The Vietnam War was a conflict between the communist government of North Vietnam along with its allies (the Viet Cong) in South Vietnam against the government of South Vietnam and the United States (South Vietnam's principal ally). In Vietnam, the conflict was called the "American War" or the "War Against the Americans to Save the Nation.” It was part of a larger regional conflict and formed part of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The poet Ocean Vuong's grandfather was an American soldier who fell in love with a Vietnamese woman. This is referred to in Vuong's poem "Notebook Fragments" from his poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds: “An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists. Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me. / Yikes.” When Saigon fell, Vuong's grandfather was in the United States visiting family, and his wife placed their three daughters into different orphanages. The reason for this, according to Vuong, was that there was a "humanitarian crisis and there was more chance of them surviving like that." Being the biracial daughters of a US soldier, they would have been eligible for Operation Babylift, or would have been stolen and taken advantage of by people hoping to travel to the US.
Vuong's mother was an adult when she reunited with her family. However, it was illegal for mixed-race people to work in Saigon, and the whole family evacuated to the Philippines before being granted passage to the US. They moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong was raised by the women of his family (his mother, grandmother, and aunt).
In Vuong's writing, the violence of war is tinged with the fact that it resulted in his creation.
