Butterfly Yellow is a young adult novel by Thanhhà Lai, a Vietnamese American writer. Her debut novel, Inside Out & Back Again (2011), was based on her experience as a refugee of the Vietnamese war in the United States, and all of Lai’s subsequent books, including Butterfly Yellow, incorporate aspects of the Vietnamese American experience.

The book follows Hằng, an 18-year-old Vietnamese girl who arrives in Texas in 1981, in search of her brother whom she sent to the country alone six years prior, through Operation Babylift. Operation Babylift was commissioned by the US government in the final months of the Vietnam War, in 1975, to transport Vietnamese orphans out of the war-torn country and to Western nations for adoption. American support of the war had been on the decline, especially as the nation came to realize that the American-backed South Vietnamese were losing to the Communists. Operation Babylift was regarded by some as an effort by President Ford to regain some sympathy for the American investment in the war, an effort that also garnered criticism (“Operation Babylift”).

Operation Babylift started out as a disaster, as the first military plane carrying children crashed just minutes after take-off.