Beyond Rhyme or Reason

I was born before age and before memory, before time held meaning. When I was adopted to America at the age of ten, my name and age were changed. These unwanted changes created a sense of distance between my public and private identities. I felt like my sense of identity was fractured between my ideal hopes and my desire for family and the American dream. Up until now I have been spending my life searching for a sense of who I am and where I fit in society. Does that sound too general? Where I fit in the order of social consciousness. Is the cup half empty? Half full? It wasn’t until I was getting married and really thinking of starting a family of my own that I turned to look at the families I have been a part of, what I know and what I don’t know, what I have forgotten and what I may never know. To be honest I have wanted to make as clear and clean a getaway as possible.I haven’t been the kind of person that likes to volunteer personal information, I have had to pass for older, younger, more sighted, more educated, less educated, more macho…less macho…bruce lee… Who am I?

Born in Hanoi in 1982, or somehow brought to a Swedish hospital in Hanoi in the first months of my life, I seem to have lived there for five to seven months and then arrived as a fat and friendly (legend has it) baby at the Ba Vi state run orphanage about an hour and a half northwest of Hanoi, cow country. Although my memories of the orphanage are fractured and hold very little semblance of chronological order, they used to plague my dreams as a child.

Ten intense, and difficult years went by, where all foreigners were to me My (Americans), I watched many children being adopted and wondered why not me. I do remember an old Uncle friend, a vet, who was blind, who would tell me stories. This was the first person to tell me about Braille.
What is family? Where is mine?

Jake Dudell was the social worker who was in charge of my adoption case through Holt International Adoption Services. Some of the only information I have about myself at that time comes from his written reports.

The Wrights are the adopted parents I lived with from the age of ten (six for them and the u.s. govt.)until I turned eighteen(again they were operating as if I were fourteen.) The Wrights adopted ten children, also raising one biological child and several foster children, that came and went.

I grew up lost in the resounding echoes of the silence that spoke of responsibility and hope. Hope for a better future free of sorrow filled past of unmet expectations of family and duty.

Key locations:
Hanoi and BaVi,Vietnam
Champaign-urbana
Kansas, Illinois
Chicago

Assimilation through language and culture.
Probably one of the most poignant stories detailing my experience of assimilation occurred when I was in kindergarten. During the first day of school, I was asked by the teacher, (Patti Burgan?) what I would like to be called since she noticed that I was listed with two names. Not feeling comfortable with my American name, I asked her to please call me by my Vietnamese name: Hai. Later on in the semester during parent teacher conferences, my teacher referred to me by my Vietnamese name while speaking to my new adopted parents and was strongly corrected by my parents.The name David sounded harsh and alien. Hai sounded like me. Again, who am I?

Kansas,il
A sense of lost culture and new dynamics of racial awareness.

Chicago
The group home
A sense of freedom

NFB/Lutherans
An investment for the future.

UIC
Handy tech