How 1980s Children’s Books Framed Vietnamese Refugees

In the 1980s, American kids browsing bookshelves might have stumbled across titles like Vietnam: The Boat People Search for a Home or My Best Friend, Duc Tran. As Vietnamese refugees arrived in large numbers in the United States, publishers rushed to release a slew of books to help children understand and accept their new neighbors.

Written almost exclusively by non-Vietnamese authors, educational nonfiction texts and narrative storybooks were meant to introduce Vietnamese culture to US-born...