From NPR's Tell Me More, 'Oriental': Rugs, Not People:
It's an adjective that used to describe rugs, not people. That's the message New York Gov. David Paterson turned into law this week when he signed a bill that bans state documents from using the term "oriental" when referring to people of Asian or Pacific heritage. Jeff Yang, an Asian Pop columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, discusses the history of the loaded term and why so many Asian-Americans find it offensive.Also from Tell Me More, Daniel Liu Redefines The Male Supermodel:
Daniel Liu comes across as the typical guy next door — unless you happen to live next door to a supermodel who walks the fashion runways of New York. At age 26, Liu is already a rising star among models, and one of the few Asian-American males making headlines in the industry. Liu talks about his budding career. [That's his picture up there, of course!]From NPR's The Takeaway, Dissolving an Adoption:
It’s Monday, when we talk about family issues on The Takeaway. Takeaway contributor Lisa Belkin, who writes the parenting blog Motherlode for The New York Times, is here to talk with us about what happens when parents make the decision to dissolve an adoption.
We also talk wtih Anita Tedaldi about this painful process. Tedaldi wrote an essay for Motherlode about her very personal experience of terminating an adoption. She had adopted a baby from an undisclosed country and after months of raising the baby, decided that she and her husband were not equipped to take care of him.
I'm not sure I want to give Anita any more publicity than she's already gotten. The fawning over her and the murmurs of "brave," "honest," and "searing" from other parents are just too much for me. Honestly, if I were to write about this topic I would try to make sure that every word of my post was saturated with "I'm sorry" and "I am a miserable failure." All the sympathy she got was just sickening.
ReplyDeleteI ABSOLUTELY agree about not giving THAT WOMAN any more publicity! I've resisted the opportunity to post much more about her -- lots of people have been kind enough to email me links and info and what-not, but I didn't want to publicize her any more.
ReplyDeleteI made an exception here because this interview made me CRAZY -- both her and Lisa Belkin don't understand ONE BIT why people are upset. It isn't that they talked about a taboo subject -- it's HOW they talked about it!
First, I have not researched the Tedaldi case in particular. My emotional cup is already runneth over right now.
ReplyDeleteOver the past five years I have witnessed, via the web, many adoption disruptions/dissolutions. One of these was a couple using my adoption agency and I was on standby to phone counsel them in China because they were overwhelmed by a child grieving. They never called. The child was intensely grieving (appropriately so) the loss of their foster family. The prospective parents were convinced that the child was autistic- they weren’t –although I have seen this label stuck on WAY too many children who were subjected to dissolved adoptions in China. Parents run to and fro in Chinese hospitals to label the child in order to absolve themselves from their harrowing decision to leave the child behind.
I must say, what disturbs me to the core, is how often the APs are vocally Christian who dissolve/disrupt. They believe themselves to be some kind of God driven conduits to the child receiving their true divine family. They believe themselves to be divine ‘stepping stones’ to the child ending up at the end of the right path. And the reverence poured onto the adoptive parents from the adoption community is equally gutting.
Recently I learned about a disruption of a child adopted from China that hit close to home. In my search for him I came across a yahoo group where people could advertise for new homes for their kids. It was haunting- truly haunting. Parents sign up, with a click of the mouse, and write a little ditty about their kid and why they need a new home and is anyone interested in them? Shudder. Some of these children have been in adoptive families for YEARS. Shreds me.
There was a family that dissolved their adoption in China- one of those stepping stone families-and asked China for another child- you know, a more ‘normal’ kid. They named the second child the same name that they picked out for the first. It burns me. I don’t know – it just burns. I can only imagine the horror of the second ‘chosen one’ when they find out that there was another child that was discarded in China and once shared their name.
Blog on Malinda. God forbid that adoption disruption becomes normalized.
In this comment on Pound Pup Legacy from Michelle Brau--the person who disrupted her adoption of two boys from Guatemala--she also describes herself as a stepping stone in their lives.
ReplyDeletehttp://poundpuplegacy.org/node/34114#comment-8441
This must be the language on the disruption forums/groups.
MALINDA:
ReplyDeleteDo you know how to post a link to firstmotherforum to this post? We are talking about the same thing over at www.firstmotherforum.com
Thank you so much for this. We were going to do this earlier but got sidetracked, agree with everything you say, thank the lord there are parents like you!
lo
Malinda, did you see Lisa Belkins other post on NYT the one entitled protecting your child's privacy ?
ReplyDeleteLink here http://tiny.cc/ozbRu
Well on that article she chastises some of the people who commented on the Terminating an adoption Article
Example
While many readers called Tedaldi “brave” for talking about the darker side of adoption, giving it some sunlight, others were furious that she treated her child like returnable goods. Tedaldi, whose husband is in the military, writes periodically for a Web site for military families, and some Motherlode readers scoured everything she has written in the past, finding a post that used the boy’s real name and country of origin, and circulating it around the Internet. I spent much of Friday scrubbing that name from the comments here, and Tedaldi spent much of the day responding to accusations that, in the past, she had written about the joys of adoption and was therefore somehow hypocritical. “Anita has done a complete 180 to how she used to feel less than two years ago,” one commenter wrote, then accused her of hiding behind a name change saying, “we have caught onto that, too.” (That name change was not proximate to the Motherlode post, as it turns out. Anita has stopped writing under her married name awhile back, at the request of her husband, for security reasons.) Some even went through everything she has ever tweeted, gathering complaints and quips about her children, then stringing them together and suggesting that she is a bad mother.
You can further read the article for more of where Lisa shows her absolute bias towards Anita Tedaldi
I wrote a number of comments pointing this out to Lisa who refused to publish them. She refused to contact me and explain why she wouldn't publish them too.!
The worst thing that I felt was that Lisa showed no neutral ground, its clear VERY Clear where her bias lays.
Anita is shameful for using her real name when she has 5 DAUGHTERS and a husband gone most of the time. She is leaving those girls wide open for problems both online and off.
And despite the little boys name being kept out of it , with using her real name it wont take much for people to know who it was there either.
She is absolutely shameful for giving D away for the second time, and she is just as horrendous for what she is doing online.
Anita is purely trying to absolve herself for something that she KNOWS in her heart was wrong. By getting "you're so brave" "you're so good" "you tried" "you poor thing" by people she feels in some way that it wasn't such a bad thing to do..
Well Anita honey if you are reading this, you know it and I know it - that's just crap.
You did a terrible thing and you were not brave at all.
If you had kept D and not tossed him out like a second hand doll THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN BRAVE!