AN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

An American Experience is apparently a PBS programing regular. I've watched several of their shows, i. e., one recently about some guy who was the guru for lobotomies before they were deemed torture. Regardless, bringing to the public, even if a few of us are interested, gets a bigtime thanks from me.

I just watched Daughter of Danang; fascinating documentary and makes so much come alive from my Vietnam experience. An aside, in our present war, in Iraq for example, the contact, relatively speaking, with the female Iraqi population is limited. In Vietnam, not so--many Amerasian children were the result of a laison between an American GI and Vietnamese woman. And, in fact, this is the basic gist of this story which is many sided and very moving. It won the Sundance Award for best documentary in 2002. It is one of those stories that started out with you thinking it was going one way and almost predictable--a Vietnamese kids brought to America during the baby lift, grows up in America but has need to go back and find her Mother--warm reunion and discovers the complete story and feels good initially.

DIDN'T HAPPEN! Well, as it turned out, she ran head on into cultural issues with her Vietnamese Mother and the family that she left behind. And, as often happens with Asian cultures, in particular: much revolved around money. And, the very sweet Amerasian child who had grown into a beautiful American, suddenly was confronted with an enormous cultural divide. She is now married to a career Navy guy, two little girls. Thrown into this mix is her adoptive Mom, somewhat of a Cruella DeVille. The adoptive Mom, from the deep South, gets hooked into some sort of selfish modality, not all that well explained or maybe I was just zoned out. And, I think ignorance, lack of education, and basic perception, i. e., why would she want to see her birth mother when I have done all this for her? Very sad, and, this Cruella DeVille type threw the youngster out of her home at an early age. That part of the story was not explored very much but the child remained a part of the Grandma's family. Thank the Lord for Grandmas.

Another area that didn't see much action was a search for the father. Thinking in that direction brought back all these memories. See link. Good, DVD. Rent it if you want a little different take on one of the many fall outs of Vietnam. 2 Parachues.