Thinking More About Adoption--and A Visiting Poet
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about a bizarre dream I had in which I was writing a book about transnational adoption, complete with coloned title. I Googled said title, First World Mothers, Third World Others: Transnational Adoption in an Age of Global Imperialism, just to make sure it wasn't a real book--and it wasn't. (The post received a great comment, btw, from Mary K. Stillwell, whose children are Colombian.)
Then this week at the university bookstore, I came across Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption from the very cool South End Press (a favorite), which looks like it addresses some of the same territory. (It looks at both transracial and transnational adoptions.) Here's the description on the back cover:
Writes adoptive parent Beth Hall,
I also often feel sad for the many children (of all ethnicities) who go unadopted here in the U.S. because they've been abused, neglected, and/or abandoned at older ages. Instead of finding secure, loving homes, they cycle through our uneven foster-care system, because would-be adoptive parents don't want to take on potential "problem" children. (And of course, many foster parents are wonderful and loving, but foster-care horror stories are too perennial for me to feel good about foster care as an option.)
Also, because I'm cynical, I've often noted with dismay the way some white parents of foreign-born children display their adopted children like a badge of their own political enlightenment. Easy enough to do, I guess, when you're not the one who bears the burden of constant social alienation and when social interactions always include praise for how generous you are.
I've listened to such parents' talks, too, at adoption conferences, so I've heard several people articulate compelling variations on that perspective--yet I'm still troubled by the power dynamic. (On the other hand--I've got to stop being my own devil's advocate!--biological children are entirely as vulnerable to being treated by their parents as Accessory Babies of one kind or another. But back to the topic at hand.) Mostly, I just have a lot of questions.
It's true that love has the capacity to cross all kinds of boundaries, but most of us who've tried it aren't naïve about the difficulties of border-crossing and its inherent potential for damage and explosive conflict. Even while we're crossing, we bring our human limitations, blind spots, and prejudices with us. It's a delicate business, as many of us know. And as any adult adoptee will tell you, it's just not that simple. Outsiders Within is all about the complexities, and I look forward to reading all the voices it includes.
One of the poets in the collection is Laotian-American writer Bryan Thao Worra, who will be giving a reading here at UNL on Wednesday, April 1 in the Bailey Library (second floor of Andrews Hall) at 3:30 p.m.
Thao Worra will also be the keynote speaker at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 2 in the Nebraska Union Centennial Room. His lecture, "Changing Cultures and Preserving Asian Traditions in the Midwest," is hosted by Asian World Alliance, and a dance troupe is performing, too. The doors open at 5:30.
And fyi, also included in Outsiders Within is the essay "Lifelong Impact, Enduring Need" by UNL faculty member John Raible, who has this great blog that focuses on the issue of transracial adoption--and which happens, just now, to include a passage from Outsiders Within in its most recent post.
Then this week at the university bookstore, I came across Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption from the very cool South End Press (a favorite), which looks like it addresses some of the same territory. (It looks at both transracial and transnational adoptions.) Here's the description on the back cover:Healthy white infants are hard to find and expensive to adopt. So white people looking to grow their families turn to interracial and intercountry adoption, often with the idea that they're saving children from terrible lives. But as Outsiders Within reveals, although transracial adoption is generally considered win-win, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and even economic toll.I really like the fact that the contributors are adoptees. When I was growing up, almost everything I encountered about adoption was written from the perspective and comfort zone of the adoptive parent, the (relative) power player in the triad. It erased my perspective and made me wonder why I couldn't get with the program, which was obviously so great and fantastic. As the no-punch-pulled introduction of Outsiders Within explains:
Through gripping essays, poetry, and art, transracially adopted writers and artists from around the world carefully explore this most intimate aspect of globalization.
This book is a corrective action. Over the past fifty years, white adoptive parents, academics, psychiatrists, and social workers have dominated the literature on transracial adoption. These "experts" have been the ones to tell the public--including adoptees--"what it's like" and "how we turn out."I just love the bold, direct stance the book takes--a stance that echoes the voices of multiple transracial and transnational adoptees I heard at the conference of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture a few years ago.
Writes adoptive parent Beth Hall,
Experts on their own experience, the writers of Outsiders Within offer an illuminating and provocative glimpse into the world of transracial [and transnational] adoption that will make many of us uncomfortable. All the more reason to read it.I've always wondered what the world would look like if, instead of spending $10K, $20K, $40K, $60K (!) to adopt a baby from another country, white first-world parents donated that money to organizations in other countries that would help parents keep their own biological children in health and safety and to organizations that would help stabilize those countries' economic and political systems. (I guess there's a link here to the build-a-better-world way I think about immigration, but that's a post for another day.) I hesitate to say this, because I fear I'll alienate my sweet, generous friends who've adopted from abroad, but having experienced maternal bonding with my own son, and the lack thereof in my childhood, I just can't help wondering what's better for the world and its babies. Outsiders Within dares to go there.
I also often feel sad for the many children (of all ethnicities) who go unadopted here in the U.S. because they've been abused, neglected, and/or abandoned at older ages. Instead of finding secure, loving homes, they cycle through our uneven foster-care system, because would-be adoptive parents don't want to take on potential "problem" children. (And of course, many foster parents are wonderful and loving, but foster-care horror stories are too perennial for me to feel good about foster care as an option.)
Also, because I'm cynical, I've often noted with dismay the way some white parents of foreign-born children display their adopted children like a badge of their own political enlightenment. Easy enough to do, I guess, when you're not the one who bears the burden of constant social alienation and when social interactions always include praise for how generous you are.
I've listened to such parents' talks, too, at adoption conferences, so I've heard several people articulate compelling variations on that perspective--yet I'm still troubled by the power dynamic. (On the other hand--I've got to stop being my own devil's advocate!--biological children are entirely as vulnerable to being treated by their parents as Accessory Babies of one kind or another. But back to the topic at hand.) Mostly, I just have a lot of questions.
It's true that love has the capacity to cross all kinds of boundaries, but most of us who've tried it aren't naïve about the difficulties of border-crossing and its inherent potential for damage and explosive conflict. Even while we're crossing, we bring our human limitations, blind spots, and prejudices with us. It's a delicate business, as many of us know. And as any adult adoptee will tell you, it's just not that simple. Outsiders Within is all about the complexities, and I look forward to reading all the voices it includes. One of the poets in the collection is Laotian-American writer Bryan Thao Worra, who will be giving a reading here at UNL on Wednesday, April 1 in the Bailey Library (second floor of Andrews Hall) at 3:30 p.m.
Thao Worra will also be the keynote speaker at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 2 in the Nebraska Union Centennial Room. His lecture, "Changing Cultures and Preserving Asian Traditions in the Midwest," is hosted by Asian World Alliance, and a dance troupe is performing, too. The doors open at 5:30.
And fyi, also included in Outsiders Within is the essay "Lifelong Impact, Enduring Need" by UNL faculty member John Raible, who has this great blog that focuses on the issue of transracial adoption--and which happens, just now, to include a passage from Outsiders Within in its most recent post.
Faye said:
Your post is very thought-provoking. I come to this topic from two angles: one, my sister was adopted from Korea when we were both five years old, and two, I am unable to have children and adopting would be my only option. When I was growing up, I didn't even realize my sister looked different (she is biologically half-Korean, she knows nothing about her father, who was likely not ever in her life, although her mother kept her until she was five years old before giving her up for adoption). She, however, keenly felt that she was an outsider for a variety of reasons, something she didn't share with me until she was an adult. At the same time, she loves my parents and knows that as a half-Korean child in Korea at that time, she would have had no identity, no rights, no chance at a decent life. Her mother was likely poverty-stricken, though of course a bond must have been created over five years. We don't know why she gave my sister up. Of course my sister feels an emptiness, and always wonders about her mother. At the same time she is happy to have a life in America. She has two beautiful children of her own now...they are biologically a quarter Mexican, a quarter Korean, and two quarters unknown because my sister's husband is half-Mexican and also did not know his own father. Her children are physically and emotionally beautiful, happy people.
I feel torn about what you write. Although in an ideal world the economies of countries who can't afford to keep their children would be built up, the reality is that this is not the case now, when children are abandoned and do need homes, and are often facing terrible conditions and lives. Is it wrong, then, for an American couple or a couple in another country to give them a chance at a safer life with more opportunity, or just with the basic opportunity to survive? Also, I think the world is changing; my sister now lives near San Francisco, where her children fit right in with many children of Asian or partly-Asian origins. As more cross-cultural adoptions occur, isn't it possible that it both gives children an opportunity to live while also helps our society become more and more ethnic and color-blind in positive ways? That is not to say that children should be asked to forget their heritage of course.
When I first lost my chance to have children because of serious health problems, the only thing that comforted me was the thought that I might adopt someday. I remember opening the book "Our Body, Ourselves" at the time and reading such an angry stance against adoption that I felt accused and devastated.
I guess, like you, I just have a lot of questions.
March 29, 2009 1:38 PMJill said:
Joy, have you seen the recent essay from a birth mother's point of view on Shakeseville?
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-silence-on-living-pro-lifers.html
I found it interesting - though I guess un-surprising - that the most invisible member of the adoption process is the woman who has given birth. I think it's worth the read.
March 30, 2009 9:15 PMfayepoet said:
After reading Jill's comments,I was reminded of a close relative who I helped as a teen— at a time when single mothers were shunted away to private agencies until term and then counseled— gave up her baby daughter for adoption. It was and still is a family secret and even as I write,I worry that I am not violating her trust. The saddest part for me is the unrelenting yearning for repair— how often I have imagined the missing child, the now grown woman, and how it would have been if...
April 5, 2009 4:48 PMMy relative never married, never had another child. All these decades later, I reveal a veiled account. Thankfully, we have writers like Joy, Faye a Pine Manor Solstice colleague, and Jill who have the courage to help shine the light on the essential emotional intangibles of this sensitive issue.