Cultural/Racial Confusion

Imagine my surprise when I got my ABA Journal in the mail. There she is, the newest Supreme Court Justice, the first Hispanic justice, the third female justice appointed to the Court. There she is, framed by a pastiche of Asian imagery, with the word Kabuki leaping out at me. Kabuki theater -- stylized Japanese dance/drama, notable for white-face makeup. Sheesh. Then-Senator Joe Biden claimed the John Roberts confirmation hearing was a kabuki dance, but I didn't see anyone pose Justice Roberts as an Asian caricature.

And this on top of the National Review cover of Sotomayor as Buddha. What? There aren't any images of wise Latinas to make fun of, so you have to expropriate an Asian image? Even when the person you're mocking isn't Asian?!

Get a clue. Justice Sonya Sotomayor is NOT Asian. What is it about her that makes magazine-cover designers think Asian? And then we can't even decide what variety of Asian we're mis-identifying her as. Kabuki? Japanese. Buddha? Indian/Chinese. No matter, she is NOT Asian!

Seems like Frank Wu got it right in his book, Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, once we move off the black/white dichotomy we are clueless about race.

Gitchi Gotcha Goo Means I Love You?

(If you don't recognize my riff on the song title, click here to watch the video! )

My friend Lisa sent me the link to this post about celebrating “Gotcha Day” at International Mom’s blog:

At the risk of upsetting the adoption experts’ apple cart, I wanted to share this little tidbit. We don’t celebrate Gotcha Day, Family Day, Forever Family Day, Adoption Day, or any other day that focuses on the adoption of our children. We made this decision long before we became adoptive parents. As a family blended by birth and adoption, we felt it was not right to exclude anyone. By celebrating, we would have excluded our child by birth.

***

My family celebrates family every day, taking joy and pride in what we are – a blended group of human beings that have been brought together, through marriage, birth, and adoption and across oceans from different parts of the world. A family that deeply loves, respects, and is grateful for each member. That, we got. . . .

This post particularly resonated with Lisa since she has a bio child and an adopted child, and it was really timely for me, since Zoe’s “Gotcha Day” is Thursday.

As Lisa and I discussed the post, we discovered that we both had other problems with “Gotcha Day” – one a problem with terminology and one a problem with the celebratory ideal.

I’ve mentioned before that when she was younger, Zoe didn’t like the term “Gotcha” because it made her feel like someone would jump out at her to surprise her – “GOTCHA!” Lisa feels the word is impersonal, and she loved the comment to International Mom’s post by Pam Thomas, who said:

The term that my daughter really hates is “gotcha day”, which she finds supremely offensive. She thinks, and I completely support her, that it has seedy implications of adoptive families snatching children away from birth family, country, and culture. Others may disagree with this, but I feel like the children are the real experts about this, and many of the children I have met share my daughter’s feelings.

The deeper problem for both of us is the celebratory aspect of the day. As I shared with Lisa, when I look at pictures of my shell-shocked kids from that first meeting, it doesn’t really look like something to celebrate. Yes, at the time, I was dumb enough to think that Zoe falling asleep in my arms was a magical moment of trust instead of the desperate inability to deal it was, but now I know better. In fact, I knew better by the time I met Maya, and that scared little voice questioning, “Mama?” still echoes in my ears, because I knew she wasn’t asking about me, but about the only Mama she’d ever known, her foster mom. And then the tears came – for both of us. Even though they are the two best days of my life, how can I celebrate my daughters’ worlds turning upside down in such a traumatic way?

Lisa agrees: “But then I feel like you, my God, that day was beautiful and scary for me, scary for her but she grabbed onto me that day and never let go. I have loved that she needed me and took me in as her mother (I am not worthy) . . . but "celebrate?" It's a day for much discussion and reflection...but "celebrate??" [In deciding initially to celebrate “Gotcha Day”] I feel I submitted to what everyone else thinks is right, heck I was a rookie mom and still am in a lot of ways.”

A day of discussion and reflection sounds about right to me. We don't do bells and whistles or bread or circuses for “Gotcha Day.” We watch the video, look at pictures, and try on the clothes they were wearing on the day we met as a way to record their growth (Zoe's still fits, Maya's not so much!), and then they get a small gift (I bought 18 gifts in China, one for each year until they reach adulthood). As you can see, we don't make it a sad and solemn occasion, that's not really my point. Zoe has even said that Gotcha Day is her favorite holiday.

So how do you feel about Gotcha Day or whatever you call it? How do you acknowledge it? Is it celebratory? Do you have a way to acknowledge the loss as well as the gain in Gotcha Day?

We’ve already deconstructed the must-believe adoptive parent tenets with regard to “adopt-a-whatever” programs and the naturalness of adoption this week. Let’s see what happens when we look closely at Gotcha Day . . . .

Search, Reunion & Handy Manny

Last night we watched Disney's Handy Manny Motorcycle Adventure. If you're not familiar with the show's premise, here it is in a nutshell -- Manny is a handyman who repairs stuff with the help of his talking tools. It's really designed for kids younger than mine, but for some inexplicable reason, Zoe and Maya love it. Go figure!

The show last night was an hour-long special, with Manny taking his motorcycle with sidecar full of tools to his family reunion. Pat, the hammer, wishes he had a family like Manny's, but Manny reassures him that he and the other tools are Manny's family. Pat isn't satisfied by that answer, and ends up climbing into a truck with a hammer logo on the side that he thinks looks like him (unlike all other hammers, this one has eyes, like Pat does).

When the truck takes him to a big-box hardware store, he makes his way to the hammer aisle and sings a song about needing to find someone who is like him, and says at one point that finding the hammer aisle is like finding "Planet Me." Unfortunately, he comes to realize, the hammer logo is just that, a drawing of a hammer, not a real hammer who might be a relative.

Not surprisingly, the show doesn't deal much with this theme of needing to know biological family, of needing to be with those who look like you. The whole focus was on family as those who care for each other, and that's okay. And the action was all about Manny and the other tools looking for Pat, despite all obstacles, because they're family.

And in light of the Anita Tedaldi fiasco, I'm happy with a kid's show that says family sticks together no matter what.

Rest of the Story

Remember the post from Cedar's blog, the fictionalized account from a true story about an infant placed for adoption because the parents could not afford the life-saving treatment the baby needed? I posted a reaction to it here.

Click here for the rest of the story. Find out whose story it is -- hint, hint, she's a frequent commenter here!

Is adoption natural?

Issicat has a great blog post up, about prospective adoptive parents, brain washing, and "natural" mothers:

And here is the other one that cracks me up from the PAP’s. Apparently, I’m not supposed to call the woman who gave birth to me my natural mother. I’m not supposed to call her that because it implies that adoption is unnatural.

Ummm…hmmm…errr….

I got 2 things to say about that.

1. I was raised by my aparents calling the woman who gave me life my natural mother. They didn’t have a problem with it. She doesn’t have a problem with it and most importantly I don’t have a problem with it. . . . I’ll call my mother whatever I want.

2. ADOPTION is not natural. It isn’t. A person giving their child to an agency to be given to complete strangers to raise. Not natural. PAP’s wriitng “Dear Birthmother” letters trying to pimp themselves to women in crisis pregnancy situations in the hope of obtaining said baby… not natural.

You know what is natural? Babies going home and being cared for by the mothers who carried them in their bodies. That is natural. Anything else is just a little sad.

I’m not saying I hate adoption. I don’t. I’m not saying that adoption isn’t necessary in some cases. It is.

But there is no way in hell I would ever call it natural.

And that is something that my aparents seemed to get. My sibling and I …we came from other people. There was and is no denying it. My parents did not find it natural to be raising two children with no medical history. I think they found it pretty stressful, especially when I fell extremely ill as a toddler. I think that time right there, that extremely stressful time showed them once and for all that adoption was a very unnatural situation.

* * *

Adoption natural? No it isn’t. My mom is very proadoption. She loves adoption but she’ll tell you herself, she’s not stupid. Adoption is not an easy or natural road to take.

Oh and she thinks Anita Tedaldi is a shit-head…but that is another story.

Issycat's amom, I think I love you!

The "natural" thing is another one of those "givens" in adoption language -- adoptive parents are supposed to be upset about adopt-a-whatever programs, we're supposed to say we're the real parents, not those pesky birth parents, and we're supposed to say that adoption is natural, just another way to add to your family.

I was brainwashed to believe it, weren't you? I completely bought into the "same as" narrative, that raising an adopted child was the same as raising a biological child, nothing less and certainly nothing more.

It's not the same. I won't say it's harder. But it is more complicated. And that's what prospective adoptive parents should know and accept.

For me, it was having my new child in my arms that changed me. When she became a real person to me, instead of the abstract notion of the idea of a child, that's when it all changed.

So I forgive prospective adoptive parents a little. They have room for redemption.

What bothers me are those adoptive parents, with their child in their arms, who persistently cling to the "same as" narrative, rejecting that birth parents are real, insisting their child is AMERICAN so needs no special heritage-teaching/culture-keeping, saying that race doesn't matter (easy to say when you're the majority race, impossible for their minority-race child to live), desperately repeating the mantra, "same as . . . same as . . . same as. . . ."

Standard disclaimer -- not all prospective adoptive parents or adoptive parents are like that. But we all know ones who are, I bet.

Would You Take Parenting Advice From This Woman?

Thanks to Dee, for the tip in the comments to this post, that Anita Tedaldi's new book is a parenting manual! Says HuffingtonPost:

Anita’s forthcoming book Major Moms, Keeping Your Troops in Line (Adams Media) will be out in Apr 2010.

Silly me, thinking the book would be a tell-all of her adoption disruption. Seemed reasonable, given the usual writer's advice: "write what you know." Who could have guessed she knew something about parenting. . . .

Heart's Desire

The conversation started innocuously enough. We're driving in the car and Zoe was doing her fake-British accent (don't ask!), She asked what the difference was between Great Britain and England, and I explained that Great Britain included England, Wales, and Scotland. She remarked that she thought Scotland was funny since men wore skirts.

I explained about kilts, and said that men in Scotland pretty much wore kilts only for special occasions, like in China, a girl will wear a qi pao only on special occasions, not every day. That lead to questions from Maya about what qi paos are made of (silk).

And that led Zoe to say she wished our whole house was decorated in silk. Why, I asked? The answer was something along the lines of silkworms are cool, silk is so smooth and shiny and colorful. I took the practical road and explained some of the difficulties of taking care of silk. Zoe thought maybe we should invent a washing machine just to wash silk.

And then she changed tacks. "Well, it's not really my heart's desire to have silk all over the house. I want a mirror like the one Harry Potter saw his parents in (the girls watched their first Harry Potter movie last night). I would be able to see my birth parents in that mirror, because seeing them is my heart's desire."

"Yes, sweetie, I know that's your heart's desire. I hope one day you will see them. I know it's not the same thing, but every time you look in a mirror, you can see your birth parents when you look at your face. They made you, so they are in you."

"I KNOW," says Zoe. She's behind me in the car, but I can tell she's rolling her eyes, even though I can't see her. "You're right, it's not the same. I don't know which parts of my face came from which birth parent!"

I respond, "I can tell that makes you feel frustrated. How else does it make you feel?"

Zoe ponders that and says, "It's sad, but I think I've got an idea. I can marry Harry Potter and he can show me the mirror!"

Now she's going all practical on me. . . . . and fickle, too. Earlier in the day, both she and Maya were moving to Europe so they could each find a prince to marry so they could be princesses.

(But judging from Zoe's latest drawing of her birth parents, I can tell her exactly who they look like -- Yoko Ono and . . . Yoko Ono!)

If Mao Could See Us Now

NPR All Things Considered did a radio story about new slogans for the 60th anniversary celebrations in China:

"Warmly celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China!"

That's one of 50 slogans put out by the Chinese Communist Party to get people in the mood for the big celebration that started this month.

Other slogans on the list are much less straightforward, like this one:

"Adhering to and improving the system of regional autonomy by ethnic minorities, so as to consolidate and develop socialist relations among different ethnic groups based on equality, solidarity, mutual assistance and harmony."

OK, let's put a little American style into that:

Give me an A. . . give me a D. . . give me an H. . . give me an E. . . give me an R. . . give me an I. . . ah, just give up!

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at the University of California at Irvine, and China Beat blogger, came up with a few slogans of his own for the radio story:

"From a third-world economy to the world's third economy in just 30 years."

and my favorite:

"If Mao Could See Us Now!"

Adopt a Liberal

Just saw a news report about an organization creating a prayer program, where members were to pray for liberals. Oooookay! Didn't surprise me -- I remember when Pat Robertson asked his followers to pray for the . . . um . . . "retirement" (death, anyone?!) of certain Supreme Court justices.

What did surprise me was the name of this prayer program - Adopt a Liberal! They even have a "waiting child" list of liberals you can adopt. Or you can go into it looking for a match by choosing the "Unknown Liberal (Tomb of, implied). I confess, it made me laugh from the sheer ridiculousness of it. What the heck does praying for someone have to do with adoption?!

I've never been that exercised about "Adopt-a-Whatever" programs, despite my preference that Katherine Heigl not put pictures of her newly-adopted daughter just above an "Adopt A Pet" announcement on her website! I understand why many prefer that there not be this usage, and Dawn Davenport of Creating a Family sums up the arguments well:

I don’t underestimate the power of words. Words both reflect and influence attitudes, and attitudes matter. The argument in the adoption community against
the use of the word “adoption” for highways, rubber ducks, or even pets, is that is lessens the meaning of the word. To adopt a child means forming a lifelong commitment to love, raise, and cherish this child, the same as giving birth to a child. When you adopt a highway or flower bed, there is no life long commitment or even caring, it’s all about money. With the family pet, it’s a bit trickier, but even the most ardent animal lover, like me, feels a different commitment to pets than to children. If one of my children developed an allergy to one of our cats, or if one of our dogs started to bite unprovoked, I would find another home for the pet.

She then goes on to say:

That’s the party line, and it’s true, but there is something about all this that leaves me unsettled. It’s as if our adopted children and the very institution of adoption are so fragile that using the wrong word can cause major confusion or fundamentally undermine self esteem. This simply doesn’t reflect the reality that I see. I asked this question to two adult friends who were adopted, and it isn’t their reality either.

Dawn also offers this conversation with her 13-year-old daughter (you know how much I love conversations!):

Daughter: What’s up with these adopt-a-highway signs? What exactly do they mean?

Me: [Surprised by serendipity and not one to miss an opportunity especially when it drops in my lap, I jumped right in.] Funny that you should ask since I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. How do you feel about them? Do you think they should use that word? How does that make you feel?

Daughter: [Painfully long pause while she looks at me with an expression that could politely be called quizzical, but more likely could be interpreted as “What planet did you come from?”] Huh???

At this point, I feel a bit like the parent in the old sex ed joke. The kid asks where did I come from, and the parent launches into a complete discussion of the mechanics of sex. The kid responds, “I mean was I born in Minneapolis or St. Paul?

Me: Um, what was your question again?

Daughter: Why is that girl’s name on the adopt-a-highway sign? I thought it had to be a business. [A high school student had adopted the section of the highway running by the school, and her name was on the sign.] And what were you talking about?

Me: [After briefly explaining how adopt-a-highway worked, I explained myself.] Some people think that the word “adopt” shouldn’t be used casually like for cleaning up a highway or giving money to a zoo by sponsoring an animal. They think it is offensive to people who are adopted. What do you think?

Daughter: [Clearly intrigued by the question, she pauses to think it through.] Well, until you just mentioned it, I’ve never thought about it. I hear that word all the time, and it doesn’t bother me at all. It just means to take care of the highway, and that doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s like with our pets. We adopted them, and they are a part of our family.

Me: But I think adopting a pet is different from adopting a child. My commitment to you guys is totally different and much deeper than my commitment to our pets.

Her: Yea, but you love us both. You can love things differently. Like, you love Thai food, but you wouldn’t want to marry it. You can adopt things differently too.

Me: English is a funny language that way. Words can mean so many different things, but I do think we have to be careful with what words we use.

Her: Maybe, but this just seems silly.

What I love about this conversation is that, despite Dawn's feelings about the word usage, she doesn't direct her daughter to feel the same way, and explains objectively the views of others she doesn't necessarily agree with! Perfect "adoption talk!"

What do you think? Would you encourage your child's teacher to change the name of a project from Adopt-a-Zoo Animal to Sponsor-a-Zoo Animal? Do you equate pet adoption and child adoption when talking to your adopted child about your family pet? Have you ever written a letter complaining about that pesky "Adopt-a-Highway" sign? Have you ever spoken to your child about those pesky "Adopt-a-Whatever" programs?

Capitalism & Transracial Adoption

Hat tip to Harlow's Monkey, for this post on Racialicious, quoting from an interview with Rebecca Walker on capitalism and transracial adoption at Bitch Magazine:

It is beautiful that people can open their lives to human beings of any background, but I think that all of us – every human being – runs the risk of being commodified in a hypercapitalist culture. For example, I feel that as a biracial person I have more social currency now that we have a biracial president. So when we think about which bodies have currency, it’s an interesting question.

One of the writers [whose piece] didn’t make it into One Big Happy Family wrote about how the process of adopting a child from another country made her more aware of human trafficking. Ultimately, she had to question whether her child had been put up for adoption or was stolen. If we look at plunging fertility in developed nations and raging underdevelopment and poverty in others, we can see how children can become the ultimate product.

The comments at Racialicious are very interesting. I was particularly struck by a comment by Atlasien, whose Upside Down Adoption blog is terrific, by the way:

I agree 100% that human trafficking and adoption should not be compartmentalized. There’s a growing awareness of adoption corruption (I touched on a couple stories here) and in most adoptive parent communities, the degree of denialism about adoption corruption is just staggering. It’s a major reason I participate in adoptive parent communities VERY rarely.

Gee, I wonder why it rang a bell?! (Don't worry, I'm getting over it! A very good friend said something that made me realize I was taking it too much to heart because I've got the @#$% flu (as do the girls) and that, combined with fatigue, is making me over-emotional).

I don't wholly agree with Rebecca Walker's opinions on adoption, but this excerpt touches on a thought-provoking subject with some intelligent comments. And it's always interesting to check out Racialicious anyway!

Anita Tedaldi on Today Show

Remember Anita Tedaldi? She wrote a New York Times piece that told only part of the story of her decision to relinquish her internationally adopted son?

Well, she told her story on the Today Show today. Also on the program, Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, and he made three good points: 1) failure to bond is not just an adoption problem since it can happen with biological children, too; 2) adoption is not a "rental" where you just try it out; 3) sometimes it takes years to bond, and parents should stick it out for as long as they can.

This time, Tedaldi did mention her previous column, We Can't Trade In Our Children or Our Husbands, where she criticized another family for disrupting their adoption. She did not, however, mention that she had two more biological children in the 18 months that she was trying -- and failing -- to bond with her newly-adopted child.

P.S. There is an active comment thread at a previous post about Tedaldi. Click here to read the new comments. Most of the commenters are new to the blog, I think, being one of the 2,000 or so folks whose google search for Anita Tedaldi has brought them here! I figured regular readers weren't re-checking previous posts, so thought you'd need a heads-up to look for the new comments if you're interested.

On the Boards

Margie at Third Mom wrote about a recent experience on an adoptive-parent forum, empowered by O Solo Mama's post about her recent adventures AP-Land:

I wasn’t going to tell you about this, because I know you’re sick of how I complain about the forums. But I was reading a really good post at O Solo Mama this morning that talks about the issue of international adoption search where she mentions her forum escapades, so I feel empowered.

Yeah, I got thumped again. . . .

Boy, do I sympathize! I've managed to stay off the adoptive parent boards for quite a long time, but in the past few weeks I've been motivated to look at some of them when someone lets me know there's a conversation about talking to kids about adoption. I feel I might have something to add, so I go look. And at one forum I posted a link to the L.A. Times article about birth planning officials in China confiscating children from parents and turning them over to an orphanage for a share of the fees adoptive parents pay. Seemed the sort of thing adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents from China would be interested in.

Well, in that thread and in others touching on corruption in the China program, I have predictably been accused of being anti-adoption. I'm kind of used to that one -- any criticism of adoption, no matter how mild, no matter how justified, almost inevitably leads to that charge. But I've also been accused of all manner of evil and stupidity. I've gotten personal hate mail from several (and admittedly, some super-supportive personal messages, too), including someone who disagreed with something on this blog, who instead of posting a comment here or using the contact email here, decided to track me down on the forum and contact me there. (Am I crazy to think that's weird?!)

My favorite line from someone who disagreed with me was, "Reading comprehension a struggle for you or something?" Zing! Sorry to sound egotistical, but that isn't very hurtful to someone who is so over-educated as to get the label "perpetual student!" LOL! My reading comprehension skills are just fine, thank you! Do you recognize the rhetorical device of ad hominem attack, the last refuge of scoundrels?!

Well, after that thumping, the moderator stepped in -- to tell me to take my thumped-upon self out of there and stop bleeding on other people and inconveniencing them!

I'm not claiming that all adoptive parent boards are dysfunctional. Here's one of my favorite boards, completely welcoming and open-minded and interested in free discussion: adopttalkcanada. They let me join even though I'm about as far from Canada as I can be and still be on the same continent!

I've posted before Margie's suggestion for how adoptive parents should respond to allegations of adoption corruption, but it seems to bear repeating now:

There is, in my opinion, no other response for an adoptive parent to make to allegations of the existence of intercountry adoption corruption than to agree. We then have a further responsibility to get under what that means, learn to recognize it, speak out against it, and understand our role in it. This neither diminishes our families nor undermines ethical transnational adoptions.

It would do my heart good if one day an article like Graff's could be met by adoptive parents with praise first of all for shedding light on this problem, followed by reasoned critique and dialog on how we collectively can bring intercountry adoption corruption to an end.

If I were to encounter that reaction on most AP forums, I'd know I'd crossed over into an alternate universe!

Some "Talking Adoption" Links

When I started this blog, I was STARVING for real-live examples of talking to kids about adoption. I wasn't finding them in books, I wasn't finding them on the internet. Lots of people explained WHY it was important to talk about our children's stories, but there wasn't so much about HOW. So I started blogging about how.

Now I'm finding more people sharing their conversations, more adoptive parents talking about talking about adoption. It's so nice to hear -- a chance to compare what I'm saying to my kids to what others are saying. An opportunity to look for new language, new explanations, new tactics. A window into how other families are engaging with their children of different ages on the hard parts as well as the happy parts of adoption. And even when I'm not learning anything new, it helps to affirm that I'm "doing it right."

I ran across these two conversations -- two in one day! -- something I would have been stunned to find a year ago:

O Solo Mama: The photo that talked to us, on the photo of foster moms from her daughter's orphanage that opened a conversation with a child who isn't often open to talking about adoption.


Our Little Tongginator: Was I Cute?, on dispelling her daughter's concern that her birth parents chose not to parent her because she wasn't cute.

Thanks for sharing, ladies. I'd love to hear from others -- what are you saying to your kids about adoption today?

Backwards

I've posted some stories before from Tai Dong Huai (see here and here), adopted from China as a child, now an adult. She writes short fiction, and frequently touches on adoption issues. I've just run across another one, in the Apple Valley Review, a meditation backwards to her birth mother's childhood full of possibilities:

Every April 1st, my middle school has “Backwards Day. . . .” Needless to say, the next day everything is back to normal.

But what if it wasn’t. What if the clocks continued to tick off the future. . . . I’d return to the womb of a Chinese mother who would first abandon me, then ponder her situation, then agree to lie down with the man who is my father. And before that, perhaps, she would be working in a factory making American sneakers. Then in school, studying mathematics and living with her family. She would be young and beautiful and see her life stretched out in front of her like a lake on which possibilities float like lit paper lanterns on a warm summer night.

A Poem

For All the Little Girls From China
by Penny Callan Partridge

Whenever I see one
I know there will someday be
this incredible sorority
of women brought here
as babies from China.

And their Great Wall
will always go all the way
through them to split
what happened in China/
what’s happened here.

But they will help each other
over this wall all their lives
until those walls at their
centers are merely their
strong and flexible spines.

Maybe on the basis of
collective cultural hybrid
strength which they’ll
find many ways to cultivate
(the strength of their stories!)

these women of the world’s
first international female diaspora
will inherit the earth.
And do something good with it.

I met Penny at the American Adoption Congress Conference last April, and loved her poetry. She's an adoptee and an adoptive mom.

I was particularly struck by the line, "the world's first international female diaspora." Definitely food for thought.

A Cautionary Tale for Adoptive Parents

The story of a search for identity, about Nisha, adopted as an infant from India, now 26 years old and going back to India to search for her birth mother -- a must-read for adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents who think the "same-as" narrative works, that all one need do is raise an adoptive child the same as a child born to you.

For adoptive parents who think “culture-keeping/heritage-teaching” isn’t worth the trouble:

“It used to be, regardless of their original culture or their skin colour, this child is truly yours,” says Kate Emery, the senior India programme coordinator for adoption agency MAPS Worldwide. But now, Nisha’s generation, adopted in the 1980s and 1990s, feels this was a mistake. “They need to know their culture,” says Emery.

It’s a thought that never occurred to Nisha’s parents. “I didn’t know any Indian people,” her father says. “And I guess I probably wouldn’t have known how to approach them even if I did. Would I say, ‘You know, my daughter’s Indian. Would you mind if she hangs out with you?’”

Though she didn’t realize it as a child, it bothered Nisha when she grew up and realized she had never been exposed to her own culture. She resented her parents for never trying to teach her about where she came from. The resentment bore down on her and when it was time to pick a college four years ago, she moved miles away from her family in Sacramento to San Diego. When she finally told her parents how she felt two years ago, they were shocked, unaware of how much pain the adoption had caused her.

. . . for adoptive parents who think color-blind works, that race doesn’t matter to their child, that knowing other "brown girls" isn't important:

Nisha, now a petite 26-year-old with a quick smile, was adopted from Goa by an all-white family at the age of six months and raised in “the white part of America”, as her father Randy puts it. The couple never taught Nisha anything about her birth country or culture, though they did retain her name and abided by one request the birth mother had made: never to cut Nisha’s hair. She didn’t cut it until she went to college. Stephanie says she figured “everyone would love each other” and that would be enough for Nisha to adjust to her adopted life in the US.

It wasn’t, though. . . . When she started searching for her own identity, as all young adults do, she struggled more than most. In her adoptive family she saw no answers, no history, not even a common physical appearance. Was she Indian or American? What tied her family together? What did it mean that she looked so different from her mother and sister and father? The questions left Nisha full of doubts about who she is and where she fits into the world around her. And, in her search to find herself, she pushed away the family that has so much to do with who she is.

* * *

When Nisha was 11, her family moved to a new neighbourhood in Sacramento. On her first day at gym, another student, Reena Ray, spotted her from across the room. “I remember seeing this girl,” Ray says, “and she was the darkest, littlest thing in the room, but she was wearing this T-shirt with strawberries on it and matching socks. And then out of her mouth comes the biggest valley girl voice ever.”

Nisha, who still has that distinct Californian accent, says she was instantly attracted to Ray—another small, dark-skinned girl. . . . Ray’s elder sister, Sharmila, became close to Nisha as well. The girls formed a multicultural group of friends. And suddenly, Nisha’s family — her mother, father and sister — felt left out and different. Randa [Nisha’s sister, biological child of her adoptive parents] says Nisha created her own family. She kept waiting for Nisha to come back to their family, but Nisha never did.

. . . for adoptive parents who don’t want to talk about birth family, who believe their children don’t think about birth family:

But Nisha still feels alone; missing a mother she could only imagine all her life, from bits she picked up from her parents’ stories. One particular thing Nisha clings to, a reason she thinks her birth mother would want to be found, is a letter that arrived at the Grayson home on Nisha’s first birthday. “My darling Nisha baby, I will always love you,” it began.

“From time to time over the years, I would find the card around the house, and I would know Nisha had been looking at it,” says Stephanie, who speaks with the wrenching love of a mother who can no longer protect her child from pain. She also speaks with the pain of knowing that no matter how good the intention, she caused some of that hurt. She tells me that Nisha’s birth mother lived at the orphanage before the birth and stayed with Nisha for some time after she was born.

When I ask Nisha about this story over coffee a few days later, she starts crying. “I never knew that!” she says. “Just the thought that she stayed, that she did really care for me, that it was hard for her, means a lot. I know she wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t have to, which is why I don’t hate her for it. But to think that she stayed. . . .”

* * *

She has got her mother’s name tattooed across her hip. “I want it to be a homage,” she says. And, perhaps, in a way, it’s a recognition that even if she never does find her birth mother, she can still answer the question of who she is herself.

Click here to read the whole thing.

This is in no way an indictment of Nisha's parents, who didn't have the advantage we do now of having heard from adult international/transracial adoptees about how these missing things affected them. We have no excuses.

Nor am I suggesting that if we only "do the right things" our children won't feel loss, grief, pain, that our children won't distance themselves from us in their search for identity, that we have somehow "failed" if our children search for birth family. I'm only suggesting that as adoptive parents we can help or we can hinder when our children search for identity, deal with adoption loss, grief, and pain, look for connections to birth family and birth culture/heritage. It is their search, their journey. But we shouldn't be the road blocks.

Who do you look like?

Chinese School has started up again, and Thursday the girls met with a new tutor to help with their homework (to make it especially fun, two other girls from Chinese School are tutored at the same time!).

One of the homework exercises Zoe was working on involved writing the characters for family members. One question was, "Who do you look like, your mother or your father?" I overheard Zoe talking to the tutor about it. . . .

Zoe: "Well, I don't look like my mom."

Maya: "She looks like me!"

Tutor: (glancing over at me) "Just write 'Dad.'"

Zoe: "But I don't have a dad."

Tutor: "That's OK, just write the character for 'Dad.'"

Zoe shrugged and wrote.

Later, she told me that she wrote the character for mom, but she was thinking, "birth mom." She wrote mom instead of dad, because she figures she looks more like her birth mom than her birth dad because she's a girl. She also told me that the exercise made her feel "left out." Because she's sure everyone else in her class will know the answer since none of them are adopted.

You never know where it's going to come from, this reminder that you're adopted and your adoption is as closed as closed can be.

I look like my dad -- same blue eyes, same body style that translates for me into "Mississippi farm woman," perfectly built to pull a plow without the benefit of oxen. I went prematurely gray, just like he did. I bruise easily just like he does. I did not, however, inherit his mechanical ability, I'm sorry to say.

Zoe and Maya don't know. How must that feel, YOUR WHOLE LIFE, not knowing? I can't even imagine it. They live it every day, just waiting for that reminder.

China-Sponsored Homeland Tours

From the Financial Times, Adopted Chinese Daughters Seek Their Roots:

We have all seen them: adorable Chinese girls holding the hands of their usually elderly, often overweight, but definitely doting) Caucasian parents, strolling the streets from New York to New South Wales, growing up in a white, white world, far away from the land and culture where they were born.

In some ways, they are a permanent blot on the image of China: surplus daughters
the country couldn’t care for, unintended consequences of the 30-year-old “one-child” policy that led to the abandonment of hundreds of thousands if not millions of female infants at birth. But now, as the balance of global economic and political power shifts subtly in favour of China, Beijing is reaching out to all these lost daughters – and welcoming them back home.

China has invited thousands of foundlings back to their birthplaces for government-sponsored “homeland tours” which, like last year’s Beijing Olympics or next year’s Shanghai World Expo, give the country a chance to show off to the world. On one level, what the Chinese adoption authorities call “root seeking tours” – filled with extravagant expressions of love and kinship and lavish gifts for the returning orphans – are a transparent public relations exercise aimed at raising money for Chinese orphanages, justifying the decision to export surplus children and countering decades of unfair international criticism that Chinese people “hate girls”.

But for the children involved – one of whom is my nine-year-old daughter, Grace Shu Min, who attended a 20-year reunion at her orphanage in March, along with two of her closest orphanage friends – their hometown trip was more like therapy. China put its best foot forward for the returning children (all girls), treating them like celebrities, showering them with presents, laying on magicians and puppet shows, kindness and warmth. It was the kind of mythical homecoming we all hope for – but few can ever achieve.

Elderly? Overweight? Doting? Oh, well, three out of three it is! I can live for that . . . but not for long, considering I'm elderly!

Still, interesting story of the value of homeland tours, sprinkled with snarky and cynical commentary, for those, like me, who like that sort of thing.

UPDATE: Be sure to read Jae Ran Kim's take on this article at Harlow's Monkey.

Asian-American Women More Likely To Attempt Suicide

Radio link from Tell Me More:

Almost 16 percent of all U.S.-born Asian-American women have contemplated suicide in their lifetimes — compared to 13 percent of all Americans — according to new findings by the University of Washington. The study also finds that U.S. born Asian-American women are more likely to attempt suicide than other groups. Aileen Duldulao, lead author of the research and blogger Jen Wang, offer insight into the disturbing findings.

Click here for more news coverage of the study by Aileen Duldulao, and for more from Jen Wang, look to her blog, Disgrasian (which is great!).

French? Chinese?

Zoe's class is having "Norman Conquest Day" tomorrow. One focus of the day is how some English words came from the French because of the Norman Conquest. Learning through the grapevine that Zoe's grandmother is French, Zoe's teacher contacted me to see if she would be willing to come to class to speak French. Mimi agreed, and Zoe is tickled pink.

Tonight she told me about a conversation at school, when Mrs. P. told the class that Zoe's grandmother is French and is coming to class. One little boy said, "Zoe's grandmother isn't French -- she's Chinese!" Zoe answered, "I'm Chinese -- my grandmother is French." Several other kids expressed disbelief, and Mrs. P. settled it by telling them simply that Zoe's grandmother is, too, French.

How curious! The kids all know me, and know I'm not Chinese. But they still thought Zoe's grandmother must be Chinese.

I asked Zoe what she thought about this -- she thought they were silly to think her grandmother was Chinese instead of French.

But thinking about our blog discussion of ancestry and adoption, I asked Zoe if she was French since her grandmother is French. Zoe's answer was quite definite: "No, I'm Chinese. But I know some French culture."

How do you say, "smart cookie," in French?!