ABSTRACT
In the last five years, the Vietnamese media has covered numerous stories about the fate of mixed-race children of French colonizers or African soldiers fighting for the French empire. Many of these children were separated from their Vietnamese mothers and sent to France, where they grew up and made a home. Others remained in Vietnam, where they were ostracized for being children of the colonizer. This paper investigates stories about four mixed-race people recently covered in the media: a Franco-Vietnamese man, a North African Vietnamese man, an Afro-Vietnamese man, and a North African Vietnamese woman. The historical context in which all four children were born and raised is explored, as is their different experiences of living in France after decolonization, and remaining in Vietnam. Today, Vietnamese attitudes towards mixed-race people born during the colonial era has become much more accepting.
