The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam

by Dana Sachs

Overview

In April 1975, just before the fall of Saigon, the U.S. government launched "Operation Babylift," a highly publicized plan to evacuate nearly three thousand displaced Vietnamese children and settle them with adoptive families overseas. Now, thirty-five years after the war ended, Dana Sachs examines this unprecedented event more carefully, revealing how a single public-policy gesture irrevocably altered thousands of lives, not always for the better. The Life We Were Given will inspire impassioned discussion and spur dialogue on the human cost of war, international adoption and aid efforts, and U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807001240
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	07/26/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Dana Sachs has written about Vietnam for twenty years. The author of The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam and the novel If You Lived Here, and coauthor of Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam, she teaches at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and lives in North Carolina.

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Introduction
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Excerpted from "The Life We Were Given"
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Copyright © 2011 Dana Sachs.
Excerpted by permission of Beacon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
 
Part One
Chapter 1
Where They Came From
 
Chapter 2
All Americans Go Home Now
 
Chapter 3
A Sea of Human Need
 
Part Two
Chapter 4
If You Are Out There, We Love You
and We Are Looking for You
 
Chapter 5
Lost in the Shuffle
 
Chapter 6
Standing on Two Legs
 
Chapter 7
Good Intentions
 
Chapter 8
Mementoes and Scars
 
Chapter 9
Ship to Parents: Severe Orphan Syndrome
 
Chapter 10
There Was No One to Take Care of Them
 
Chapter 11
Photographs and Fires and Rage
 
Chapter 12
I Wanted to See What Peace Was Like
 
Chapter 13
Hesitation and Resignation
 
Part Three
Chapter 14
Resources
 
Chapter 15
Baby in a Burning Building
 
Chapter 16
Belonging
 
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index                               

Editorial Reviews

Deeply compelling and deftly researched, Dana Sachs's The Life We Were Given vividly documents this controversial mass evacuation while trailing the heartbreaking narratives of the children-from village life to orphanage to hastily arranged flights to the United States and into the homes of waiting American adoptive parents. The Life We Were Given is a powerful exploration of the questions that haunt everyone involved in adoption.—Meredith Hall, author of Without A Map

"The saddest story in the whole awful sweep of the war in Vietnam had nothing to do with soldiers or ideology and has never been fully told—possibly because no one could bear to. Thankfully, Dana Sachs fills that void with The Life We Were Given, one of the bravest and most wrenching books I have read about the war. All the victims and heroes of the Orphan Airlift come unforgettably to life in this beautiful book, and I will not soon forget them, or it."—Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things

"The Life We Were Given is a work of great compassion and scope that gives voice to the tragedy and salvation of thousands of Vietnamese orphans. Dana Sachs has compiled an impressive collection of personal stories and presented them with concise historical background to give this subject the depth it so rightly deserves. An illuminating book worth reading."—Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala and The Eaves of Heaven

"With its clear and compelling truths about war, children, fear, and hope, The Life We Were Given becomes one of our very best and most important books about America's involvement with the people of Vietnam. And it's so much more. Exquisitely written, full of breathtaking suspense, this book will become a classic, a must-read."—Clyde Edgerton, author of Lunch at the Piccadilly and The Bible Salesman

"This gripping account of Operation Babylift allows the voices of those directly affected by the experience to speak out. . . . Unmatched in its breadth of perspective and depth of insight . . . Sachs has broken new ground in our continued understanding and insight into how powerful Operation Babylift was on our national consciousness and the many lives it impacted."—Bert Ballard, PhD, Operation Babylift adoptee (April 1975), international adoption researcher, adoptee activist

From the Publisher

Who is the orphan: the displaced children of Vietnam—or Vietnam itself? So mused an MIT political scientist in the New York Times in 1975, the year of Operation Babylift, when the U.S. government sanctioned the removal of almost 3000 Vietnamese children before the fall of Saigon. Indeed, as America withdrew from Vietnam, Operation Babylift took on an urgency that Americans, after a disastrous and unpopular war, embraced. Those involved, such as Friends of Children of Viet Nam (FCVN), were poorly equipped to handle so many adoptions so fast. They had the best of intentions but perhaps a limited view of the consequences of their endeavors. Many of the transported children were not in fact orphans, and although some were reunited with their birth parents, others were not despite efforts to negotiate the poorly maintained records. Especially moving is the story of Ahn, an Amerasian girl given up by her birth mother, who was fearful of the fate awaiting her child in Vietnam once the Americans left. VERDICT Combining historical background with personal stories from those involved, Sachs (The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam) provides a well-researched, deeply moving work, sensitive and nuanced. Highly recommended.—Patti McCall, AMRI, Albany, NY

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