Heidi acted reasonably. Even though her birth Mom gave her up to save her, she did give her up. This means that Heidi really has no obligation to her anymore. I adopted a daughter from Haiti who was eight when I finally got to fly over and get her. I send her birth Mom pics and a letter every six months. You have to understand that even though Heidi was an older adoptee, she was still only about eight..the same age as my daughter was when I got her. She is forgetting her birth Mom a and sometimes when we talk about Haiti, she has to ask me her Birth Mom’s name because she has forgotten it. Her Birth mom still thinks about her all the time ( I am told), but my daughter is just a child and is forgetting. If she were to go to Haiti ans visit her Birth Family when she is an adult, I wouldn’t think that they would have any right to ask for money because to her, they are not family to her any more.
I’m sure that Haiti is a lot poorer than Vietnam, but I’m also sure that the people ther have more manners than Heidi’s family in Vietnam had. I would like to be able to help my daughter’s Birth Family in Haiti by sending money, but I lost my job right after she got here and can’t afford it. Besides that, Haiti is very corrupt and if I did send money, someone else would probably get it. I wish heidi all the best and don’t balme her for feeling the way that she does. I wouldn’t blame her if she never spoke to them again. they hadn’t seen her in over 20 years and couls only think about how much money she could give them. HOW RUDE!!
@ Robin:
In a court of law, the words that you are forced to say under duress are not admissible. So giving up a child under duress can not be accepted as valid. What a despicable thing you are saying. Your arrogance is palpable toward the peoples of the world who, by virtue of your country’s foreign policy, have suffered extreme hardship. That you chalk this up to “local” corruption is such a stretch of the believable that I am hard-pressed to consider that you didn’t mean it as a joke. Your Anglo-Saxon notion of the nuclear family and your ideas that humans are traffickable (do you own slaves?) will never allow you to understand the communal culture that Heidi comes from. Instead of seeing in this a sad condemnation of adoption, you see a glorious and self-righteous affirmation of your horrifying act of selfishness. Such hubris! You should be ashamed of yourself. I hope the child temporarily in your care one day returns to her true home and true family and, like many of us, starts to attempt to undo the damage inflicted on this planet by our “parents”.
Daniel..It’s interesting to note that you think that My Country’s foreign ploicy is to blame for poverty in the world. You must be EXTREMELY ignorant to believe that. My Country has done more than almost any country to help out economically in other countries. Vietnam is poor because it is a communist country. They can thank Uncle Ho for their poverty. The war has been over for over 30 years, but they remain poor because of the communist economy. As for my Child’s birth parents..they dropped her off @ the Orphanage when she was four and only came to visit her one time in the next four years until I came to get her. They did come to meet me on the day that we left for home. That was the first time in years that my daughter saw them. They also had a little boy, but they kept him. Before you say that maybe they couldn’t afford to come and visit, I have to tell you that they lived within walking distance. I was not expecting to meet them cause I had been there twice before and they didn’t bother to come and meet me. Anyway, I had a beautiful antique ruby ring and I took that off and gave it to them. After the earthquake, I got an e-mail from a third party stating that they birth mom was paralyzed and would not be able to work and could I please send money. I was broke then, but was trying to find some way to send money. I contacted another third party who lives in Haiti and knows the family. He told me that he had just seen the birth mom and she was fine. Apparently, you have never been to Haiti and have no idea of the corruption. I am not sending money down there to line som politician’s pockets! As far as adoption under duress, they were not under any duress at all. they willingly gave her up! Like I said, they had a boy too and kept him! I don’t think that she will ever go back even though I have told her that I will take her back as a graduation gift when she is older. Deep down inside, she is hurt that they never made more of an attempt to see her when she was in the Orpahange. they are not her “true family” and Haiti is not her “true home”
“Interesting that I think”? 99% of the world thinks this way, because 99% of the world has been attacked, has had war waged upon it, has suffered economic and political warfare (the case of Viet Nam), has had its democratically elected governments overthrown (the case of Haiti), has been oppressed, exploited, or “kept in line” by the country that you think has done so much for the world. Who lives in the Third World, you or I? Who lived through a 33-day war in this country with bombs falling paid for by your tax dollars, you or I? Who lives next to a building that was an arsenal of American-supplied weapons that led to a street war of five days, you or I? Are you kidding? Who has uncovered the child trafficking in his country of birth incentivized and made possible entirely by adoptive parents like yourself, you or I?
You think you get to lecture me on this subject? You think seriously that Haiti “just happened”, and hasn’t been helped along by the United States and France who keep it in its impoverished conditions for very particular political reasons? You truly believe that the children you’ve kidnapped don’t want to be with their true mother? And you think that this mother thinks in any way highly of you? Did you ever consider picking up a history book in your life? How arrogant. How shamefully arrogant. I dare you to find out the truth of what the United States did to Viet Nam and Haiti (and the rest of the planet). I dare you.
Okay, everybody needs to calm down. This thread is of no useful purpose if it is just filled with hate, slander, anger adn completely unsubstantiated accusations.
Several comments have been made recently that impune a sinister ‘geo-political’ motive to the actions of individual human beings trying to live their lives as best they can. Some people live very selfish lives, some people are very self-sacrificing and giving. But whether you are giving up your child for sefish or unselfish motives, or wehther you are adopting a child for selfish or unselfish motives, noboby actually says to themselves before doing that, “Gee what are the geo-political’ consequences of this decision?
The accusation against Robyn of being a ‘kidnapper’ is completely out of line and unjustified. You made a lot of assumptions about her situation and in everyassumption you assumed the very best about the birth mother and assumed the very worst about the adoptive mother. That tells everyone you are not trying to be an objective 3rd party and it took the conversation down a very destructive path. Bring it back to reasonable, civil discourse. Before you start condemning people, talk to them, ask them questions, try to learn what their situation is. You want a more compassionate, understanding world? Start by being a compassionate, understanding person.
You also assumed Robyn is Anglo-Saxon, you might want to think about why you assumed that…
I’m going let the slanders toward my country lie for now (btw, I’m an American). I’ll let your response dictate what I say about that in the future. Save one thing, my country is the only country in the world that people, en masse, every single day of the year, risk their lives crossing deserts and oceans to get to.
With Love,
Allen Troup
Christian
American
Thanks Allen:
I never thought when I was adopting my kids ( I have 3 adopted kids) that I shouldn’t take them from their birth environment..nobody ever thinks that. I don’t know why Daniel has such a strong view. Maybe his adoption was not a success. Anyway, my other 2 kids are birth sibs. They were taken from their birth parents because of extreme drug use and neglect. Every adoption is different just like every family is different. There really are kids who are stolen like little Anyeli AKA Karen Monahan, but most kids are given up by their parents or the rights are terminated.
I don’t know how the thread got so far off course, but bashing our Country really has nothing to do with adoption at all. And I’m sick of hearing that our Country is responsible for all the world’s ills. that view is so outdated! It’s from the 60’s and 70’s and went out with Nehru Jackets. Like I said we have done so much to make the world better. I’m reeling over the negative views of adoption (especially international adoption) that I’m getting. You should read the Family Preservation advocacy they are very anti adoption. Adoption is about 90 percent good and does have a dark side, but a very small one. thanks again Robin
I never stated that I thought she was “Anglo-Saxon”; I said her notion of a nuclear family was Anglo-Saxon. I define kidnapping as exploitatively taking a child from his or her true family. Given that adoption is such a leveraging of a situation of class or economic inequality to one’s advantage, then I think it fits. Perhaps I should have said abducted? Personally, I was trafficked and abducted at the age of one month, and the concept of orphanage here is the same as in Haiti—a place that takes care of children until their parents can take care of them themselves; a communal space. How much greater God’s grace would have been shown in helping this mother keep her child?
Slander toward your country? Where do you think I grew up? What nationality do you think I was given against my will? What racist nation questions my right to return every time I try to visit my family? What nation am I glad to be finally rid of? Try to step out of your comfortable shoes as the status quo “Christian American” for one second before you think you get to lecture me on this subject as well.
Slander implies willful mistruth; I do not lie when i say that the United States is the major Empire in the world, do I? What do Empires do? They exploit others. Same as Rome, same as any other previous Empire. Why be so ashamed to admit this when pressed? This is your hypocrisy. You are part of an Empire. You consume as a population of five percent of the planet 25 percent of that planet’s resources. You wage wars, political and economical, and I guarantee you that your foreign policy kills more children in the world than your collective adoption “saves”.
Here’s a response to your quaint concept of people who can’t wait to get to America: Imagine a huge gunboat destroying the smaller boats around it; where would you have those who have been willfully capsized swim to? The only mythology worse than that of adoption is that of American exceptionalism. And I can tell you the world is sick to the death of it, and will have the last word.
A truly Christian beneficent view would say, what are the conditions within our society that led to such drug use? Instead of too bad, you messed up, I’m taking your kids. My ideas are outdated because you need to believe so. The U.S. has done nothing to make any aspect of the world better, starting with the American Indian and so on throughout history. All of the countries you adopt from (including Haiti) have despotic leaders put in place by the CIA. Are you so blissfully unaware of the revolutions going on in my part of the world? In the shift away from American Empire in South America? These are the last days of such criminal capitalism. There is nothing charitable or beneficent in your act. Coming back to topic, this movie is about the ultimate act of a desperate warrior nation removing itself from the place it had bombed into oblivion and which it is still recovering from, and requiring some good “PR”, and so the Babylift. That you think you can quantify such an issue, and say “only 10 percent is bad” is like saying that only 10 percent of slavery was bad. The primary issue is of creating the conditions that result in the displacement of people from their families, their lives, their place, their land, their culture, their language, their identity. Whether through slavery, migrant labor, adoption, or any other aspect of the criminal act we call Capitalism, it is all the same thing, and should be met with the same focus on community, and family, and validity of life that you claim for yourselves, but not for those who children you rip from their mothers’ arms.
The implication that I am somehow a “failed adoption” is a filthy thing to say, and does not deserve reply. I wouldn’t have returned home if not for the support of my adoptive family. And you need to consider that these words will one day come from the children temporarily in your care’s mouths.
And what will you reply then? Who will you blame then?
Daniel:
This is an adoption blog! You need to save your political rantings for a political blog! Somohow, this conversation has gone from talking about one woman’s story of being reunited with her birth family to having to read you bash my Country. It reminds me of the Granma International. it’s the Official paper of Cuba. Anyway, they did a story a few years back about a woman with a very embarrassing femanine condition and went on to state how they were trying to help. This woman lived in an african country and Cuba sent Doctors to help her. Somehow, they managed in this article to blame my Country for her condition and blasted my government. It was all I could do to keep from rolling on the floor with laughter! It made them look so stupid!! Thats what you are doing to yourself!
Correction, this is an adoptee blog, hosted by an adoptee that considers that adoption is a political issue, if I read her correctly. I agree with this statement, and would only add that it is economical and political. So a discussion of the economical and the political fits in here more than your “ranting” about America the Glorious. You don’t get to come in and heavy-hand it because of how you see yourself in relation to adoption. Should she tell me to stand down, of course I will do so. In the meantime, know your role.
The saddest sign of the decline of an Empire is when its population becomes dull, lethargic, oversated, and ignorant. So thanks for reminding us that the days of your Empire are numbered.
Just to correct the record, since it seems a little history lesson is in order:
Cuba was a sugar colony of Spain; it was also one of the waystations for the slave trade between Africa and the Americas; it is a pivotal center of global capitalism. In order to provoke a war with the Spanish Empire, the United States sank its own ship, and killing its own sailors, the U.S.S. Maine. (This tactic would be used again in World War II against Japan, against Viet Nam, against Iraq, against Iran, etc. ad infinitum.) Cuba became a “sugar republic” of the United States, with the dictator Batista put in place until the revolution there. The United States has attacked Cuba (the Bay of Pigs), sidelined the country, set up an embargo against it, and otherwise has set about to destroy it in order to conquer it. THIS IS WHAT THE UNITED STATES DOES. At least have the decency to put your bombast in its place and claim your monstrous country for the nightmare Destroyer that it is! (The American Indians referred to George Washington as “Destroyer of Villages”).
Just to note is that when Haiti suffered its earthquake, the United States sent armies and vulturous evangelical kidnappers, Cuba sent doctors. Ask any country in the Caribbean, in Central or South America (except for the remaining puppet states) who they would rather want “help” from, and I guarantee the answer would be Cuba. This is because they ALL KNOW what American help means, as threatened in Roosevelt’s Gunboat Diplomacy as well as Kennedy’s New Alliance for Progress and up to the present day.
Your ignorant laughter condemns you, indicts you, and incriminates you more than anything I can say. I’ll wait for your defense of your precious country, instead of ignoring the discussion.
You are a fool of the first rank. Furthermore, you are truly a “barbarian within the gates,” and you should be expelled from this country, as the Romans would have pushed out an angry Parthian or Goth. If you despise your adopted nation so much, then please pack up and leave immediately. You are unloved by most and will not be missed in the least. Oh, and you have a most simplistic view of the history of empires, as befits an obvious simpleton. I’m most familiar with the Romans and Byzantines, so I’ll cite them. Despite your 18th-century viewpoint of the matter (which is largely stolen from Edward Gibbon and his successors) that decline is due to the “decadence of the population,” the fact is, even when there were periods of decline or torpor, this Romanic culture reinvigorated itself. When empires do collapse, it can be for many reasons. Read a bit in history before you make such facile observations.
You give a watered-down, Howard-Zinn type synopsis of U.S. history that simplifies and is basically a leftist jeremiad, with only some hooks in reality and mainly the product of pathological hatred. You lambast Batista, but I’m sure you love Fidel Castro and his fat brother, whose regime has perhaps killed 100,000 Cubans, does not allow free elections, has forced political opponents to flee and uses the U.S. as the convenient bugbear under the beds of the good Bolsheviks of the island. Amnesty International has a nice large dossier on the many civil rights abuses recorded in Castro-land. The U.S. embargo against the island was entirely justifiable while Fidel was the dutiful puppet of his masters in the Soviet Union and while Cuba meddled in so many foreign countries itself (as ask some Angolans about this, sometime).
Japan? Are you serious? Have you reached Alex Jones level as a fluff-headed conspiracy theorist? You ignore the fact that Japan killed around 10 million Asians from 1932 through 1945. The sheer brutality of their actions in China, Korea and the Philippines are amply documented, and it was a calvacade of horrors for years–medical experiments on civilians (amply documented), “comfort women” forced into sex slavery, mass bombing of civilian populations, etc, etc. I’ve spoken to some survivors of this occupation, and the horrors they told me about in rather sober language defy belief. You ignore the fact that the U.S. was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and by a full-scale invasion of what was then a U.S. Commonwealth, the Philippines. I’d say U.S. military action in retaliation was fully justifiable.
I could go through point by point with everything else you blathered, but it would take a very long post, and I haven’t time at this moment. I will say that the dubious “honor” for largest number of American Indians decimated by far goes to the Spanish Empire, and disease vectors played as much of a role as any military actions or hostilities. This has happened again and again in many countries, not just the U.S. The aboriginal inhabitants of Taiwan were pushed into odd corners of the island by the Han Chinese. The “negritos” of the Philippines were invaded, conquered and marginalized by the Malay Filipinos. Australia was more or less replay of the Americas. Even most of the countries in Europe had different inhabitants at one time–England wasn’t Anglo-Saxon, France wasn’t Frankish, Bulgaria wasn’t full of Bulgarians. And so on. This is not to deny a great tragedy took place in the U.S., but that this type of tragedy is the tragedy of the human race as a whole.
Please just immigrate if you haven’t. Go back and live in Parthia, barbarus.
Wow. So much pompous energy just to say, “love it or leave it!” Is your hope that I immigrate to save you the trouble of having to assassinate me, or emprison me, or exile me like the millions before me? Don’t worry. Because of the likes of you I never “loved it”, and due to the likes of you, I have definitively “left it”. This doesn’t put me outside of your country’s reach however, and the next time your tax dollars pay for the hell raining down on my head in the form of bunker-buster bombs, or fly overhead in the form of killer drones, or go to stock the weapons arsenal next door to me that leads to a street war with a family dead under my balcony, I’ll be sure to invite you over, “Southern hospitality–style”, so we can drink some iced tea and you can gloat then again about your country’s enlightened ways and exceptional attitude toward the world. As you say, such hubris is the cause of much in the way of Imperial downfall, and your country started its downward trajectory the moment your ancestors set foot on the continent. If you could do me the favor of no longer hectoring me now that I’ve left, I’d appreciate it very much. Those who defend Empire are doomed by Empire; but they need not doom the rest of humanity as well.
This is my last post on this blog.
First let me say ‘Thank You’ to Sume for creating a space here where people can come together and talk openly about an issue that is not talked about enough. I have been following this blog for over a year and thank everyone for their thoughtful comments, whether I agreed or disagreed. As I said in my first post, my feelings run deep on this subject.
But the blog has been poisoned of late by comments filled with anger & hate on top of hate & anger. And it appears they’ll be no end to it. Such hate & anger does not produce a better understanding or wisdom. It does 2 things (at least 2 maybe more) 1) It intimidates some into silence & 2) It causes others to simply leave who have neither the patience nor inclination to tolerate such abusive behavior. I fall into the 2nd category. Fools are not persuaded by sound arguments and wise men who argue with fools just end up looking like fools themselves.
People of good will can disagree & debate issues passionately and in a civil fashion. And both ‘sides’ can be better for it. I am 45 years old and in my life, over the years, I have begun to appreciate the fact that we are all thrown into a universe so big we can barely comprehend it, yet in our own lives we can only actually see & experience a small sliver of it, as if looking at the universe thru a keyhole. And knowing this, we should humbly approach others, seeking to listen before we speak, seeking to understand before we judge, seeking to connect with rather than sever from.
Yet the easiest thing to do, is to take one’s limited experience, limited understanding and knowledge, and then extrapolate that your experience is universal and despite your severely limited understanding & knowledge, you are in a position to judge and condemn.
Sume, I hope we can connect again, someway, sometime, somewhere else.
Be humble, love, forgive and then love some more.
Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Allen Troup
I am very sorry if anything that I said offended you Allen. I guess I should have just ignored it like you said. I can tell that you are a very wise and reasonable person. Robin
Robin,
I said my previous post was my last but I will break that so you know that you didn’t say anything that offended me. I appreciated all your comments. I wish you & everyone the best!
The positioning this as an “equal” debate is not valid. The two sides are not “equal”. Frankly, given the injustice of adoption, if adoptive parents said nothing for the next thousand years, this would still not make up the differential in what needs to be said by adoptees, their families, their communities, and the lands of their birth in this regard. And I would be interested to see whether what they say echoes your “side” or mine. So I do not see your silence as a problem, but as a requirement—you have the full weight of the law, the media, the medical and legal institutions as well as religious backing to make your case when you are not even saying anything. This is what weighs upon adoptees; the pressure of you expecting them to act according to your worldview. You don’t even see the “hate” and “anger” in, say, Robin’s words; why is that? Because they are a given; they are the dominant discourse. Given the injustices waged against those on the other side of the equation, to ask that the discourse be “civil” is equally insulting. Jesus (peace and blessings upon Him) violently overturned the tables of the money lenders in the Temple; would you ask Him to be more “civil” when confronted with such arrogance?
Hello Sumia:
I like Allen am going to choose to ignore this posting for a while. Some people on here are turning it into a hate and political forum. I choose not to argue because as Allen said ” it would make me into as big of a fool” It’s too bad that it has to be this way because it would have been a very valuable tool for me being that I have an adopted daughter from Haiti as well as two domestically adopted children. We need to be able to discuss this without being @ each other’s throats. Anyway, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas especially you Allen. You seem to be a sensible and wise as well as a peaceful person. You are a true peace maker. Merry Christmas to all!
Does anyone have Heidi’s family’s address so I can possibly come and help them a little bit? I really want to do something for them, just because I am Vietnamese too. Thank you! 🙂
If you would like to send a donation to Heidi’s birth mom, go on the movie’s official website http://www.daughterfromdanang.com and they provide an address.
Daniel, you are awesome, everything you say is the truth. I’m also one of the 95% of the world’s population who don’t live in the USA. To counter some of the vaunting of US exceptionalism that is provoked at the slightest hint of truth – my homeland is always in the company of other fantastic countries in the top 10 in the world for quality of life, health and longevity; it is also a country (among others) to which huge numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees brave great hardships to try to reach. There are many wonderful countries in the world, which have never invaded or bombed another, and many which altruistically do huge amounts of humanitarian work without boasting or expecting anything in return. Far from glorified kidnapping (as you rightly say, Daniel) with false promises of “later” helping the poor families left behind, they help to keep families intact – by either helping people in their own countries, or by helping intact families to come as refugees.
In my country, we regard “patriotism” with at best healthy scepticism, and at worst with outright suspicion – let alone breast-beating and flag-waving, which is viewed with horror.
I’m not Vietnamese ethnically, but I find it so disgraceful to see the ugly results of cultural genocide and imperialism displayed in this (yes, exploitative) film, that I too would like to contact this poor Vietnamese mother, and would gladly pay what her daughter could have paid to help her out.
Yes … I would gladly send this Vietnamese mother/family $AU60 a month aswell. Let me know how to find them?!
I keep up on adoption as the mother if an adopted child. I can tell you that Australia has a very bad record on adoption. There were children kidnapped from their aboriginee families and raised in white families simply because they were part white. Also, Ausrtalia recenty sent an apology to thousands of it’s women who were forced by your government to give their babies up for adoption simply becuase they were unmarried. Look very hard at your own government before you criticize another!
Thanks, Ozzie; I needed to hear that! I appreciate your words very much. You bring up a great point; America loves its immigrants as babies (more easily indoctrinated) but hates its immigrants as adults. I think this explains the emotion here: We’re expected to remain the silent infants we were so many years ago. But this is changing, and the class of adopters will have to listen eventually.
I was watching a show on TV a few nights ago called Secret Millionaire. Don’t know if yo have heard about it. It’s about millionaires who give away money to worthy organizations. Anyway, last weeks millionaire was adopted from Lebanon as a baby just as you were. He had no bitterness of any kind and had made himself very successful in life. I can’t help comparing him to you. You sound like a broken record and a fanatical idiot! Stop complaining about this country and being adopted! You are making yourself look very bad.
Oh yes, we loooooove those charitable millionaires. Do you even stop to ask where his money comes from? Blood diamonds in Africa, oil trade in the Gulf, construction work that displaces thousands, the inherent fraud and corruption of a failed nation-state called Lebanon. Nope. We don’t think. We just drool: Look! A millionaire! How pathetic.
This gives us reason to ignore the hundreds of thousands who remain poor, stateless, indigent, etc. Come live my life in my neighborhood for one week instead of worshipping at the foot of Capital for a mediated and fake reality TV show that lasts half an hour, and we’ll see how much you love your millionaire after that.
Who are you to say I’m bitter? What a horrifying projection on your part. I’m definitely angry in the face of injustice. And unlike you, I have the honesty to call it out and name it for what it is. How hypocritical you are. How offensive.
This is just my opinion and thought after I watched this documentary. Sure, Heidi didn’t grow up knowing her Vietnamese mother and family, but the way she acted was so selfish. I would have gladly helped out their family, even if it might be very little.
I just have sympathy for the Vietnamese mother, who has been heartbroken all of those years, having to give up her child and not knowing the whole time how her child was doing. Then to have Heidi not even write a letter or keep in touch? It’s like an emotional rollercoaster. Why even bother to go back?? Because she might have just hurt the poor mother even more.
It just opened my eyes to how selfish some people are.
I just watched this documentary yesterday. I have to say it was roller coaster ride of mixed emotions, sweeping through me till the very end of this documentary. The initial airlifting of the children was very heart wrenching. I can only imagine how the mothers must have felt whilst giving up their children to unknown officials fearing for their safety. At the same time I cannot help myself empathizing with Heidi, her mother and Heidi’s husband and children. This is how I see it, Heidi was raised by a adoptive mother who should probably never have had the chance of adopting anyone, although she might have provided the material comforts for Heidi, emotionally Heidi was very estranged from her adoptive mother. She must have had this dream of the birth mother being a person who would shower her with nothing but love and be full of understanding and compassion, which is what she must have been craving in a non loving relationship with the adoptive mother.
Like all the other posts above I agree she should have been prepared by the guide or someone else way in advance of how the Vietnamese culture would be like , although her guide says something along the lines of you can never be prepared enough for something like this, I believe that Heidi was lacking even that basic preparation. That being said we have to remember this is not some child who has been raised till 18 and sent off to college and coming back more westernized and expected to earn and fulfill the financial needs of the family. This is a child who has been separated from the family at a very young age. To me it seems that its very similar to being born in America to realize one day you are adopted and begin searching for your birth family , full of expectations and not be fully prepared and suddenly be overwhelmed with the harsh realities that one might not have expected.
I also find the Heidi bashing is a little too harsh, I can understand her position, she went back unprepared and head first into a journey of a lifetime and a life changing one and was shocked because she was not exposed to that kind of frank behavior in her life. Lots of comments here state that she should have researched about her family and so on, at the same time I feel her family in Vietnam should also have been briefed on how she might not be the same child they are expecting, even their expectations from their cultural perspective was high and they were let down by her behavior as well. I myself ( no I am not American or Asian) was a little taken aback when her sister asked her for money and Mrs. Bubb gave her money only to be asked something along the lines of , you can do better and was asked more money, she did not receive a thank you either. It was as though the family was awaiting their savior to come home and pull them out of their financial crisis. I understand that the family is poor and very frank and are trying to reach out any way possible due to their situation. Maybe the letters after her return to the states , constantly requesting her for money might also have put her off.
What irked me a little was a family in dire circumstances might be more understanding of what it might be like for Heidi, what if she was not well off, what if she was barely making ends meet, can Heidi afford to help them out, now it is not just the mother she has to help , let us bear in mind she has to financially assist her mother, father, brother and sisters. They did not seem to consider where she was coming from, what it might be like for her, they were worried about the rest of the sisters and brothers and took it for granted she was made of money? Did they not care for her genuinely then? Did they just care for the brothers and sisters that they knew and grew up with? Now assuming Heidi is well off and can afford to help them, if they didn’t nag her constantly maybe she might have helped them out of her own will seeing them struggle, and yet not ask her for assistance, she might have had a change of heart and helped them of her own accord. I absolutely also feel for the mother, they are in dire straits and need help, I could see the internal struggle her mother was going through, I could see the worry in her eyes that she might loose her daughter if they kept asking her for money but maybe she could not go against the family. I also firmly believe that she does indeed love Heidi and that’s one relationship she did not want to loose.
It is a good thing to be frank and open about things, but just like Heidi should consider their position, cultural perspectives , the family should also have considered where is she is coming from and could have definitely been more tactful about approaching her for financial assistance given that she is not used to their way of life. All of this is very easy to talk about in a forum but I am sure if we were all in Heidi shoes would we have approached the situation the same way, would we not be frightened to be miles away from home alone, to a family who are still strangers, without any support system.
I truly hope Heidi and her family have reunited on a more positive note as the years have rolled by. I wonder if she has found her father?.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned this so I will. Heidi was six years old when she was separated from her birth mother. My elder daughter is almost six, she speaks fluently, can almost read, can count to 50 and can do many things on her own. She knows her mother and father, where she lives, etc.
I would imagine that the same could have been said for Mai/Heidi when she was separated from her birth mother.
Imagine the trauma she must have experienced to erase all of that experience, living and identity — her language, her memories — all of it, to become Heidi Bub.
I agree with many others who stated that Heidi wasn’t properly prepared and that the reunion was played for maximum dramatic effect. Who prepares someone to meet their birth mother by teaching them to say “I love you” or to call them “Mom”? Most of us, I think, even without training would realize that this is risky emotional territory.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but all of Heidi’s birth mother’s memories will have been of a little girl (so even if there is a cultural difference in amount of personal space and affection shown to children that could only be amplified by her “seeing” Heidi as a child and maybe from guilt wanting her to be her little girl again).
I don’t think Heidi is so much selfish as closed off and lacking in self-reflectiveness. She’s had to be in terms of how she has grown up and in how she continues to live. Had Heidi been someone else she would have consciously chaffed against having to pretend that she is white, would have moved away from Pulaski and its KKK members and not married (an equally unquestioning) white man from the town.
Heidi is a survivor, but in the not so pretty way of one who is “passing.”
The author of this blog and everyone else who posts here have far more experience with questioning, soul searching, analysis and critique it seems than Heidi does.
To have contact with her Vietnamese family be anything more than a Disneyland adventure (as another poster termed it) Heidi would really have to look at her life in a way that may be uncomfortable and literally upsetting (would her marriage and continued life in Pulaski withstand such a lens?).
Well I’ve seen it and read quite a few comments. Some don’t seem to realise it was filmed in 1997 and I don’t think the internet was quite as ubiquitous as in 2009 (one of the detractors wrote then).
Yes it’s surprising that she hadn’t done much homework but it seemed from her adoptive mum there wasn’t going to be any such inquisitiveness allowed. When I went over to Germany to meet family and work well I did go about learning the language. And I’ve also lived in Scotland. Even a European country and the UK are quite different from Australia and I was always finding something new and odd to me, so Vietnam would be even stranger. I’ve lived in Pakistan too and of course that was very different but also enjoyable.
I’ll admit if my mum gave me up at 6 you might not feel the same about supporting them as if you had decided to migrate. Maybe everybody had too many unrealistic expectations. She was lucky to met her birth mother but just the biological link may not be enough for any deeper connection after such contrasting lives lived.
Heidi is a bitch and her birth mother should have never gave her up so she can live in Vietnam and go through what her family are going through. She is a ungrateful beeezzyyy.
We are focusing a little too much on Heidi here and not on the mother. The mother gave Heidi up so that she could have a better life. Heidi admits that her life in America is great. So why the hell is she so damn surprised when she asks for a little repayment? I mean shit woman your mom gave you the life they all could never have. Heidi is a prime example of a spoiled, intolerant American. The pain on Heidi’s mothers pain made me look away. Not only did she lose her daughter once, but she lost her twice. The first time to give her a better life, the second time because her daughter is a spoiled bitch.
Yeah i just watched the movie and I began to hate Heidi near the end.
Heidi Bub is an extremely selfish woman, and shows the worst of what America has to offer.
In Vietnam, it is normal and expected for the wealthier family members to take care of the poorer ones. Those who make it to America, England or Canada are expected to send money back to Vietnam to care for their families. Family means everything in Vietnam. Vietnam is still a very poor country. Less than $1 USD can buy a meal. Sending simply $100 USD/year would go such a long way towards helping her family.
Her mother sacrificed her reputation (and probably to a certain degree her dignity and feelings of self-worth) to save her family by become what was essentially a prostitute. Heidi clearly has no idea what her family (and especially her mother) must have suffered through.
Her mom clearly loves her daughter and deeply regrets losing her. She was so proud and happy to see her again. My heart breaks thinking of her, writing letters to a daughter who is to cold and selfish to answer them.
Heidi made the decision to “open the door” – did she not think what that decision would do to her birth mother if she decided to “close” it again?
I can’t imagine the pain her poor mother felt at finding her daughter, only to lose her again. Listening to her tell her daughter that they had forever made my heart ache. I hope Heidi will one day regret the pain she caused, but I doubt she will ever think of anyone but herself.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I am not an adoptee and was lucky enough to have been born into a country (the United States) wherein I did not want for anything, and I came from uneducated parents, to boot.
To say that this Heidi person didn’t have enough preparation before her trip to see her birth mother is ludicrous. What didn’t she learn in school about Viet Nam an the living conditions there? No matter what she expected or envisioned she would be met with upon meeting her birth mother, did she not have the brains to realize that, if not for the sacrifice made by her birth mother, she would not have been able to grow up to be the brat she ultimately became? As bad as her adoptive mother is purported to be, here life in America was heaven compared to what her biological mother lived through in Viet Nam. Heidi looks like she has survived a lifetime of hefty meals and she should be ashamed not to have at least a pea sized brain to, on her own, anticipate the hell that her birth family lived through. Give up a few Big Macs Heidi and send some money home to your family.
I just watched this and was wincing as the film went on – just watching Heidi looking shell-shocked I knew the culture clash was going to sneak up on her viciously. I am not adopted, but in my 20s moved to a few foreign countries on my own and can recall in detail my cultural transgressions, my overreactions, and my eventual hard-won hyper vigilance when it comes to cultural differences. There’s a knack to it, involving research and constantly analyzing supposedly “offensive” interactions for other interpretations, and Heidi was not equipped for culture shock AT ALL.
Heidi was not prepared for ANY of this. She needed to know so much more than how to say “hi” – she desperately needed to know the financial expectations, the family structure, and frankly she should have had her husband or another friend there with her to serve as a buffer and refuge. I’m guessing that a large part of her inability to reconnect is embarrassment over her own reactions – which were totally natural in relation to culture shock, and she shouldn’t be ashamed of now that she has more information.
I know Heidi came out of this looking relatively bad, but come on. This was a wholly Americanized woman raised in a town with no Asian population whatsoever, she didn’t have the chance to even anecdotally hear about Asian traditions that might seem strange to Caucasian Americans. She appears to have been in the same area since the age of 8 – she might still get thrown by culture clash by going to Boston or another big northern city. She had NO context for what she was walking into. I feel bad for her birth family, and I feel bad for her.
I’m utterly disgusted by this Grand Guignol exhibition of anti-Southern stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings displayed in this thread. Truly, I can tell that very few of the posters have lived in the South or have much familiarity with its people, beyond the usual bad assemblage of hillbilly and redneck nonsense slapped together by overpaid idiot writers in Hollywood that these posters have apparently swallowed hook, line and sinker. I am also leery of a documentary that plays up some of these aspects or romanticizes another country’s culture in comparison. If you really would like to know why some Southerners are still “fighting the Civil War,” it has about as much to do with resentment towards these negative media portrayals and the overwhelming arrogance towards the region displayed by some of those from from other parts of the U.S. as it does with any lingering resentments because of civil rights advancements. If you think that the Ku Klux Klan’s more than a marginalized group of social outcasts in most of the modern South, then, simply put, you’re not particularly knowledgeable. I’ve lived all over the South for about 3/4’s of my life, and the general attitude of the majority of white Southerners under the age of 65 towards the KKK was one of acute embarrassment and social avoidance. They are dead enders in every sense of the word.
I’ll also say that, while I empathize with Heidi Bubb’s misery and confusion, I just can’t consider her a “typical” Southerner, and that has absolutely nothing to do with her foreign origin or the fact that she’s biracial. Frankly, the extended family has always been the norm in the South’s small towns, and this was how things were within my own family as I was growing up. The extreme individualism that one might see among urban professionals in some larger urban areas of the Northeast or West Coast just wasn’t in play. While some suburban types in Charlotte or Atlanta may live that way now, they are outliers. Mutual family support, knowing who one’s first, second, third cousins are, large family gatherings, loans of money or even providing housing to poor relations–that’s the South I knew. Poor Heidi had an alienated upbringing and was never close to any extended family, but that’s not because of a characteristic Southern upbringing.
In my own case, I’m a rather typical educated white Southerner with an Asian wife and biracial children. I can truthfully say that we have not encountered that much overt prejudice in our lives, and we are definitely not socially isolated. My son’s a popular fellow at school, and he attends a school where about 5 to 10% of the kids are biracial and another 20% are African-American or Hispanic. The South is different culturally from the rest of the U.S., but, in terms of race relations, much has been accomplished since the early 1960s. I don’t claim it’s utopian when it comes to racial tolerance, but the rest of you need to wake up to the fact that it’s no longer 1950 here, either.
Once again the injured White Man comes in to lecture the masses about their delusions of racism and classism, and how they should suck it up for how good they have it. This post is full of subtle innuendo, especially when it cites “overt prejudice” for example: Pray tell what subliminal prejudice that might leave out of the picture? I’d certainly like to speak to your wife and children in private and get an unmediated response from them, if that is even possible, given your highhandedness here.
To mention a school system as being “integrated” is laughable in a country where so-called public education is a function of class collusion via property taxes (except in Vermont); to call class-based “integration” a model for racial harmony flies in the face of the reality of a country which is the number one per capita incarcerator in the world, with the percentage of minorities in prison as compared to the general population giving new meaning to words such as “gulag” and “ethnic cleansing”.
This is the “covert racism” of an entire nation and its political-economic system, only denied by revisionist Northerners who claim some act of liberation via Abraham Lincoln for what was basically a tactical economic decision to decimate the “property” and workforce of the antebellum South. Yeah, the North was as racist as the South, and both were completely classist in their outlook. I’d much rather hear this, then to consider either of them as some racism-free Shangri-La which has never existed.
You sound like a broken record from the 60’s Daniel. Your rabid anti-Americanism sounds like something from the Nixon Era. You are stuck in a time warp!
Is this what you call a reply? Instead of arguing the points I bring up? I’d much rather be from the era of 1968 than that of 1950s-era McCarthyism. Especially when the world has in fact moved on from the era of horrifying imperialism that you champion so “rabidly”. Anti-Americanism? Hardly. Pro-justice? Definitely and forever.
I am wondering what Heidi’s birth family’s reaction would have been had Heidi’s adoptive mother made the trip with her to Vietnam and asked for all the money she spent raising Heidi, clothes, trips, and University, be paid back. She could have said, ” I have taken care of her for 22 years now, paid all her bills, trips to the doctor, trips to the dentist, etc., it is time for you to start paying me back for all my expenses. I am no expert on Vietnamese culture, but I can’t see any money being offered in grateful appreciation for the family that did raise her.
I am wondering if you realize just how horrifying it is to hear that we adoptees are nothing but financial investments that either “pay off” or not. How disgusting. A kidnapper wouldn’t qualify his prey this way; it is very telling that those who support adoption might. What a filthy and heinous thing to say.
Heidi wanted to meet her biological mother and siblings. Period. It was natural for her to be curious about her biological family. She is genetically linked to them; but, she is not bio-mom’s daughter. Heidi is an American. She has no cultural connection to the Vietnamese family, and she certainly has no moral or ethical obligation to them. Bio-mom sent her away–perhaps to protect Heidi from the communists, or maybe just to get rid of her, before her husband got home. Heidi was, after all, a constant reminder to everyone that bio-mom had slept with the enemy. When you give up your child for adoption, for whatever reason, you give up all claims to their affections. Adoptive parents have no obligations toward you. Their only obligation is to love their new child, and to raise them as their own in a loving, nurturing environment. They are not obliged to supply cross-cultural, ethnically-diverse schools, neighborhood, etc… Parents are obliged to do their best to raise children to be healthy, responsible adults. I concede that there are many unscrupulous adoption agencies. That has absolutely nothing to do with Heidi, her wish to meet her biological mother, or her perceptions of the biological family. You people know nothing at all about Heidi’s own family or her financial situation. She did give money to her sister, and was immediately asked for more money, as well as a commitment to continue financing the family. Why? Well, because Heidi obviously has more money. Does this sound familiar? A sense of entitlement–
“you have a lot more money than I do, so you are a selfish bitch, if you don’t give it to me…” Wait… I guess it isn’t just a cultural thing in Vietnam. It is here, too. Redistribution of the wealth.
Let me reiterate for the people, who think that bio-mom was altruistic in giving up Heidi: she did it, so she wouldn’t be reminded every day of what she had done. My Korean friend told me that thousands of Korean women did the same thing after the Korean War. Bi-racial kids let everyone know what you did, and made you a target of ridicule and discrimination. The kids’ lives were tough, too. If you gave up the kids for adoption and moved, chances were good you could recover. Those children owe their biological parents absolutely nothing.
I am just very sorry that Heidi’s mother was not loving and nurturing. I hope that her mom comes to her senses and mends that relationship. It seems that Heidi has other loving family members like her grandmother and her aunt. Heidi was very brave to share her story. Her detractors are dragging a lot of baggage and agendas.
I was born in Da Nang in 1974, but was brought to America a year later luckily by my loving and courageous parents. I’ve pretty much assimilated to American culture and at the same time was instilled the values of Vietnamese life and importance of family. Btw…I was raised in Alabama and loved it. The South is not that as bad as people/media try to make it, it’s quite wonderful in fact.
I’ve watched the movie several times over the years and even felt compelled to have my friends and family watch it with me as well. I’ve gotten mixed opinions on both Heidi and her Vietnamese family, much like the comments on this post.
One thing I don’t see discussed or emphasized much is the fact that Heidi was and is an only child. She never had to share many things in the house, never had to care for a sibling, never had to put her needs before someone else on a consistent basis before having two small children of her own. In American culture it seems even close friends go dutch or take turns for paying for things during outings. I’m sure Heidi never had the experience of paying for a dinner for 20-30 people like she did for her family in Vietnam.
For Heidi, an only child, the thought of being finacially responsible for not just her bio-mom but her sisters and brothers family as well was a hard pill to swallow for someone who was used to been the one taken care of. Even the fact that she was a military wife whose housing and sometimes food is supplemented by a stipen or use of PX on base should be taken into account as to how she was living. Just an observation, not being judgmental at all folks.
And another thing I noticed was the gifts she gave her family. The ring and watches. Not to sound mean, but they were cheap. Ok, again don’t hate this…it’s just an observation. In my head I was thinking…even for a poor family like hers…I’m sure they were thinking was that real gold…or a quality watch that they could sell for later for food or anything to make their life better. To Heidi it was a perfectly loving and kind gift which is great, but to Vietnamese jewelry is also currency or trade asset for future.
When Heidi’s bio-mom asked her to come back with her to live it really bugged her out…and to be honest it would do the same to a lot of people weather you admit it or not. The family was basically asking her to sponsor her and eventually the family as well to all come to America….yeah the mom said to visit so she can get to know her better but her intent was to get a better life, which I can’t blame her for trying. Already Heidi admitted to being somewhat ashamed of her heritage. Visiting in Vietnam is one thing, but do you think Heidi would have the patience or perseverance to have her bio-mom around in her little home town. It would be a huge responsibility but at least Heidi was true to herself for knowing her limits.
When I first watched this movie I really, really didn’t like her much. As I’ve watched this movie over the years I became more empathatic to Heidi. Pretty much things got to real to fast…and it was pretty much an internal defense mechanism of out of sight out of mind.
As for me I plan on watching this movie again to see if I can pause it to where she shows the envelope of where the mom lives so I can send $50 or so her way…not sure it would make it to the mom or not but it’s worth a try. I have no issues helping my own family but I wonder if I would be able to extend my time and money to return the favor and sponsor a family that were complete strangers as someone did for me. Something I will….I need to look into.
Even just 50-100 American dollars a year would help her mother/family immensly. I can understand getting overwhelmed in the situation. Being so emotionally charged and frustrated due to the communication barrier. But at some point she must re-consider what happened and how Heidi could not have gone back, or at least kept a line of communication to her family in Vietnam is outright selfish of her. What is she thinking? Not much I don’t think. I really have a strong disliking of her after this and I feel very bad for her mother.
How wrong is it for a family struggling to live to ask anyone such as a close family relative for help? Is there no compassion or empathy left in people’s heart that this Vietnamese family needs to be scorned? Heidi might not be equipped with the knowledge that the Savior Jesus Christ sacrificed for her and paid her ransom for her sins. He asked us to help carry each others burdens. What a lost opportunity for this young privileged woman.
I just watched this and people here are way too hard on Heidi. She went there and her family there looked at her like a business or lottery ticket. That may be their way but there is no way she was prepared for that. She may have been naïve or ill prepared but she was not bad. She wanted to go and meet them and develop a relationship with them while they wanted her to support them from day 1. As a military wife I can assure you that she would not have had a great deal of money and the gifts she gave and the expense of the trip would have been a great deal of money for her.
Nothing she could ever do would satisfy her family in Vietnam. No amount of money or effort ever would have been enough. I think Heidi made a wise choice focusing on her own husband and children. Good luck in the future Heidi and know your story will help other prepare for their journeys.
I totally agree!
[…] on adoption, these types of reunions will be addressed with more sensitivity. Thank you Ethnically Incorrect Daughter for your insight on the […]
Thanks for your well-thought-out essay. I feel like so many who watched the film reacted so negatively without thinking more about what was really happening. The whole thing was really sad and I felt for both the American woman and her Vietnamese family. It’s very unfortunate. Thanks for your perspective (I’m not Vietnamese nor adopted so I appreciate reading your POV).
the first time i watch this movies and have to said “sorry” i dont like this movies because it not really true for all Vietnam Mom like that.
Heidi wasn’t interested in hanging out at the market with her birth mother, either. Her complaints about the heat and odors at the market are understandable to me, but her complaining about her birth mother spending time conversing with friends and acquaintances at the market seemed very odd.
Why would she not want to go back to the states with memories of having met her birth mom’s friends and acquaintances?
She grew up as the only child of her adoptive mother, whom she says beat her with a belt, so maybe she really did want the reunion to be all about being nurtured by her birth mother, instead of being about getting to know her birth mother?
I have seen the film twice, and I was a little shocked that Heidi’s family just came right out and asked for money after basically just meeting her. Heidi was looking for a family connection, but instead just ended up feeling like she was being used. It’s easy for others to sit there and judge when they have never been through the same thing.They blame Heidi for being insensitive, but what about her family? Weren’t they insensitive too? Heidi gets all the blame put on her for being “ignorant” of Vietnamese culture, but her family obviously didn’t go out of their way to find out anything about American culture either. Heidi had an unhappy life, first being taken from her family, and then being raised by a woman who allegedly didn’t love her. In the end, neither Heidi nor her family found what they were looking for.