Vietnamese Adoptees Living in Vietnam

My wife looked up me after checking her phone and I immediately knew something was wrong since she must have had a dozen missed calls in the past hour.  I too had a few.  It was her mom, her brother, and sister calling one after the other as if they were saying to drop everything and just go.  Her grandmother had passed away and she needed to get back to her parent’s place in the countryside as if nothing else needed to be explained.  My wife and daughter packed a bag to leave early the next day and I would join later in the evening after finishing work.   The next evening I finally arrived at the funeral, I noticed that the immediate family members were all dressed in white robes and wore head wraps that symbolized rank according to the proximity to the deceased as well as age.  Other close relatives wore white headbands, the younger children in orange headbands, and everyone else wore dark clothing and black headbands. A funeral band played trad...

The following interviews are about Vietnamese adoptees from Australia, Europe and America who not only have come back to visit their heritage, but also to settle in Vietnam. Our perspective is unique as foreigners, as Viet-Kieu (Vietnamese Overseas), and as adoptees who, through various connections, know each other while now living in Saigon, Vietnam. Everyone in the world searches for peace and meaning in their lives. As adoptees growing up we have searched for comfort in our identity, finding where we fit in. While not entirely accepted in our home countries nor here in Vietnam, we share the feeling of pride and excitement in humbly submerging ourselves into our roots and this gives us peace. Why it is so meaningful to us to come back to our motherland which we were afraid to confront before is almost impossible to put in words, but these interviews shed some light. The interviews of Tuy Buckner, Brent Kurkoski, Khanh Oehlke, Zion Mitchell, Thao Pross, Kym Blackwell, Tiffany Good...