Sweetness
The new issue of Asian American Poetry and Writing, an LA-based literary arts project and online magazine, features Korean adoptees. Check it out:
Simply kickass
Jane Jeong Trenka has a great post today on Conducive Chronicles about legal reforms being pushed forward by KAD activists and allies in Seoul.
“The coalition of TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea) ASK (Adoptee Solidarity Korea) and KoRoot, along with TRACK’s legal advisors, the Gonggam Public Interest Lawyers, have been participating in the law revision process through various channels since last winter. This summer, a group of single mothers called Miss Mamma Mia, who are raising their own children, also joined our coalition.”
After fighting to gain the right to participate in the adoption law revision process, the coalition is moving forward with the following demands:
1. Integrate the laws that govern domestic and international adoption, and bring the laws up to international standards.
2. Put children first.
3. Strengthen support for children’s’ original families.
4. Strengthen the rights of adoptees and children who will be adopted.
5. Install a government watchdog over the adoption agencies.
Read the entire post “Nothing About Us Without Us” and support, support, support!
Transracial Adoptee Film Fest
If you are in the Minneapolis area next month, check out the Minnesota Transracial Film Festival.
The Minnesota Transracial Film Festival is the first festival in the Twin Cities to showcase voices from the transracial and transcultural adoption community through film, words, and music. The MNTRFF is being held at the Oak Street Cinema on November 14th, 2009.
Looks like an excellent program.
The Holts would be proud
As promised, the polls are now open for the Third Annual Demons of Adoption Award. You have until October 30th to vote.
I’ve tried to ignore the whole Naleigh situation, mostly because all the asinine comments from Katherine Heigl about Korean adoption make me want to throw up. But I definitely thought about Naleigh when casting my vote for Harry and Bertha Holt.
I’ll send you off to the polls with a crazy picture of Heigl and her adoption inspiration/sister…
Happy Now?
Comments submitted by “A-Mom” (amom@aol.com) on 2009/09/08 at 3:17pm:
“I find it interesting that you will post your outlandish remarks but won’t publish comments from adoptive parents. I’ve left several on here but no where do they appear.”
Why is this so interesting? It’s my blog, so of course I post my own remarks.
“I have no problems with you posting your feelings as they are yours to own. I even agree with you on quite a few of your posts.”
Wow, thanks for letting me post my own feelings. It’s quite generous of you.
“However, either there is some odd cyber disconnect between my PC and yours or you chose not to post comments from adoptive parents.”
I’m not a PC person, and your comments just weren’t that interesting…or I guess annoying enough, until now.
“At any rate, I do enjoy and read your blog regularly.”
Okay, you got the attention you were seeking, now go patronize someone else’s blog.
Cast your votes
It’s time for the Third Annual Demons of Adoption Award:
In 2007 we instituted the annual Demons of Adoption Award to raise a voice against adoption propaganda and the self congratulatory practices of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s annual Angels in Adoption Awards.
My favorite so far is the posthumous nod to Harry and Bertha Holt. Check it out:
“In 1955, a special act of Congress allowed Bertha and Harry Holt, an evangelical couple from rural Oregon, to adopt eight Korean War orphans.” This couple was the first to have laws changed in order to steal “orphans” from Korea and bring them to the United States. Thus setting in action the years of “legal stealing” of many children. Without the Holts actions maybe this forum would not exist. Maybe hundreds of thousands of overseas adoptions would not have taken place.
You can nominate candidates up until Sept. 15th, and then the voting begins!
Wanna buy a broken record?
It’s 2AM and I’m running out of new things to say about gay adoption. State after state, country after country will institute “same-sex adoption” laws—here’s the latest: Uruguay nears same-sex adoption law—and I will be here, repeating the same question over and over again.
Here we go:
Uruguay drew one step closer to becoming the first country in Latin America to allow same-sex couples to adopt children with the passage of a bill by the lower house of Congress.
Then we randomly learn about previous progressive legislation, but it’s still awesome:
Last year, lawmakers approved a measure allowing children aged 12 or older to change their names, a measure aimed at transgender or transsexual youths.
And we can’t end without the obligatory religious opposition quote:
“To accept the adoption of children by homosexual couples is to go against human nature itself, and consequently, it is to go against the fundamental rights of the human being as a person.”
So, let’s review. We’ve got the rights of same-sex couples, the rights of trans youth (okay, maybe some of whom are adopted), and the rights of, um, the human being as a person. But what about the rights of children generally, and adoptees specifically? They’re not even considered.
Unless you want to argue that the archbishop guy is fighting for the rights of children to not be adopted by gay people. Sigh.
Not A Forever Family
I just read this article from the New York Times Motherlode blog: Terminating an Adoption.
Written by the adoptive mother of a “little boy from South America” (referred to as “D”), the post is a detailed account of the woman’s decision to basically put the boy back up for adoption when she discovers that she and her family–consisting of her husband and five biological daughters–are not bonding with him (and vice versa). Yes, some of the statements are cringe-worthy:
I had never once considered the possibility that I’d view an adopted child differently than my biological children.
And some of the descriptions are predictably exoticizing and self-indulgent:
I kneeled down and pulled D. close to me, desperately wanting to impress an indelible memory of my son on me, and me on him, inhaling his scent, feeling his soft skin and touching his coarse hair. In our last moments together, I stared into his eyes and told him that I loved him and that I had tried to do my best.
His new mom would love him so, so much; my little man would be OK.
He didn’t cry, he stared back at me, then looked to Samantha and asked for more juice. I was too overwhelmed to utter another word, but Samantha squeezed my hand and reassured me that D. would know I had loved him and that I had done a good job.
But what really strikes me about the article is that, in the end, it seems instructive for prospective adoptive parents to hear from someone honest enough to admit that it wasn’t a good match, that she wasn’t the best person to parent this child. It reminded me again of how my adoptive mom used to tell me that she wished she could have sent my adopted brother back to Korea. I was always very angry at her for telling me this, but I can’t deny that she was “right” in the sense that forcing people to be a family is pointless.
Adoption is a trauma in itself. I don’t know what being re-placed for adoption would feel like, and what the long-term impact of the decision will be for “D.” As always, I’m waiting until the adoptee can tell his own story.
Stop friggin naming your kids “Asia”!!!
All right, seems I’m overdue for an angry/cranky rant…so here you go:
What the fuck is up with people naming their kids Asia!? Yeah, I know it’s been going on for a long time. I just always tried super hard to ignore it. But then I saw this “inspirational story” about a Korean adoptee named Asia Renning, oh god, who’s a runner. And of course she “overcame” autistic impairments to become an inspiration to everyone around her. And of course the whole video is made by her adoptive mother. I mean, everything about it makes me want to throw my head back Charlie Brown style and scream “AARRGGHH!” When did this Asia-as-given-name bullshit become popular? And please tell me why you would do this to an adopted Korean girl? Are people going to start naming their adopted Korean kids “North Korea” and “South Korea”? Naw, that doesn’t sound attractive and exotic.
Anyway, here’s the video that made me angry:
And another one just for fun:
Only in the Gay Area?
Saw this on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) the other night:
We never knew how proud we could be until we adopted Keisha.
It’s from an Adoption SF ad campaign, developed by Better World Advertising. If you check out the advertising company website, you’ll see it’s part of “Proud 2009″ (guess I had my adoption ad blinders on during Proud 2008).
According to their website, Adoption SF is into promoting adoption out of foster care, and they specifically promote LGBT adoption, even recognizing (duh) that children and youth in foster care may be LGBT themselves.
My beef is not really with this adoption agency, or even the advertising agency (although some of their adoption/foster ads make me cringe with their “pick me, pick me!” flavor). Seeing the ad just kind of triggered my anger with gays and allies who see gay adoption as the next great frontier in the fight for gay rights. Often it’s white queers wanting the right to adopt white kids and kids of color. In this case it’s a promotion of queers of color adopting kids of color. But what about the rights of children to not be marketed, and to not have to fight and compete for the chance of having their basic needs met? What about the kids who aren’t as cute, healthy, academically achieving, and, well, perfect as the ones depicted in the advertisements? I just think it’s kind of f-d the way combining different oppressed members of society gets marketed as the recipe for a happy rainbow family. Adoption is a band-aid for larger social problems. But ads like this have a way of implying that institutionalizing gay adoption is a step toward social justice.
The initial reason I took a picture of the ad? Someone has obviously slashed through the faces of the two women who comprise the lesbian couple. This pissed me off and inspired me to take a crappy picture with my cell phone even though everyone on the train was staring at me. Yes, this is the kind of hate that makes protection of gay rights so vital. It’s also the kind of hate that happens all the time in the oh-so-liberal Gay Area. My problem is with the promotion of a gay rights agenda that erases the rights of children, and ignores the structural racism and economic oppression that lead to children of color being removed from their families into the foster care system in the first place.
