A branching narrative deck for Vietnamese adoptees,
refugees, and the displaced children of 1962–1995
You may have known before you opened this. The stream you traveled, the orphanage, the boat, the agency paperwork: it has been with you your whole life. You didn't need a deck to tell you.
What you may not have had is a document that treated it as a journey with architecture, with variables that shaped the outcome, with parallel paths that other people traveled while you traveled yours.
"One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name. One gave you the seed of talent, the other gave you an aim. Neither, my dear, neither — just two different kinds of love."
Anonymous · Legacy of an Adopted ChildThis deck was built from the Operation Babylift Collection, 33+ boxes of original archives from the 1975 Vietnamese child evacuation, entrusted to Devaki Murch by Sister Mary Nelle Gage with one instruction: connect as many as you can.
The Journey (Core), Four departure streams: Operation Babylift, Agency Adoption, Remained in Vietnam, Boat People, ODP, Amerasian Homecoming Act. Cards 1–33. Stream 1B Extended · The Amerasian Child, Before the journey. Cards A1–A7. For Those Navigating Legal Status · The Paperwork, The citizenship gap. Cards P1–P8. For Those Who Are Searching · First Family, The search, the contact, the meeting. Cards F1–F13.
Begin at Card 1. Follow the path that matches your history, or the path you want to witness. Each journey card carries narrative prose in second person, a branch block naming 1–4 historically accurate next cards, and calls to Variable cards and Reflection cards.
This deck begins in 1962. The history begins earlier. The Vietnamese American Experiences Model Curriculum (VAEMC), a free K-12 curriculum developed by the Orange County Department of Education and hosted at UC Davis, covers the full arc: Vietnamese civilization before colonialism, a thousand years of Chinese domination, French Indochina, the war from a Vietnamese perspective, and the departure streams this deck centers. Areas of Study 1 and 2 of the VAEMC provide the historical foundation this deck presupposes. The two resources are designed to work together.