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Giving Voice to the Children of International Adoption

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Dana Sachs explains how her title, The Life We Were Given, reflects the feeling of acceptance some transracial adoptees ultimately achieve. (1 min., 26 sec.)

NEW YORK, April 27, 2010 – The sensitive topic of international adoption was given an airing at Asia Society's New York Center, when historian Dana Sachs read from her new  book The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam, which brings to light an almost forgotten episode in US-Asia relations.

Sachs's reading was followed by a panel discussion on the topic of international adoption, in which she was joined by documentarian Stephanie Wang-Breal, psychologist Amanda Baden, and Operation Babylift adoptee Jared Rehberg, in a conversation moderated by Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch.

Undertaken in the chaotic days before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, Operation Babylift was the United States' effort to respond to the problem of the thousands of Vietnamese orphans, especially Amerasian children, who had lost their families to the ravages of war. Sachs' book reveals that this so-called rescue mission was fraught with complications—particularly as she discovered that not all of the transported children had been orphans.

Broadening the discussion of the United States' complex relationship to international adoption, documentary filmmaker Stephanie Wang-Breal presented a clip of her new film Wo Ai Ni, (I Love You) Mommy, (to be screened at Asia Society on Friday, May 14, 2010). Wang-Breal illuminated the situation of over 70,000 Chinese children who have been adopted from China since 1992, by focusing on one adoptee and by considering the event from the child's perspective. This film sheds new light on problems of displacement and Diaspora that are particular to the international adoptee's situation.

A practicing psychologist, and herself an adoptee from Hong Kong, Amanda Baden provided special insight into the situation of international adoptees, discussing their limited access to Asian culture, especially as most international adoptees are raised by white American families.

Offering a more personal perspective on the matter, Operation Babylift adoptee Jared Rehberg, explained that many adoptees have been consistently working to "figure out their place in the world." Having been raised by white American parents, Rehberg explained that he hadn't been especially aware of his own Asian identity until he moved to New York City in his mid-20s.

In conclusion, Sachs said that she still believes international adoption should remain an option "so long," she said, "as children need homes." For his part, when asked to address the often painful feelings that accompany the practice, Rehberg stated that, "If it's the life we were given, then some people don't accept it." Though the issue was addressed with both tact and personal insight by the panel, international adoption remains a contentious issue both on the personal and policy planning levels.

Reported by Shendi Xu

Shop AsiaStore for The Life We Were Given

Janet Gardner & Pham Thai | 05:04:10 09:05pm
Just want to remind you of the documentary premiere at Asia Society in 2002 of a program entitled "PRECIOUS CARGO" which was broadcast on PBS. "PRECIOUS CARGO" follows a group of Vietnamese young adults adopted by American families at the end of the Vietnam War back to their motherland in search of their culture. We learn of their personal quests for birth mothers or foster parents as the plane touches down in Saigon. This was the "Motherland Tour" for adoptees, sponsored by Holt International Childrens Services 25 years after Operation Babylift. They were among the 2,700 children brought to the United States, Canada, and France. It also introduces audiences to some of the pioneering adoptive parents who began a movement that has grown to redefine the American family by embracing these biracial, and sometimes disabled children, as their own. Once on their native soil, they travel to the orphanages they came from, meeting the nuns and nurses who once cared for them. They wrestle with complex feelings of loss and gratitude, connection and detachment as they confront overcrowding and poverty as well as natural beauty of Vietnam. The interactive website at www.pbs.org/preciouscargo contains reaction from other adoptees and messages for those looking for lost loved ones. The film is available through Flmakers Library, Inc. in New York. from JANET GARDNER & PHAM QUOC THAI, Producers

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