Allison Varzally. Children of Reunion

Over the past few decades, feminist scholars have shown that war is not exclusively a matter for men, or a masculine domain. Instead, it is a complex process that transforms not only public institutions and national economies but also intimate relationships. Adopting a feminist approach to the study of war and adoptions and migrations from Vietnam, Allison Varzally’s Children of Reunion: Vietnamese Adoptions and the Politics of Family Migrations examines the changing meanings of the Vietnam War and its aftermath in the lived experiences of adopted Vietnamese, Amerasians, and their transnational families. Bringing together the tools of history and the theoretical insights of gender, ethnic, and family studies, Varzally insightfully shows that because of the timing of the arrival of Vietnamese adoptees and the war conditions that propelled their departure from Vietnam, national debates about the adoptees were simultaneously debates about U.S. race relations, foreign policies, and national identity. Children of Reunion begins with an examination of American attitudes toward the first wave of Vietnamese adoptions, which took place against the backdrop of military escalation and the antiwar movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. According to Varzally, in the earlier periods of the Cold War, Americans articulated the adoptions of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean children that followed U.S. expansionist interventions in their countries in the positive rhetoric of uplift and rescue. However, American attitudes toward adoption shifted in the context of the Vietnam War: deploying the language of guilt and blame rather than of patriotism and humanitarianism, Americans began to conceive the adoptions of Vietnamese children as the consequence of and solution for failed and immoral U.S. foreign policies in Vietnam. This historical fact is important because it demonstrates the diverse perspectives and complex politics of transnational and transracial adoption across space and time. It also reveals the intersection between the public and private spheres, noting how antiwar activists used adoption—and the power of intimate, familial relations—to make a political point about U.S. foreign policy. Moreover, Varzally usefully notes that in the context of the era’s civil rights and women’s movements, Americans came to regard Vietnamese adoptions and the resultant interracial families as an effort to realize ideals of racial inclusion and equality, and to celebrate middle-class white maternity.

Blame · Context (archaeology) · Expansionism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Vietnam War · Vietnamese · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies