(Emma Carew) How I Came to Accept My Adoption

I recently came across a blog on the New York Times Web site called Relative Choices: Adoption and the American Family. The blog is maintained by over a dozen authors, all with some tie to the adoption community.

Having been adopted as an infant and having just spent 8 weeks in Korea reuniting with my birth family, reading the blog has really hit close to home for me. The entries themselves, which range from topics of dual racial identity to separation and attachment issues, all touch on topics that are very real and very true in my own life, but in addition, I was amazed by the comments and discussions posted by other readers of the blog.

When celebrities like Madonna and Angelina Jolie internationally adopted their children, transnational and interracial adoption became instant buzzwords around the world. Suddenly, the concept of the only family structure I had ever known was being dissected in gossip magazines and people made adoption out to be something of a trend or passing fad.

In reality, international adoption dates back to the Korean War, when white American families (mostly from Minnesota) began taking war orphans into their homes and raising them.

Two years ago, I enrolled in the first known college course about international adoption, called Cultures of Korean Adoption. About half the class was made up of Korean adoptees, and the class was taught by a Korean adoptee who was doing her PhD. work in the area of Korean adoption.

The class was interesting, and acted as a crash course for me in the history of a system that eventually brought me to my family. It also opened my eyes to a much larger debate about the advantages and disadvantages of international and interracial adoption.

Most of the other adoptees in my class had very different experiences growing up than I had. Certainly the writers of the memoirs we read had very different experiences, having grown up a generation or two before me and my adopted friends.

In the 1970s, Korean adoptees seemed to be few and far between. Resources like Korean culture camp, language villages and dance groups didn’t exist for adoptees and their families. Schools didn’t offer counseling groups for adopted students. Agencies didn’t encourage parents to introduce their children to their native cultures.

I grew up in Minnesota, the so-called Korean adoptee capital of the world. An estimated 10-15,000 adoptees currently live in Minnesota. I met my first Korean adopted friend when I was in first grade and went to Korean culture camp first the first time when I was eight. I went to Korean school on Saturday mornings for a year, and performed Korean dance for eight years.

Our dance group, Chonsa, was mostly adoptees, including our teacher. From fifth grade all the way to college, I had adopted friends and an adopted role model. I had a support network who understood that sometimes I felt out of place in my own family, who knew that it felt weird to be the only Asian kid in a class at school.

An interesting thing happened while I’ve been at college. A group of adoptees, myself included, came together last fall and tried to form a student group for Korean adoptees. We paired with the local adult adoptee group to host an artists’ showcase, and invited adoptees from the community to come.

Many local adoptee “elders” came and all of them praised us for banding together on campus. “I wish we had something like this when I was in school,” they said.

Unfortunately, about six weeks later, our little group sort of disbanded. The semester ended and we seemed to go our own separate ways. I believe this is because so many of us grew up here, and that we really didn’t have a need for a formal reason to come together. There’s a sort of loose adoptee network in place just through summer culture camps and language villages, dance groups and Korean classes.

The adoptees who grew up in the generation before us seemed to come together as adults, finding one another for the first time. For us, we grew up with adoption as a much different part of our lives.

I still see my Korean adoptee friends, either in language class or out on the weekends. My adoption is very much a part of my life. I feel the duality of my identity every day, whether it’s a debate in our newsroom about coverage of minorities or something as simple as choosing rice or pasta for dinner.

It’s unlikely that I’ll ever be fluent in Korean, a fact that seems to drive my Korean family a little crazy. I probably will never live in Korea, because it’s a culture I feel so disconnected from. But it’s also unlikely that I’ll ever lose my connection to the adoptee culture, one which I firmly believe exists. It’s a culture of conflict, loss, identity, tragedy and confusion, but it’s mine and I’m okay with owning that.

(Beau Sia) On Adoption

"please adopt me"

i am going to be under the assumption that i was assigned this particular topic because there must be some concern within "the community," about babies from overseas, such as china and korea, being adopted here by parents who are not ethnically asian. i believe i have a t-shirt in my closet saying as much, more succinctly.

here is the united states of america. i imagine, though, that this concern also exists in france, great britain, australia, and so on...

i imagine there isn't the same level of concern for this in brazil, india, the continent of africa, and so forth.

i've received emails from adoptees, good christians all, who have written me, expressing that i am attacking their identity, because they are under the belief that my work is a direct address of their "non-asian," parents, who love them very much, and have given them everything they could ever want as a child: education, shoes, meals everyday.

i've read essays by adoptees about the anger and hurt they've felt because of a circumstance beyond their control has caused those of asian descent to judge them, ostracize them (am i using this word correctly?), and treat them less like one of them, if there is such a thing as a, "one of them."

i've met parents of adoptees who have asked me to help them, because they know they are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to explaining and fully understanding the issues their child will have to grow up dealing with in this country, by virtue of the way they look.

i've watched photographs of angelina jolie and that one son of hers, whatever his name is (as if it makes a difference to my life now. maybe one day we'll work together on a project...), going into places, leaving places, surrounded by faces that love without touching.

i've been to conferences where it is "really wrong," for this adoption to occur, because of reasons i should've been paying more attention to at 9am, i'm sure, and i've been to conferences where, "we must adopt," because so many children already live without the care and love they require to grow, and why selfishly demand that you must have your, "own child," when to own a child, to say a child is only yours if it carries the same blood within it, are both fundamentally inaccurate.

do i understand why so many children exist without parents to love and care for them? i don't know the judgement that befalls unwed mothers in christian nations. i don't experience the policies of governments giving one gender value over another. i have never been in the midst of a genocide. i am not certain there are similar sex education programs and services provided overseas, nor the time to participate in such things (i hear the days are getting shorter). i won't speculate on the effects of the unseen on the bodies of the first world (we will not speak on stress, or waves, or pills fda approved). i can't go into the horrors and acceptance of rape all over the world (uncles must continue playing their part, women are legally treated as objects, and love has been reduced to the manipulation of an act, afterall). and i'm not sure now is the time to go into all we leave behind and forget to maintain our illusions in life.

i am unable to see the village in which starvation is a factor. i have not lived in the home where moral belief is an inflexible law. i do not have to live my life as a woman, where my purity is constantly in question. that my purity is attached to my biology, and that the judgement of both rests in the hands of man.

and who can forget the fact that we have new toys every year that bore us once they give us problems, or don't give us what we think they will? as if we aren't applying our habits to all aspects of our lives. as if being raised by the community of a screen so that parents can afford vacations doesn't affect a child's ability to raise as child.

as if the problem lies in adopting the child.

i've been in the company of many children raised by their birth parents. adults now, there are enough stories to make me question the idea that one circumstance is better than the other. that we must enforce one situation at all costs. in this case, that of keeping the child with the parents she was born into.

stories of molestation, beatings, verbal abuse, neglect, being trapped in an identity they did not choose, being forced to live as an extension of another's life, being told their possibility, being exploited for their parent's gain, being shut out from the conversation completely always.

there are wars. there are economic crisis. there are governments dictating bodies and culture. there are diseases. there are children without parents.

everyone could be a better parent. everyone could be better about nurturing the life of a child. everyone could learn more about the needs of those they are entrusted with caring for. everyone should provide their children with all that they have to offer, knowing that love and understanding are non-negotiable. everyone needs to know that being entrusted with the life of someone, does not give one the right to own it, but rather to help it to grow into the life it is to become.

i cannot blame adoption for the deeper issues that have made it such a controversial topic in the last ten years, and i will not focus on adoption, when i must make choices that seem irrelevant to adoption, to try and stem the tide of children being born into this world alone.

(Lena Wong) Asian American Role Models

When it Sizzles

1998 was a year of firsts. I attended my first concert that year (Hanson; I was in the midst of my teenybopper fandom) and lived through my first decade of life (though I doubt I really processed what that meant at the time). But, more importantly, it was the first year that I identified with a movie character. She was my first on-screen role model and her name was Mulan.

Like any other little girl, I had quite the active imagination while growing up. My friends and I engaged in make believe games frequently, but we often found ourselves pretending to be princesses – particularly of the Disney kind. Yet, until 1998, I had trouble finding a princess to portray when playing with my friends. My favorite Disney movie was (and is) Beauty and the Beast, but it seemed silly for me to play brown-haired Belle when I so clearly did not look like her. Therefore, in an effort to stay true to the films, I was often cast as Pocahontas or Jasmine – even though I clearly wasn’t Native American or Middle Eastern. They had the jet black hair and darker complexion that I did, though, and in our adolescent minds, it made sense to put me in those roles.

And then Mulan happened. Suddenly, there was a Chinese Disney princess who I could emulate. To top it all off, the film she starred in even provided a glimpse into a historic Chinese tale to which I hadn’t been exposed before. Yet, while all of this sounds like the trivial worries of an elementary school student, much of the same concerns of finding an Asian American role model in the pop-culture landscape of the United States still applies – and it’s been almost a full decade since 1998.

As much as I’d like to go against the popular concerns that tokenism and stereotypes surround almost every Asian American character or actor in the mainstream media, I’m finding it increasingly hard to do so. Yes, there have been great strides made in recent years with television channels targeted towards Asian American audiences and independent films made from Asian American perspectives, but little has been done to change the representations of Asian Americans in media targeted to the general public. As much as I laughed and enjoyed Danny Leiner’s “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle”, I couldn’t help but notice just how much the movie relied on the stereotype of Asian Americans as being studious, lawful, and submissive. Same goes for Shonda Rimes’ hit hospital drama “Grey’s Anatomy” wherein Sandra Oh plays a doctor who exemplifies the stereotype of the Asian American as brilliant, but competitive and manipulative. I recently dressed up as Cho Chang from the Harry Potter series for Halloween and even her story was unfortunate in its own right – Cho is Potter’s love interest that is never fully realized because he falls in love with his best friend’s sister.

It’s not to say that I haven’t been able to find Asian American role models at all, though. After reading his memoir The Rice Room, I got in touch with Ben Fong-Torres, the former editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone who inspired me to pursue the field of journalism in the first place. There have also been a few Asian American authors to whom I’ve looked to for literary guidance; Maxine Hong-Kingston’s writing has been especially empowering.

However, the truth of the matter is that in some ways, I’m still that little girl looking for a princess who I can pretend to be. I’m still searching for a strong Asian American woman whose life trajectory follows what I hope mine will be. True that my role model doesn’t necessarily have to be Asian American or a woman, but it’d sure be nice if she existed.

(Beau Sia) Asian American Role Models

"asian american role models"

i've been hearing so much more about this lately, and it seems like there's good money to be made being one of these. it seems like there are lots of aspects becoming identities, and that these identities are great for advertisers, or those who want themed shows.

when presented with this as a topic, my first response, snarky as usual, is, "do you mean role models for asian americans, or do you mean asian americans who are role models?" from there, i've got some follow-up smart ass, like, "if for asian americans, should we exclude those who might also be role models to recently immigrated asians?" "do the role models have to be ethnically asian if they're to role model for asian americans?" "which asian americans are we talking about here? those of russian heritage? arab heritage? aren't we not inviting the iraqi americans to e.c.a.s.u. again this year, because we feel middle eastern trumps the continent of asia? and of course, who can forget, "how did we get to this place where we live by an inaccurate, problematic, and vague term like 'asian american'?" (of course, i have been guilty of this in the past, and even now in the present. i too am struggling to figure out how i've allowed terminology to lead me astray, and how i can find my way back to the truth. the real. the whole.)

there really have been too many layers in these subjects for 500 plus words, but we've got to start somewhere. And all our collective contributions will eventually help us flesh out a fuller understanding of this all (no, i'm not a communist.).

i recently finished acting in a film (how first world of me!), and in a group interview, a fellow actress, who is white (i've got to figure out something quick instead of this word, before it becomes a cycle that binds me to an illusion! if only we'd spent more time speaking with each other about our ethnic background and not our dreams and perspectives!), said (now here i go into paraphrase mode...), hanging out with me led her to use my work example as a guide and encouraging reality for her work. does that make me an asian american role model? even if she's not asian american ( i did classify her so poorly as white (though there are those of asian descent who appear this color))? should i pick one ethnic group whose lives i can nurture?

let's not think that i have this effect on everyone. my work hasn't reached a majority of the world's population. barely a minority. and of these folks who've been exposed to my work, i receive positive remarks for my impact in their lives from about ten percent of them (this number was arrived at by guessing, while thinking about shows i've performed, and who from those shows have hit me up via social networking sites).

that doesn't sound very model-y to me. that sounds very dude-who-positively-impacts-the-lives- of-some-of-the-folks-he-interacts-with. model, and i'm not an educated man, sounds a lot like guideline, and role sounds a lot like, role. i was just in a thing where i had a role (gosh, i can brag.). it was quite the specific function (thankfully, not of the this-guy-is- foreign variety). if we kinda see these things connected, regardless how they're used to sell the nobility of athletes and celebrities, it sounds like, "hey, if you wanna be a champion caliber pony, here's the outline of what that kinda is and does."

there are other words associated with role model that i often hear like, 'encourages,' 'inspires,' 'teaches,' 'shows,' 'example,' 'exemplify.' there are other labels besides role model which are associated with them words, too. so when we think about a person's effect on our lives, why not use specific, appropriate wording, instead of a blanket term to represent a bevy of verbs? granted, it's much more difficult to have a press kit that states you are, "one who encourages, etc." than one which states, "he is a role model." that just makes keyword sense.

i don't mind spending a few extra seconds responding to someone via email by writing, "i'm glad that my work could have a positive impact on the choices you make," instead of just writing, "it's cool you see me as a role model." why? 'cuz what role am i a model for? even i know that when i'm interviewed, that the interviewer requires a direction for the audience, so i allow them to call me a poet, but even then, i don't believe i am beau sia: poet.

i've had to live so many other labels in my life. now, i'm not saying i'm not a poet (i will add here that only time will tell whether or not the universe considers me a poet after my death).

i'm saying beau sia: poet sounds a lot like lap top: computer. confused? basically, i don't want to be bound in my possibility by a title that immediately categorizes what my life can be about forever. and beyond that, i've met enough people who are poets (on top of everything else they are), and they've got their own way. there are many things i do creatively that work for me, but just don't work for other poets, and vice versa. who are any of us to impose, "be like poet x in you want to be a poet." it's not the single function type of thing a champion caliber pony is. and let's go full circle for a second and recognize that if american citizens whose ethnic background is of asian descent want to be seen as individuals, as well as part of a vast cultural landscape, if you will, aren't we going to run into some long time trouble if we start assigning folks the mantle of asian american role model?

wouldn't that be of the same vein as saying, "this is a model minority," "this is a good asian," "this is your place?" yeah, it's that deep. and if we're going to be individuals who are built on the enormous wealth of experiences and input we receive, why not be aware of and address that as best we can, instead of funneling all of our particular energies into one source. i've spent most of my life digging bruce lee to the fullest, but i will never be him, and trying too hard to follow him would only cheat my potential. okay. i'll give you an example.

rather than me being like, "saul williams is a role model to me," why not tack on a couple of sentences and say, "kal penn has had roles which show me that asian americans (here we go again, for brevity) can be funny, without being at their own expense, hines ward inspires me to seek the self on my own terms, haruki murakami gives me hope that art does not need to rely on corporate interests to be valid, and beau sia..." right. i'm not going to decide what parts of your life i might inform or help you positively build on. I will never be you. them, anyone?

ps- we should really stop looking to level of exposure as a gauge for who is a valid voice in our lives on the various issues we must confront. just because mom doesn't sell as many magazines as paris hilton, doesn't mean her dating advice isn't more accurate to who we are. 98 percent of the time, it is. well, for me, anyway.