Before Babylift
Female Photojournalists and Vietnamese-American ‘Orphans’ in American Print-media, 1971–1973
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12914760 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Georgia Vesma (0000-0001-9889-787X, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 186-206 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of War and Culture Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1752-6272 • E-ISSN: 1752-6280 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17526272.2021.1928384 |
| OpenAlex | W3160418337 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 25 |
President Ford’s announcement of ‘Operation Babylift’, a plan to airlift over 2,000 Vietnamese ‘orphans’ from South Vietnam to the United States in March 1975, prompted a wave of interest in adoption of Vietnamese children by American families. This was the culmination of years of growing interest in adopting Vietnamese ‘orphans’. Contemporary newspaper reports credited television and photographs with motivating potential adopters. Adding to scholarship which explores how photographs create discourses of ‘rescue’ and ‘responsibility’ in humanitarian contexts, this article examines how arguments for transnational adoption as a solution to Vietnam’s ‘orphan problem’ developed in the years leading up to Babylift. It notes stark differences in depictions of white-Amerasian and black-Amerasian children in keeping with racial discourses of early 1970s America. The work of female journalists in Vietnam has historically been marginalized; this article redresses this, arguing that American women photographers offered a specific perspective on the ‘orphan problem’
Art · Linguistics · Media studies · Photography · Photojournalism · Political science · Sociology · Vietnamese · Visual arts · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Somebody’s Children
The Lost Children
Photography
Humanitarian Photography
U.s. Foreign Policy and the Other
Ideologies of Forgetting
The Best Possible Immigrants
Displacements and Diasporas
A horrific photo of a drowned Syrian child”
The Ambiguities of aid and Agency
Mother, Child, Race, Nation
Don’t just look for a new pet’
Vietnamerica
Tender Violence
Operation Babylift or Babyabduction
Children Born of War in the Twentieth Century
Children of Reunion
Innocents Abroad
"The "Uncensored War
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |