For me, my life began with the first letter of my adoption papers. Anything before that is an insubstantial mix of of wishful thinking and stories told to me by my adoptive parents. I was born in Saigon during the Vietnam war but by the time America called its troops home, I was already long gone. My adoption papers say I was born in 1970. Six months later, I landed on the shores of America claimed and renamed; a supposed blank slate except for my race. Operation Babylift was yet to occur and by the time the war ended, I had already grown fat on biscuits and gravy.
The war ended in 1975 and in that same year, I entered Kindergarten. I had no knowledge of the country or the conflict from which I’d sprung nor did I truly understand the environment in which I had been transplanted. It was a small Texas town with a population of a little over a thousand; a population that was still in mourning and still bitter. Americans had not yet buried all of their dead and symbolically many still haven’t. So it was in this secluded post-war environment where I would grow and later learn that I was a seed scattered from some other tree an ocean away.
I grew up feeling not only ethnically misplaced but ethnically incorrect in this white-dominated town. It was a community that was still segregated by a set of railroad tracks separating the black and white sides of town. I wore the face of the enemy for both of them. The irony is that as I entered my first year of school, I had no idea that there were so many Vietnamese adoptees. As the only Vietnamese, only Asian in the entire town, I wouldn’t see another live Vietnamese face until I was around 11 years old. I grew up feeling as if I’d been cut and pasted onto a painting with too many pieces left behind.
My adoptive father served two tours in Vietnam and meant well. I can only guess at his motives other than to save an orphan from a life he thought held little promise. He went to Vietnam to fight a war and brought me back with him; a living souvenir. I float between feeling saved and feeling kidnapped, between gratitude and resentment but in the end, there is always love. We are a close family but I chose not to share these thoughts with them, at least for now. This space serves as a repository for those thoughts and my experiences as I sort through them.
There are still loose ends to my story and gaps that can never be closed but life does move on. I’d rather move with it than be swept away as I was as an infant but that doesn’t stop me from looking back. Half of me will always be stuck some where in the past, unable to move forward beyond the borders of Vietnam and a mother I never knew.
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in some sense, we’re all margin walkers…
I would just like to tell you that as a Korean adoptee everything you say resonates with me. I too was adopted by a white family and I too wonder if I was saved or kidnapped. My family is marginally close and if they were to hear me say these thintgs they would surely be confused and hurt. Thank you for sharing yourself and I look forward to reading more.
Thanks Angie,
Yeah, the lines can get a little blurred sometimes. It was a real surprise to find out I wasn’t the only who had these feelings. Even more surprising and kind of comforting, was finding out how common it is for us to have them. It helps to know it doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong with you as a person. In fact, it’s more the “normal” than most people care to admit.
Thanks so much for telling your story. As a transracial KAD I understand the isolation that you talk about growing up. I had some misplaced identity growing up-Not that I’ve supposedly found this identity today.
I also have two little sisters who are adopted from Taiwan and Hanoi Vietnam. They’re getting close to age where I feel like they need the right resources and people to discuss their feelings about being adopted, but my parents don’t know what to do. So I’ve found most of this educating ends up falling on my shoulders. thanks so much for sharing.
I love the way you write, and what you write.
This beautiful. Please consider submitting something to my site or at least exchanging links with me?
I love your work, the writing as well as the photographs, and was wondering if you would want to talk about possibly doing some things with VAN. I’d love to hear from you if you get a chance – and thanks for putting your voice out there…we need it.
Dear Sume,
Is there an email address where you can be contacted for writing work? I can’t seem to find one on this blog. I am an editor putting together an adoption project for November and would like to discuss it with you. You may contact me at the above email if you would like to know more about it.
Thanks,
Peter Catapano
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I have a question. Would you have felt so isolated if there was a large vietnamese or hmong community near you? Just curious because the world is a somewhat different place in 2007 than it was in the early 70′s – even in rural texas.
Another question is if you had been able to retain your birth language (Vietnamese) growing up would that have made a difference?
For people who are looking to build a family and don’t want to adopt domestically because of the legal system – is it acceptable to adopt internationally (specifically from Asia) if the parents are caucasion?
Thanks, I appreciate your viewpoint and I look forward to reading more posts.
Wow you are an amazing writer, have you ever considered publishing some of your work in a magazine or something? I’m into writing an this is totally amazing – not like anything I could EVER pull off. Keep writing, we all wanna hear more.
I was looking for photos of adoption papers for a story I’m writing and stumbled across this – I’m glad I did!!!
I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion . . . I’ve been reading your blog for a while now . . . I am an adult adoptee (not in a cross-cultural/cross-racial situation, though) and I just got the news tonight that my birthfather died last week (I have known my birthmother for almost 18 years, and met my birthfather and had contact with him for a few years). The funeral is tomorrow . . . it’s a ten-hour drive from here . . . I would go in a minute, but I’m scheduled to fly to see a friend in Canada on Wednesday–thinking about driving one-way, changing my plane ticket and flying from there.
I am not sure what I’ll decide to do, but I just feel the need to connect with folks who understand my desire to be there . . . and my sense that I have a *right* to be there.
Hello,
I’m sorry because this comment is not directly toward your post. I am hoping, however, that you will take the time to read this, and make a future post based on the following information.
My name is Myriam, I am a French adoptee born in Korea and I am currently interning at the Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link (GOA’L), located in Seoul, South Korea. I am writing to you with intentions of both providing you with information on, as well as asking for your assistance with our current campaign.
As you may already know, GOA’L has been supporting overseas adoptees born in Korea since 1998. We are now lobbying for overseas adoptees’ right to hold a dual citizenship.
At the bottom, I will include a link leading toward documents about our campaign. There is an information package which contains the specific details about our campaign. Within, issues such as military service and tax responsibilities are outlined. The second document is the petition form. We are hoping to obtain 50,000 signatures by December 2008. To reach this goal, we are contacting organizations and individuals connected with Korea, or with adoption in general, in order to get their help, as this is an issue that could concern all adoptees in the world who are denied dual citizenship. We hope to set a precedent so that other countries forbidding dual nationality could also liberalize their legislation.
We would greatly appreciate your support in this campaign. The info package and sign sheet are available at this address:
http://goal.or.kr/eng/?slms=room&lsms=1&sl=6&ls=17
You may also contact us at campaign.goal@gmail.com
Thank you so much!
Myriam Cransac
Campaign Coordinator
Your story is poignant. As an author and a member of Origins-USA, I fight for an end to the redistribution of children and FOR family preservation.
We who have been hurt and damaged by family separations are speaking out in the hope of preventing future harm. I cannot help wonder, though, as I read your story, if many who read it do th same as they with the stories of mothers who lost children . They say tsk tsk…”that was then; this is now” and things are not done that way now. They tell us that now there is open adoption and that will resolve all the feelings of loss. AS IF! And I can just imagine a contemporary prospective adopter reading your story and saying – well today we are much more aware and we take our children to events with other children of their ethic heritage…as if that cures everything!
And on and on it goes…
It must be stopped! Cultural genocide, babies being stolen and sold because of a demand and unscrupulous baby brokers willing to meet it for a price.
The truth is that it is worse today than it was when I lost my children in the late 60s and you were brought here by one man believing he was doing good. It is far more commerial. A huge worldwide multi-BILLION dollar INDUSTRY…as described in your most recent post…
It is happening in Asia, S. America, Eastern Europe and even Africa. Wherever there is political and/or economic unrest mothers will be exploited, and children kidnapped to meet the demand of the West who are willing to turn a blind eye and pay the brokers fees.
Hello! I wanted to drop you a quick message letting you know about a new Social Network for Adoptees, called AdopteeNetwork.com.
http://adopteenetwork.com
If you’d like any more information, feel free to contact me personally @ johnsaddington@gmail.com. I’d love to discuss how we can work together!
John
Hello Sumeia,
I am the adoptive mother of two wonderful, amazing children from China who I love more than life itself. However, from educating myself on the experiences of international adoptees, particularily transracial adoptees, I know that love is not enough. I want to help my daughters as they walk this difficult path. I am hoping that you will take the time to share with us, what your parents could have done to help with your developing racial identity and the many issues related to transracial/international adoption that you have faced and currently face.
I never thought it was a terrible thing to adopt a child from China, uprooting her from her culture and expecting her to transpalnt in Canada but as time goes on, I see how very selfish I have been in my quest to be a mother. I cried on the way to the airport with my first daughter because I sensed I was doing something wrong taking her from China and I grieved for the culture she was losing. Once I felt that my daughters had been abandoned by both their birth parents and their country and culture but now I wonder if I didn’t indeed cause the ‘abandonment’ by China in my desire to parent. I can’t undo what I have done but I can do better than generations before me and that is what I intend. Listening to people like you allows me a sense of what my girls may experience and feel and for that I am truly grateful. Thank you, June
Hi Sumeia,
I’m interested in speaking with you about a website I am developing geared to multicultural parenting. I am seeking submissions from talented writers who are parents as well as experts in the field of multiculturalism/lingualism. I would love to tell you more about it in an email if you are interested.
Best regards,
Stephanie
Dear Sumeia Williams,
We hear a lot in the media about celebrities adopting Asian babies, adoptive parents who adopt these babies, and most recently about trafficking of children through adoption. But, we rarely hear from those Asian adoptees. Read what Asian adoptees have to say about adoption and trafficking in this month’s issue of Conducive. Three adoptee authored articles are online now and two more are coming this month.
Here are the links:
http://www.conducivemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82:transnational-adoption-and-the-financialization-of-everything4569&catid=38:innovative-thinking&Itemid=61
http://www.conducivemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=81:international-adoption-and-the-fight-for-human-rights&catid=37:critical-thinking&Itemid=62
http://www.conducivemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=85:trading-in-babies&catid=37:critical-thinking&Itemid=62
Sincerely,
Brielle Nikaido
Associate Editor/Media Director
Conducive
Conducivemag.com
bnikaido@conducivemag.com
[...] Sumeia Williams was born in Saigon in 1970, during the Vietnam War. She was brought to the US and adopted by an American soldier and his family. She knows little about her life before her adoption, yet has always felt out of place in the US. Sumeia grew up in a small town in Texas, where she was the only Asian. She blogs about her feelings about being adopted and about never feeling like she fit in. [...]
Thank you for your words!
I am the Vice President of Korean Adoptees of Hawai’i (KAHI).
I am working on a Research Project on transnational adoptees and their American parents. Please visit our website to find out more about this study, access the surveys, or send requests to be interviewed:
http://transnation…al-adoptee-paren…t-study.webs.com/
Or follow us on Facebook:
to http://www.facebook.com/Stories.Adoptee.Parent
Of access our on-line (anonymous) survey for adult transnational adoptee (age 18+) by clicking on:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Stories_Adult_Adoptee.
Thanks Charlie, I’ll put up a post on the main page so others might have better access to your information.
Hi:
I’m wondering what you think of this article:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/vietnam/110901/vietnam-war-babies-US-visa-GIs-troops?page=full
Thx!
– A Reader
Hi Helen,
Thanks for the link. Are you looking for an answer regarding something specific or just my general take on it?
Hiya -
I’m curious about two things. One is, yes, your general take on it — how true did you find the reporting, what did you think/feel while reading it, etc.
The other question is maybe related I dunno — I just got around to watching “Daughter of Danang” and spent some time reading your post and the long set of comments following (until some of the name-calling in the latter bogged me down). I was looking to see if anybody else saw what I saw, which was this barely grown-up kid Heidi, who’d been torn away from her birth mom in a haze of misinformation and fear and Op Babylift pressures, then whose adoptive mom eventually asks her to pay the mom back for raising her from age 7 — not with $ but with time and total “loyalty” or something. Bizarre. Of course Heidi leaps at the chance to reintegrate w her birth family … only to have them ask her to pay up, which she shoulda anticipated but didn’t. We can talk all we want about how poorly prepared she was and how badly she reacted, but really, given where she’d been since age 7 it’s hard to expect otherwise, and I think it’s also hard to separate her reaction to her family’s request from the fact that her adoptive mom had also made what probably felt like a related all-or-nothing demand. So complicated. Then consider the journalist and the documentary team also using Heidi for their personal purposes … I just felt so awful for her. But, at least in the comments, it looks like I’m kinda alone in that view.
Anyway, then a few weeks later I see this article about some babies/families who weren’t lifted by Operation Babylift, and their lives suck too, and so — again, wow. Lots to think about and made me want to reach out and see what you think.
I hope you’re doing okay. I pop in and out reading you so am not 100% up to date, but I 100% hope you’re doing okay.
Helen
You know, that came out really wrong didn’t it. I should have just said — I watched “Daughter of Danang” and thought, wow, Heidi would have been so much better off in Vietnam. Then I saw this article and thought, oh wow, maybe not. But then maybe the article is only true for the few people interviewed by the writer. Or maybe, two contradictory things, both true. Happens. But wanna talk it through w somebody.
Helen again.
Hello Helen,
Thank you for your kind wishes and for checking in once in a while. I don’t update as often as I use to, so it’s nice to know that people still check in now and then.
First, your contradictory thoughts are a perfectly natural reaction to two seeming contradictory scenarios. Neither situation was ideal. If we must compare, Heidi had more opportunity materially than Dang, but that does not negate her emotion and psychological suffering or her sense of loss. Dang and the others interviewed in the article, on the other hand, did not make it out and suffered most of their lives at the hands of those who shunned them. That does not necessarily mean they would have been “better off” had they gotten out.
A lot of people guffaw when I say that, but some of the reasons why are stated here: http://ethnicallyincorrect.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/the-unanswerable-question/
At first, I also wanted to start comparing them as if they were the same, but stopped myself, because I think that takes away from the two individual stories. One might be tempted to start looking for a “better off” comparison, but that’s like comparing apples to oranges. For someone to point to the article, generalize the situation and say, “See? Now aren’t you glad you were adopted? You could have grown up like that!” infuriates me to no end.
For one, not all the adoptees who came from Vietnam were bi-racial or true orphans. Many were left in the orphanages because their families could not afford to take care of them. As we are seeing all the time, some intended to come back for their children and were too late.
As far as the article is concerned, adoption should have nothing to do with the stories of Amerasians in Vietnam. Let’s isolate it and see it for what it is. The Amerasians have the RIGHT to be in the US. It’s sad that adoption has to be in the picture at all, but sadly it was because so many American fathers didn’t want to or were unable to take responsibility for their children.
Do I feel “lucky” and “grateful” when I read articles like this? Yes and no. It will always be “yes and no”. Should Heidi or a Vietnamese adoptee in general? Who am I or anyone to say?
Neither of the two stories are black and white but they are both swimming in a whole lot of grey. It would be an injustice to generalize them for the sake of comparison. We all have our own stories to tell, and as I’ve discovered, they are all unique in their own way.
It’s awesome in itself that you question your own thoughts and opinions. You’re trying to broaden your perspective and that’s something I always respect in people.
I am Amerasian from Việt Nam, living in the west. I was one of those Amerasian (Việt Lai) children, that was taken, against my will. I was forbidden to speak my language, or ever speak of where I came from. They forced me to be Western. But, silently, I was still Vietnamese! My story is here, if you are interested:
http://my.opera.com/amerasianvietnam/blog/
I always welcome visitors to my little blog.
Xin chào bạn!
Chào ang Mình,
Thanks for stopping by and saying hello. Will definitely check out your blog. I’m very interested in hearing more of your story!
Xin chào chị Sumeia,
I am sorry for my error. I sent you the wrong URL, to my blog.
This is correct one: http://my.opera.com/vietnameseamerasians/blog/
- anh Minh