Interesting that many are female and in the arts. I wonder if that is a consequence of the cross cultural adoption experience, or perhaps reflects how the adoptive parents raised them?
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To Ms. Cao, “it seemed Asian adoptees and their parents constantly had to consider their racial and cultural identities.”
That is a foreign concept in our family – two white parents and two Chinese-born daughters, Pearl, 20 and Jade, 16. We were always warned about these racial and cultural divisions that cut across adoption families and community lines. Yet we never saw them.
My girls never broached nor experienced them. I was fearful of implanting a sense of separateness by raising questions too often. I also feared missing it by not asking. So every year or so, I’d gently ask about any feelings of awkwardness or anything else. Each time, the answer was no. Even after Pearl’s first year at a college in the rustbelt of eastern Penn., she said nothing had changed.
My wife and I tried to instill in them a sense Chinese culture and identity. For example, we took them to Chinese dance for years. But one day, they chose to switch to Irish dance.
I had long planned revisiting China and where we adopted them. When the time came, with both girls in high school, they voted instead for a Jersey shore vacation.
Over the years, I’ve seen countless stories that consistently focused on adoptees searching for their racial and cultural identity. I’ve also found other mixed-race families like ours to be on both sides of the question of racial and cultural identity.
I have learned there is no right or wrong place to be on this question – but there is more than one side to this story.
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@John Heenehan I have a follow up personal question, how else did you and your wife try to immerse your children with Chinese culture?
Did they have other Asian friends/ classmates?
Language, Chinese new year etc?
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@John Heenehan our adopted Chinese daughter has never been interested in Chinese culture even though we attempted to give her opportunities when she was younger. Now she’s 20 and still has no interest, at least not as we can see. She seems to be fine being in our family and has loving parents, siblings as well as a niece and nephew who all love each other. Perhaps one day she’ll want to know more.
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@Ashlee - We'd frequently get together with two Chinese families we're close to. We paid for our girls to attend a Chinese school on weekends. They've taken Mandarin in school for several years. Many of their first books were Chinese children's stories. We took them to a few events in NY's Chinatown. They know far more of their cultural heritage than I do of my Irish heritage. Like me, they feel no pull from their cultural roots. They simply gravitated to other interests. I felt no compunction to dissuade them as it's really their call. They each insist they've never been treated different because they are Chinese. They simply feel American -- no hyphen -- as do their parents. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've met other families with the same experience, just as I've met some adoptees who are curious about or seeking their Chinese identity. But clearly there is no universal magnetism for a lost background, one without visible trace or memory. That is what should be included, but never is, in these stories. There is more than one story here.
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As the mother of one of the adoptees featured in this article, I want to say I appreciate the sensitive and open-minded way in which Mengwen Cao approached this project, as well as how the Times reported it. I'm glad these stories are being shared. My only quibble would be the wording of the sub-heading where it says these adoptees "grew up in white families." In fact, though Cao sought out adoptees with white parents, the families, by virtue of their children, are now multiracial.
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I have a Jewish grandmother, a Japanese grandmother, and mixed (though mainly Caucasian) grandfathers. I have a hard time figuring how to racially identify myself because I don’t want to lose the cultures of my family, but I also feel like a “fraud” when I fully say I am mixed race or part Asian. In modern day America, people need to start understanding that race and ethnic identity are much more complex then we traditionally think of them. Who we are, who we grow up around, the cultures we interact with and the people we become are more complex than a single check mark in a race box.
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As a multi-ethnic & transracial adoptee, I'm thankful that NYT is publishing more stories focused on adoption. For many decades adoption was a taboo to talk about and adoptees suffered emotionally because of it.
Like some of the adoptees in the piece, I've been criticized by those who think I'm not "Korean" enough, and white individuals who think I'm not "Asian" enough. What both sides don't seem to take into consideration is that being a transracial adoptee give you no cultural mirror to help you identify yourself as. You don't look like your parents, you don't sound like them, and you don't really know who you are. It's a struggle that never really goes away.
I'm thankful that there are more resources now available for younger adoptees. When I was growing up none of this was there.
https://www.adopteebridge.org/adoption-culture-camps
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My daughter, also adopted from China, made this video for one of her college landscape architecture projects to illustrate the disruption of international adoption. https://youtu.be/WwMvu9UMUps
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@Sarah
Thank you for sharing your daughter’s beautiful and creative video. It captures exquisitely the experience of my own adopted daughter from Vietnam. It really is ‘OK.’
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@Sarah terrific video made by your daughter!!
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@Sarah
Brilliant!
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"To her friends and family back home, she had become “too American.”
The Chinese culture has always emphasized the importance of perpetuating Chinese tradition, roots the village that you originated from, and ancestry.
Becoming "too American" is frowned upon for immigrated and American born Chinese as well.
As an American born Chinese from Queens "my village", I would hope my roots are afforded the same respect.
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I am a mom of an adopted special needs child from Russia. Now 30 years old. She has blond hair and blue eyes my husband and I have brown hair and eyes. My daughter was almost 4 when we adopted her. I always thought it was important for families of adopted children to make sure their children did not have their cultural identities removed from them. My daughter kept her birth name we just added our family name on to the end of her birth name. We are secular and cultural Jews. She was baptized into the Russian church twice. Once at birth once when I went to adopt her. When she was younger we took her to the Russian church during the holidays. I found her birth parents and we went back to meet them. I believe it’s important to know your heritage and roots if possible. Now she has the knowledge and can choose what path she is taking.
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@Simone Mogul-I'm American of Ukrainian descent. Parents from the old country, they tried hard to instill those cultural roots mostly to a great failure. I'm a human being. End of story. I choose, there where's, the what's the how's in my life. Racial and cultural roots are secondary.
7
While shopping, I recently wished a stranger with Asian origins a Happy Lunar New Year. I was not prepared for her response..."I do not celebrate Lunar New Year." I was surprised and wondered, and I guess she saw the wonder and confusion on my face as I myself come from a different country but really enjoy the customs and traditions of my origins even while living and being a US citizen and enjoying the customs of this country. She said to me that she was adopted, and we left it at that. I felt a bit awkward at the same time felt sad that she had not had the opportunity to explore the culture of her origins and did not identify with being of Asian origin at all. Or then, maybe she had...just did not feel or want to be a part of it. I don't know. It will make me think twice the next time before assuming.
20
As the parent if a Korean adoptee he is very unhappy when these assumptions are made about him and finds people who make them to be horribly ignorant. One of his favorites is assuming he is going to study math or science in college... Asians are good at math right? We all need to stop with the identity politics in this country. And identity politics, when they are foisted on others through casual assumptions are infuriating.
Lastly, schooling pure ignorance is not a bad thing.... so, just for the record not “all” Asians are from the same place or share a heritage. To put it in context, would you ask red headed Mary O’Hare if she enjoyed her Christmas? Probably not. So, use this logic to retrain your brain when you spot “an Asian” and TRY to be one of the people who rise above identity politics and let people be themselves.
3
@IGupta,
Perhaps it is best not to make visual assumptions. Would you say Happy Kwanzaa to someone who was black that you came upon in a store? Especially if you are not black? Happy Passover to someone who visually appears Jewish? Why do we have to make visual assumptions? Your heart was in the right place but it is just a different kind of racial hot boxing that really isn't helpful.
4
Dissonance from the expectation of who you should be, based on your external appearance, and who you actually are, based on your actual life and experience. This constant background noise can either feed or steal from your confidence, comfort, well being, ability to accept love and uncertainty And it is all part of the process of getting to where you understand and accept who you are, as a priority over who you should be, along with a certain sadness and sense of loss and longing for what might have been.
36
Your comment is incredibly insightful. Thank you.
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You absolutely nailed it! People raised by their family of origin in their own country can feel this same sense of not belonging if they don’t resonate with their culture of origin and struggle to adapt, especially in multi racial families. I am suddenly reminded of a treasure of a book The Color of Water. Thank you for your response.
1