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 […]
Tag Archives: transracial adoption
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 […]
Guest Appearance on 김The Korean Hillbilly
Though we both have white partners now, in this conversation, Rosita and I ponder what our youth and early romantic experiences would have been like if Asian men had been a predominant demographic in our areas and if Asian men had been celebrated as masculine and desirable and if our own identities as Asian women had been validated by society.
They Call Us Bruce Podcast (Episode 101: Adoptees)
On Wednesday evening, Jeff Yang, Phil Yu aka Angry Asian Man, Dan Matthews (DANakaDAN), and I had a conversation about Asian adoptions to the U.S., Dan and my personal experiences growing up as Asian adoptees, stepping into our Asian identities, and our perspectives on some recent, troubling news stories about Asian/Pacific Island adoptions, including the Myka Stauffer rehoming case, the Paul Petersen case, the murder of Johanne by her adoptive brother, and the arrests of 3 Iranian men for selling babies for adoption on Instagram.
Checking My Privilege
When I question how I could have both been helped and hurt by white privilege, it is the same type of reflection that I must conduct when I think about the ways in which I have both gained and lost so much through my adoption. The ability to not think in simple polarities has shaped and defined my maturation and has been a liberating discovery.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (Review)
Read this book if you want to think of birth mothers reimagined, a fantastical rags to riches “Cinderella” story, or a beautiful portrayal of scenery and a lesser known culture, not if you are an adoptee looking to identify with Haley, the Chinese adoptee character in the story. While Lisa See tried to do her research, her identity as a non-adopted person shows clearly in the adoptee parts of this book. The use of common adoption tropes and clunky, developmentally-off dialogue made the adoptee passages difficult for me to read or even get excited about until the last chapter.
KAAN Connect 2020
As many of you know, I serve on the Advisory Council for the Korean American Adoptee and Adoptive Family Network (KAAN). Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve had to […]
