The Amerasian's Journey

Facing Discrimination as a Child

Châu Lê Thuỳlinh is one of the Amerasian children from the Vietnam War. She was born as a Vietnamese and White child in Đà Nẵng, Việt Nam in 1966 to Trong Le and, like other Amerasian children of her time, experienced hardship due to her mixed heritage. Growing up in Đà Nẵng, Thuỳlinh did not leave her home often due to the way that Vietnamese adults and children would treat her.  In school, she would often be by herself and had only a handful of close friends that would "[help her] out if [she] got bullied," which was a common occurrence. Even outside of school, children refused to play with Thuỳlinh as their parents told them that her mother was a bad person for having a child with an American man. Other kids were so hostile that they would push her into chicken wire, rip her clothes, "dump food on [her] body," or chase her trying to hit her. This made Thuỳlinh's mom urge her to stay indoors whenever she was not at home. 

The harassment and disdain for mixed children is commonly reported among many Amerasians interviewed by Robert McKelvey. McKelvey reported a general culture of exclusion among Vietnamese citizens, forbidding marriages/relationships outside of the community. This only intensifies when the partner is of a different race or national origin. The prejudice against Amerasian children was so widespread it became institutionalized in Vietnamese society and government.

The Two Sides to Sài Gòn

After the passing of her brother, Lê Lâm, Thuỳlinh and her mother moved to Sài Gòn, where her life improved until 1975. Her mother found work working for a high-ranking colonel in the Vietnamese Navy, who provided housing for them. Thuỳlinh attended school with the officer's children who became her close friends and protectors in school. In general though, the officer's reputation and his children's  company warded off much of the harassment that Thuỳlinh faced in Đà Nẵng. The situation for Thuỳlinh changed drastically after the fall of Sài Gòn in 1975. As communist soldiers approached the city, neighbors spread a rumor that the soldiers would "kill all the Amerasian kid on the way." To save Thuỳlinh's life, Trọng hid her in a nearby Franciscan church. During their stay, they heard a large volume of gunfire accompanied by helicopters above and protected themselves from stray bullets by hiding in sandbag structures in the building. 

The differences before and after 1975 were also reported by other Amerasians, like Clarence Dung Taylor who also lived in Sài Gòn at this time. He believed that life was difficult after 1975 because the American forces left, inferring that an American presence promoted racial tolerance.

After the fall of Sài Gòn, communist soldiers maintained a constant presence in the city. Because of her Amerasian identity, Thuỳlinh became a target for harassment from the soldiers and her neighbors. She, and other Amerasians like Taylor, were name-called and constantly reminded that they were below others in Vietnamese society. The worst treatment that Thuỳlinh endured was when the soldiers arrested her while visiting family in the countryside. They falsely claimed that she planned to escape Việt Nam by boat and demanded compensation. Since the family could not afford it, they sent Thuỳlinh to a hard labor camp intended for criminals and American allies. She was the youngest prisoner in the camp at 15 years old. Some of the other prisoners protected her "on their side" due to her age and provided her with food. Every morning, Thuỳlinh was tasked with bringing water in for the camp to take baths with. Unlike others who stayed in hard labor camps for years, she was able to get out after only one month. Before she was taken to the camp, a high-ranking officer in the communist army admired Thuỳlinh for being a well-behaved child and asked Trọng to be her godfather. Although both Thuỳlinh and her mother refused, Trọng called the officer to ask if he could release Thuỳlinh from prison. Shortly after the phone call, she was able to go back home to see her mother. 

Leaving Việt Nam

Thuỳlinh and her mother immediately worked on an application for a U.S. immigration program aimed at allowing Amerasians to immigrate out of Việt Nam. The first few attempts failed because the application did not include a bribe for the Vietnamese officers processing the first stage of the paperwork. Institutional corruption of this kind was typical for Amerasian children to face. Another study from Kaori Mori Want states that one Amerasian tried to enroll in university but was rejected because he was "part American and non-communist", showing how widespread institutional racism was against Amerasian children.  Feeling defeated, Thuỳlinh and Trọng sat outside of the American embassy, missing their bus home. After some time, an American embassy worker came out and found them sitting by the gate. In Vietnamese, the worker asked why they were still waiting outside, to which Thuỳlinh explained their situation. He invited them up to his office where he began the interview process and provided further instructions on what to do. Within a month, Thuỳlinh and her mom checked the listings at the embassy and "saw [her] mom and [her] name on the list," meaning they could leave for America.

 From then on, Thuỳlinh and her mother traveled to a processing center in Thailand and then a Philippine Refugee Processing Center while they waited for a sponsor. This was standard for Amerasians leaving Vietnam and built in as a measure to find a sponsor and learn about the United States in different ways. Unlike Valverde's assertions, the camp was not a traumatic experience but an incredibly positive one for Thuỳlinh. In the Philippines, Thuỳlinh and Trọng took English classes to prepare for life in the United States and took on jobs to sustain themselves. Thuylinh took on two roles within her camp: sorting mail at the local post office and teaching younger children English. It took six months before they found a sponsor, the Sisters of Divine Providence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They could finally leave the camp and immigrate to the United States. 

Starting Fresh

Thuỳlinh and Trọng arrived in the United States in January of 1986. She recounted that her first experience with American culture was through a fast food restaurant. After nuns from the convent picked them up from the airport, they took Thuỳlinh and Trọng to a fast food restaurant and had Thuỳlinh practice ordering her food and paying for it. The nuns' goal was to prepare Thuỳlinh and Trọng for life in the United States. To do so they provided them with a room and a job within the convent so that they could practice spending and saving their money wisely. Thuỳlinh feels that this experience prepared her in the best ways possible for an independent life after their stay at the convent. Other Vietnamese migrants also felt that what contributed to their successful adjustment to the U.S. was working and practicing essential skills, such as Bùi Bích Hà. These skills contributed to their survival in the United States and eventual economic stability, regardless of the turmoil they faced back in Vietnam.

When reflecting back on her experiences, Thuỳlinh believes that the United States was a much more accepting country. To her, it felt like it did not matter if she was an Amerasian child. It simply mattered that she was an American. Everyone was much more pleasant in their interactions with her compared to Việt Nam, even if she was a stranger to them. Although Thuỳlinh has no desire to visit Việt Nam, she tried to take her three oldest children back in 1999 to show them their cultural roots. Thuỳlinh eventually got married to An Châu and moved to California to start a family with four children.

 Description:

An oral history of Thuỳlinh Châu, born in Đà Nẵng in 1966, an Amerasian child in Việt Nam. The interview will focus on a few key areas, specifically Thuỳlinh’s experience with discrimination as an Amerasian child, her experiences during the war, and her departure from Việt Nam through the Bring Amerasians Home Act. She was born in Đà Nẵng to a single mother and experienced constant racism throughout her entire life in Việt Nam, even after moving to Sài Gòn. Before the fall of Sài Gòn in 1975, Thuỳlinh’s life was relatively nice in Sài Gòn due to living with the family of a high-ranking officer in the Republic of Việt Nam’s Navy. However, after American forces left, she dealt with discrimination from her neighbors and the occupying communist forces. At one point, she was accused of trying to escape Việt Nam by boat and served one month of hard labor at 15 years old until she was released by a high-ranking official in the communist military. After some difficulties processing her paperwork, Thuỳlinh was able to leave Việt Nam through the Bring Amerasians Home Act and was sponsored by the Sisters of Divine Providence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through Catholic Charities. She now works as a bookkeeper for a real estate company in Alhambra, California. She has 4 children and lives in West Covina, California with her husband. 

Key Words

• Đà Nẵng: fifth-largest city in Vietnam that used to be a part of the Quảng Nam province

• Sài Gòn: Formerly the capital of South Vietnam and is now known as Ho Chi Minh city

• Hard labor: compulsory work that is done as part of a prison sentence

• Embassy: a building containing a foreign country's ambassador/representative

• Amerasian: term given to children that have Asian and American parents

• Discrimination: act of making unjustified distinctions between people of differing categories that they may belong to

• Racism: discrimination directed at others because they belong to a different race or ethnicity

Decade of Birth: October 10, 1966

Interviewee: Thuylinh Chau

Interviewer: Brandon Chau

Date created: December 8, 2022

Duration: 00:52:33

   Language: English

Type: Oral History

Oral History Files

Recording

Transcript

Abstract

Field Notes

Time Log

Bibliography

Bùi Bích Hà, interview by Thuy Vo Dang, July 23, 2012, transcript, Vietnamese American Oral History project, UC Irvine Southeast Asian Archive, Irvine, CA.

Clarence Dung Taylor, interview by Thuy Vo Dang, December 13, 2012, transcript, Vietnamese American Oral History project, UC Irvine Southeast Asian Archive, Irvine, CA.

McKelvey, Robert S. The dust of life: America's children abandoned in Vietnam. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1999.

Thomas, Sabrina. Scars of War: The Politics of Paternity and Responsibility for the Amerasians of Vietnam. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2021.

Valverde, Kieu-Linh Caroline. "From dust to gold: The Vietnamese Amerasian experience." Racially mixed people in America (1992): 144-161.

Want, Kaori Mori. "Uprooted from Home: Analyzing Vietnamese Amerasian Diaspora in the Unwanted." Studies in Linguistics and Literature 2, no. 1 (January 2018): 14-26. https://doi.org/10.22158/sll.v2n1p14