Vietnamerica: The War Comes Home

Hamilton College American Studies and Comparative Literature Professor Thomas Bass has written an anecdotal look at the sad stories of Amerasian children of the Vietnam war. In his book, Vietnamerica: The War Comes Home, Bass examines the stories of children born to American servicemen and Vietnamese women during the war in Vietnam. He focuses on the struggles of these Amerasian children, now adults, attempting to immigrate to the US.

Searching for unidentifiable fathers, dealing with bureaucracy and surviving corruption, these young adults try to build themselves a life and finally find acceptance in a society which welcomes them no more than the land of their birth had. Bass tells the sad tales of these immigrants, already Americans by birth, struggling to make it to their new homeland.

Reviews

“This is an astonishing and harrowing and deeply moving book about people who embody both the divisions and the unity of our country. The Amerasian Children of the Vietnam War are now adults and living among us, and they call us to understand anew what it means to be an American. Vietnamerica is a very important book.”
-Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author