Not All Mothers Leave Vietnam. But Sometimes Daughters Have to Live in Kentucky.

In the first few months of life, babies are unable to recognize themselves as “separate” from their mothers. Child psychology states that this is due to lack of object permanence and an undeveloped sense of identity and space. Your identity was first your mother’s.

So what does it mean when your mother gives you up for adoption right after you are born?

For me, it means that I spent my childhood asking every other Asian kid in my class if they were Vietnamese (they often never were). It meant looking into the mirror and dreading seeing almond eyes and straight black hair. It meant that I was destined to search for my face in every Vietnamese woman I came across.

I always wondered why my parents thought to bring an Asian child to the middle of Kentucky. This place was their home, but could it ever really be mine?

On some days, the answer is yes. I really do love my city. The transition of seasons in Louisville keeps time (even though we sometimes get all four in the span of a day or two). The energy of the city when Derby comes around is incredibly intoxicating and I can never stop myself from cheering when the fireworks show comes on. Strangers in this community have taught me a lot about the power of random acts of kindness. And so many of the people I love live here. I don’t think I’ll ever stop caring about this place, the land of bluegrass that my parents brought me to.

Difference is an inevitability in a story like mine. We tell young children here in the U.S. that our differences are to be embraced. To be accepted. But I often wonder now if we do not talk enough, if at all, about the isolation that differences can bring when no one is seemingly able to see the world through your eyes.

So even when I look into the vast expanse of Kentucky’s sky, the sunsets painting sides of the hills with golds and pinks, I cannot help but feel a deep sense of melancholy. In another lifetime, I would be viewing this world from Vietnam. But here, my memory fails me and Vietnam is just the remnant of a life that I was unable to keep. It is in those moments that I come head-to-head with one of my deepest fears: that I will never shake the feeling of loneliness I experience when I look into my mirror every day.

Psychologists, adoption agency workers, church clergymen — they all told my parents that my thoughts were normal, that “feeling out of place” was just part of the adjustment I would constantly have to make for the rest of my life as an adoptee. They said that if my parents loved me enough and if I was willing to let go a little bit, I’d eventually assimilate and these feelings wouldn’t feel so bad.

And so, my white American parents did just that: they loved me. In fact, they loved me so much that they squeezed as much of Vietnam as they could into a box. Fans, dolls that were vaguely Asian-looking, cultural clothing, all tucked into a plastic Walmart tub. Though I loved everything in that box, it felt like it was the closest I’d ever get to Vietnam. 

Still, I have sought Asianness in every corner of this city. My life has been a tapestry of Chinese and Korean friends, connected by the similar feelings of alienation that came with being a racial minority in Kentucky. We would often take one knowing glance at each other in a room of predominantly white people. Sometimes, we would laugh about it. Other times, it felt like we were clinging to each other in a desperate attempt to stay alive in a place that made us feel like we didn’t belong.

Yet, I still knew deep down I was not like them. Something about meeting all their Asian mothers brought out a gnawing in me. So Chinese and Korean mothers could be gentle. Were Vietnamese women the same? I didn’t know, but I wanted to. 

My freshman year of college, I witnessed something I believed to be impossible. It was in a dark ballroom at the Student Activity Center, light blue linen draped across the ceiling as bright fake stars dotted the fabric. A runway divided the area in two. This was the University of Louisville’s annual international fashion show, the event where students of all backgrounds could demonstrate a love for their heritage. 

There, I watched not one, not two, but a whole group of Vietnamese ao dais travel across the stage. The same clothes I relegated to a version of myself back in the homeland were out in the spotlight. And they were being celebrated! I learned that our campus had a “Vietnamese Student Association,” and that my city actually had a significant Vietnamese population a mere 40 minutes away from where I grew up. After all those years believing that I was the only Vietnamese person for miles, it seemed like I finally had the chance to really know what it meant to belong.

A week later, I attended my first VSA meeting with high hopes. But though I was finally surrounded by other Vietnamese people, my deepest fear resurfaced. We may have looked similar and even shared the same homeland, but I did not quite belong. 

My parents are not refugees.

I don’t know Vietnamese.

And I am adopted.

College is supposed to be the place where young adults learn who they are, a time where they can exercise new independence and create the community that they want. So who was I among all these other Vietnamese people? Why couldn’t I make myself fit in? Am I not Viet enough?

Walking out of the meeting, a heavy realization dawned on me: My identity would always be tied to a woman I never got to know.

Even though we have been long separated, I still somehow depended on my birth mother to know myself and our culture. Being Vietnamese was the parting gift she had left for me. I cannot learn about Vietnam without thinking about her.

In the process of healing my inner Vietnamese child, I embodied the idea of a Viet mother. I listened quietly to the stories of my non-adopted Asian friends. I watched Asian creators on TikTok with dedication. I labored over the wok in an attempt to taste “home.” Through this, I forged an image of the woman I wanted to meet. But sometimes it still doesn’t feel like enough.

A Chinese adoptee in my CHEM201 class once asked me, “Why try figuring all that out? I wouldn’t. It’s in the past. We’re basically white people anyway.”

I do not fault any Asian adoptee that feels the gap of bridging “Asianness” and “Americanness” is too large for them. Being an adoptee means you must ask yourself, “What does it mean being separated from a people?” And for some, finding the answer comes at too high a price.

To me, it means I have to see myself change in ways my ancestors wouldn’t recognize. I speculate that I am the first in my family to leave the motherland, that all the Vietnamese women before me have stayed exactly where they were supposed to. I have experienced life in a way they could not even imagine and I’m constantly wondering if I’m actually better for it.

But I personally could not ignore Vietnam even if I tried. Vietnam made my birth mother, and thus, made me. A Vietnamese daughter. With every mother and daughter relationship comes an inherent pain. You spend a lifetime trying to understand the person whom you once fit perfectly in as a baby in her womb. We are always trying to fit back into one another.

Not all mothers get to leave Vietnam, but I suppose sometimes daughters have to go. 

Maybe some daughters leave by going across the ocean to another country. Perhaps they find themselves living in a Midwestern city on the edge of Kentucky’s border. They might even experience joy in their lives as Asian American women despite the hardships that might bring.

Regardless, all daughters think about their mothers. And truthfully, I hope my birth mother thinks about me too.

I am not sure if I’ll ever meet the woman who gave me my first identity. I am not even sure if she would care to know who I’ve become. But if not her, then maybe if I had a daughter myself, I could tell her all the things I’ve learned in this life before she too eventually has to go her own way.

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