The Dust of Life: America's Children Abandoned in Vietnam [Paperback]

Robert S. McKelvey (Author)

Book Description

The Dust of Life is a collection of vivid and devastating oral histories of Vietnamese Amerasians. Abandoned during the war by their American fathers, discriminated against by the victorious Communists, and ignored for many years by the American government, they endured life in impoverished Vietnam. Their stories are sad, sometimes tragic, but they are also testimonials to the strength of human resiliency.

Robert S. McKelvey is a former marine who served in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Now a child psychiatrist, he returned to Vietnam in 1990 to begin the long series of interviews that resulted in this book. While allowing his subjects to speak for themselves, McKelvey has organized their narratives around themes common to their lives: early maternal loss, the experience of prejudice and discrimination, coping with adversity, dealing with shattered hopes for the future, and, for some, adapting to the alien environment of the United States.

While unique in many respects, the Vietnamese Amerasian story also illustrates themes that are tragically universal: neglect of the human by-products of war, the destructiveness of prejudice and racism, the pain of abandonment, and the horrors of life amidst extreme poverty, hostility, and neglect.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

While television accounts of war and civil strife tend to devote substantial time to the plight of the helpless civilian, published accounts largely concentrate on the military and political aspects of the fighting, relegating the civil sector to token treatment. McKelvey, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Vietnam, offers an account of one largely forgotten aspect of the non-military side of that warAthe children born out of liaisons between American servicemen and Vietnamese women. Now adults, they have spent their lives caught between two societies whose racial and cultural practices have left many of them emotionally shattered. McKelvey, a child psychiatrist at the Oregon Health Sciences University, provides a psychological overview as he narrates the extraordinary problems these folks faced as children and adults. He covers the Amerasian experience in both Vietnam and the United States and concludes with an emotional chapter on a few attempts to locate American fathers. A useful introduction to a neglected subject. Recommended for academic and public libraries.AJohn R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Of all the mistakes made during the U.S. experience in Vietnam, one of the most shameful was the treatment after the war of the Amerasian children who were products of soldiers' liaisons with Vietnamese women. Already abandoned by their American fathers, most were also abandoned by their mothers at the end of the war. McKelvey eloquently profiles many of those now grown children and their battles to survive in a country that didn't want them. Many Amerasians and their families were banished to "economic development zones" to eke out an existence by farming. Most were teased and tormented so much that few finished school, locking them even further in poverty. Their stories are mostly of heartbreak and loss, toiling hard in an impoverished country, and discrimination. McKelvey sees the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987 as too little, too late. Nonetheless, he profiles those who did make it to the U.S. By contrast, they seem luckier than those who were not granted sanctuary here. For all history collections. Marlene Chamberlain --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 135 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295978368
• ISBN-13: 978-0295978369
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #796,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Book Review, March 29, 2008

By 

M. Lyman "MEL" (Alexandria, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dust of Life: America's Children Abandoned in Vietnam (Paperback)

A very heart wrenching story. More people should read this and understand the difficulties associated with war, even many years after.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars shameful heartbraking stories !, August 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dust of Life: America's Children Abandoned in Vietnam (Paperback)

this was a very informative book about what took place during the war. These stories were really sad. I would like the author to write another book about this, and expand more on their lives after coming to America, and detailed accounts on meeting their american fathers...This story which is non fiction, has opened my eyes even larger to the horrors of love affairs during war, and the tragedy it brings to the innocent children involved.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great work from a dedicated author, December 14, 2002

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R. ARANT "Toun" (Lanesville, Indiana USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dust of Life: America's Children Abandoned in Vietnam (Paperback)

Few seem to understand the aftermath of the US involvement in Southeast Asia better than Robert McKelvey. The stories of abandoned Amerasian children told in "The Dust of Life" ring true. The author's later work, "A Gift of Barbed Wire," tells the equally painful stories of our abandoned "allies." Having once worked with the 4,000 Amerasian children living throughout Thailand, I would love to see the author examine the fates of the Amerasian children left behind in Thailand. An examination of the Lao "seminar" (reeducation) camps is long overdue as well, and is certainly well within McKelvey's reach.