The Queen’s Gambit and Adoption
Like many people around the country, I recently watched the popular series on Netflix, The Queen’s Gambit. The Queen’s Gambit is an intriguing show about chess, substance abuse, and the […]
Updating Your Child’s Bookshelf
Adoption books are hard to come by; good adoption books are even harder to find. Many adoptive parents trust older classics or may get so excited when they see a […]
Navigating the World: Heritage Travel and Tourism
I was recently asked to speak at the Ray Warren Symposium on Race and Ethnic Studies through Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. The panel I was on asked […]
Love is NOT all you need
Unpopular Adoption Opinion: Love is NOT all an adoptee needs! I oftentimes hear this sentiment as a justification for adoption and people’s desire to help all of the “orphans” around […]
Balancing Emotions with Adoption Jenga
Adoptive parents often mistake silence for a lack of curiosity or questions about adoption, but this is not necessarily true. The adoptee may be waiting for the parent to bring up the topic or may be unsure if they are allowed to ask questions around the circumstances of their adoption. I have adapted the grief Jenga game for adoptees in the hopes that this can increase communication around adoption in your families if this is not something that you currently do.
ADAPTED Podcast, Season 4, Episode 5: Grace Newton
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kaomi Goetz over Zoom to talk about my personal experiences as a Chinese adoptee. Our conversation ranged from […]
Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu Adaptation) + Review
Introduction The book, Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng, published in 2017, was recently adapted for a T.V. miniseries on Hulu earlier this year (Shelton et al., 2020). The show […]
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Review)
Originally published on the KAAN Community blog: here George Floyd. Ahmed Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Philando Castile. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. Trayvon Martin. And most recently Jacob Blake. These […]
Adoption/Searching Online Groups
A few weeks ago, I decided to restart my birth parent search that came to an almost immediate halt in China in 2015 (read about it here). I realize that time is going by – time that I will never get back – and feel confident that I am in an emotionally strong enough place to begin again. I decided to join a number of search groups on Facebook and on WeChat for information about searching, templates for language used on search posters, and camaraderie from others who are also going through this complicated process. Below, I’ve shared a list of potentially relevant searching groups for Chinese adoptees.
Ripped from my Roots Pt. 2
Just before I left for my semester abroad in China, I posted a watercolor painting I made of a tree stump titled “Ripped From My Roots: An Adoptee Family Tree […]
