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Adoptees and
identity
Answering "Who Am I?" can be a
long, complicated journey
Growing up in Port Orchard, Wash., Christina Johnson
was your typical all-American girl. Except that she wasn't. Adopted from
Korea, she identified with her white adoptive parents and didn't think
much about race, even when kids pulled their eyes back in mimicry or
when store clerks asked where her mother was even though she was
standing right there. Then, at 16, Johnson attended for a summer youth
program in Seattle's International District. The program was a
leadership training session that attracted a diverse group of teens. “It
was the first time I'd been around so many Asians,” the 20-year-old
University of Washington sophomore says. She worried about not being
cool enough, not being Asian enough. Normally outgoing, she shut down.
It was one step on a difficult journey toward finding identity as an
Asian adoptee, one filled with questions that came from within as much
as from others: Why don't you look like your family? Why do you look
Asian but act “white”? Who are you, really?
The range of Asian adoptee experiences are the subject
of “Asian & Pacific Islander Adoptees: A Journey Through Identity,” an
exhibit running through Sept. 4 at Seattle's Wing Luke Asian Museum. The
exhibit features mementos such as clothes worn by adoptees upon their
U.S. arrival and snapshots of adoptees' return visits to their birth
countries. There are journals, video footage and photos of adoptive
parents such as Seattle's Diane Robbins and Vickie Wallen, who adopted
3-year-old Sam from Vietnam when he was 4 months old. With children from
countries such as China, Korea, India and Thailand, these families are
among the vanguard of an emerging multicultural society.
Perceptions slow to change
The origins of Asian adoption, the exhibit notes, rest with U.S.
military intervention in Asia, from the Philippines to Vietnam. “U.S.
military and economic might,” it states, “paradoxically orphaned
thousands of children who were later adopted by American parents.” In
the 1950s, they started coming from Korea; 20 years later it was Vietnam
and Cambodia. In the 1990s, a rising U.S. economy fed growing numbers of
adoptions from China, Thailand and India; these days, instead of war,
the driving forces are poverty, social taboos regarding unwed mothers
and family planning restrictions. For example, advocates say the vast
majority of Korean adoptees are children of young, unwed mothers who
suffer a 1950s-America-like stigma. Though perceptions are slowly
changing, “Korean society is not set up for single mothers to raise
their children,” says Mary Ann Curran, social services director for
Renton, Wash.-based World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP).
WACAP is one of many international adoption agencies placing Asian
adoptees statewide.
In 2002 — the latest state numbers available — WACAP
says Washington families took in 322 Asian adoptees, two-thirds of them
from China. Another 40 came from Korea, 29 from Vietnam (which has since
halted adoptions) and 20 from India. Many agencies strive to place
children with families of the same ethnicity or race. At the same time,
says Lillian Thogerson, WACAP's chief operating officer, “we believe
having a family is important, and we won't hold up a child just waiting
for a family of the same heritage.” Last year, WACAP placed about 15
percent of its Asian adoptees nationwide with families of similar
heritage.
Acknowledging heritage
There was a time when adoptive parents thought it best to fully
Americanize their child, cutting all ties to the child's birth country.
Jenny Kelly, adopted at 10 from Korea, says social workers told her
parents establishing such links would only confuse her. But, the
38-year-old full-time mom says, “it would be hard for anyone to look in
the mirror, see an Asian face, and have their parents say, 'You're just
like us ... ' You can't try to stay in the dark about this forever. You
have to acknowledge it.”
Many parents now go the extra mile, traveling overseas to see their
child's origins and fostering appreciation of the child's birth country.
One long-popular method of educating adoptees about their birth
countries are days-long “culture camps” where participants learn about
native arts, food and traditions.
“Adoptive families are becoming more aware that the child needs to be in
touch with his heritage,” WACAP's Curran says.
Though their adopted son is only 3, Robbins and Wallen say they aim to
give Sam every chance “to make sense of who we are as a family.” They've
already begun reaching out to determine how to teach him his Vietnamese
culture and language.
“It's early, but we're beginning to water those seeds of how one defines
oneself,” Robbins says. “These days, everybody likes categories, and we
kind of defy them.”
Kelly says adoptive parents should offer opportunities without pushing
too aggressively. It's a fine balance, but she's glad fewer parents now
choose to ignore their child's origins.
“The confusing part is being told you're just like everybody else,” she
says. “That's where you have your identity crisis, because you believe
that. You feel totally Caucasian on the inside, but when you go into the
real world, you're treated different, as an Asian individual.”
Journey to identity
In one installation of Wing Luke's adoptee exhibit, adoptee Mimi Sang
Peterson recalls being asked by an Asian American why she hangs around
so many white people. “I realized unconscious and insensitive
assumptions and comments ... can come from both minority and majority
groups,” she says.
In another, Korean adoptee Sue Anne Guild confesses: “Ever since I was a
young girl, I wanted to be the average 'White American.'”
Some adoptees seek answers in their pasts — in
documents, or on “homeland tours” offering visits to their birth
countries. Others — like UW's Christina Johnson, who's never felt the
need to seek out her birth parents — only pursue the issue so far. “It
doesn't map out the same for all of us,” says Kelly.
But because adoptees' journeys toward identity can be gradual and
complex, support groups such as the Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington (AAAW)
have blossomed to provide resources, networking and camaraderie. Founded
in 1996, AAAW serves both adoptees and adoptive families — for instance,
offering guidance for those considering birth-country visits or just
looking for similar companionship. Other support groups include the
Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN), the Vietnamese
Adoptee Network and Mavin, an organization supporting transracial
adoptees and the country's growing mixed-race population. For adoptive
parents, there's iChild, for families with children from India, and the
self-explanatory local chapters of Families With Children From China (FCC)and
Families with Children from Vietnam (FCV). But there are also support
groups opposing Asian adoption. The Wing Luke exhibit, for example,
features a T-shirt with an illustration of a dangled newborn being
stamped with the words, “Made in Korea.” The shirt is produced by
Adoptee Solidarity Korea, a group of adoptees which “recognizes the root
causes of Korean adoption in imperialism.” While the Dec. 26 tsunami
that ravaged Southeast Asia has raised interest in adoptions,
authorities estimate it could be months, or even years, before affected
countries determine orphan status and then, whether and when to make
children available for adoption. “In the meantime, what we hope the
public remembers is that there are children who ... are already waiting
for families, legally free for adoption,” says WACAP's Kristine Leander.
A turning point
UW's Johnson doesn't know why she was put up for adoption in Korea, but
she's happy with how things turned out. As a youngster, her parents
Douglas and Nancy Johnson sent her to several culture camps for adoptees.
For a long time, all she remembered was getting to eat a lot of rice,
but now, after years of answering the same questions, she recalls
something else: “For that one week, you didn't have to explain why you
had white parents,” she says. “You didn't have to go through, why is
your last name Johnson?” The summer she spent as a 16-year-old in
Seattle proved to be a turning point. It was the same summer a group of
Asian youths were cited for jaywalking in an incident that promoted
charges of racism and bullying against a Seattle police officer. Johnson
embraced her Asian self to such an extent that afterward, friends back
in Port Orchard teased her for being too Asian. She'd grown up the only
way her parents knew. “There's no guidebook saying how to raise an Asian
baby in a white home. ... They did the best they could. I'm proud of who
I am and who my parents are.”
Marc Ramirez
1 February 2005
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/10786805.htm
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