Chinese Adoptions to the US: Older Than You Think

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The history of adoption, like our own individual history as adoptees is often hidden, forgotten or never recorded. While we recover our own pasts and the rights taken from us, it is also important to recover the lost history of adoption. It is part of us. We own it. When we think of Chinese-US cross border adoption, for instance, we think of the 1990s and beyond. The truth is, the “placement” of Chinese children to the US began much earlier, in the 1950s, when Chinese refugee children from Hong Kong were sent to the United States to be adopted by Chinese-American and American couples. News to you? It was to me! Google “Hong Kong Project” and see what you come up with. Friday I attended a lecture at Ohio State by Catherine Centiza Shoy, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at UC-Berkeley. The lecture was part of OSU’s Center for Historical Research’s ongoing seminar The Intersection of Diaspora. Immigration and Gender in World History. Choy’s topic: “The Hong Kong Project: A History of Chinese International Adoption in the United States.” Prof. Choy is not adopted. She developed an interest in Asian-US adoption when Korean-American adoptees, trying to fill in some Continue Reading →

Plug for Adoption Secrecy: Taking Off the Gloves

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I’m working on a couple long pieces and having a hard time getting a handle on them. So tonight I’m sharing with you the great news that Joanne Swanson is kickin’ out the jams with her new blog Adoption Secrecy: Taking Off the Gloves. Jo predates many of us in the movement. A long-time activist with a mile of filing cabinets, she knows where all the bodies are buried, and she’s digging them up. My favorite post so far is Joe D. Tennenbaum, Protector of Women’s Virtue. I was aware of most of adoption pimp Tennenbaum’s “problems,” but didn’t feel I had enough of a backstory to write something that made sense–if sense can be made of Tennenbaum and his management style. I’m so glad that there is now a proper repository we can all refer to. This is very strong, ugly stuff that goes to the heart of adoption corruption and beyond. I took the above picture of Jo at the AAC in Falls Church back in 1999 . She’s selling her infamous buttons.

Call for Proposals for 2011 Symposium Richmond, VA: Opening Adoption: Realities, Possibilities & Challenges

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Call for Proposals for 2011 Symposium Richmond, VA Symposium 201 1 Opening Adoption: Realities, Possibilities & Challenges Call for Workshop Proposals Dates: September 23 & 24, 2011 Location: University of Richmond School of Law, Richmond, Virginia Definition of Symposium: a meeting or conference for the public discussion of some topic especially one in which the participants form an audience and make presentations Coordinators2inc is seeking proposals for their 2011 Symposium Opening Adoption: Realities, Possibilities and Challenges. Through this symposium, we seek to open a dialogue in our community about many facets of adoption. We hope that presenters and attendees will have opportunities to discuss, from multiple viewpoints, adoption as a lifelong process. We are open to presentations that are about adoption in general or specifically about one type of adoption. We do not intend for this symposium to only discuss open adoption nor to only discuss adoption from a positive or negative perspective. We seek and expect to have a wide range of perspectives to give a full view of the complexity of the issues and to allow attendees an opportunity to consider adoption from another perspective other than their own. Please consider in your proposal how you can structure Continue Reading →

It’s enough to make a girl…

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This will be short tonight since I got a late start. This morning I reconnected with a cousin on Facebook I’ve not spoken to for years. I have lots of family pictures, and scanned a few of them tonight for FB and her. Looking at these old pictures reminded me that once upon a time we weren’t adopted. I don’t mean the obvious: that time between birth and finalization. But when we were older, when even if you knew you were adopted you didn’t know about the political and personal consequences and disabilities. There’s a kind of innocence about about those days, (if you were fortunate) before you figured out that you were a pawn in a lot of other people’s games. People you’d never heard of and didn’t care about then–or now. Sealed records and adoption secrets may be our agenda, but we, as individuals and as a class, are part of so many more public agendas: abortion women’s status, welfare, political platforms, , taxes, “privacy,” race, class, gender, christian conversion, infertility, child abuse, custody disputes, high tech repro, political correctness, immigration, trafficking, child abandonment, globalism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, State Department deals. You can probably think of more. Leave us Continue Reading →

My Second Adoptee: James MacArthur

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The Young Stranger had a terrific impact on me. I knew by my voracious reading of movie magazines that James MacArthur was adopted. When I saw the film, I was at the age where I was angry about a lot of stuff, including adoption, though I had yet to intellectualize much of it. I’d made a speciality of systematically rummaging through the house while my parents were away, looking for anything about my adoption. (It never seriously occurred to me to ask, since I was sure tears would ensue. They had a year earlier when I’d shouted “You can’t tell me what to do . You’re not my real mother.”) The Young Stranger had nothing to do with adoption, but it was about identify formation, hypocrisy, and crappy middle class status styles. And Hal Ditmar was portrayed by an adoptee. Was James MacArthur playing out adoption? I felt like he was playing out mine. Continue Reading →

Pound Pup: Why the Hague Convention Needs Revised

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Pound Pup Legacy has a very important piece up: Why the Hague Convention Needs Revised. I was going to comment about it later, but now is a good a time as any to get it out. I’ll probably say more later when I calm down from losing the blog I intended to post today. This is the type of research and writing our side does so well. It needs to be distributed far and wide. The adoption industry thinks that by ignoring what writers like and Kerry and Niels say, that it and they will go away. It won’t. And we won’t. Here is a sample: In order to “earn” adoptable infants, adoption agencies and prospective adopters make donations to orphanages. The more money donated, the larger the number of infants an agency is entitled to. Orphanages don’t necessarily have a shortage of children in their care, but many don’t have a large supply of adoptable infants. When orphanages receive more donations than they have adoptable infant stock, they need to procure infants to fulfill their obligation. The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-Country Adoption. The Hague convention was introduced in the 1990’s Continue Reading →

Blog Explodes

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OK, I spent hours writing a blog tonight. I tried to fix a broken link and the whole thing except for the last couple paragraphs just went poof right off the screen and the “new version” automatically saved itself. I ‘ve had it. In a separate post, I’ll put up a short piece and go to bed I’ve had it. I will try to reconstruct tomorrow.

Betty Anderson: A Little Clip from Peyton Place

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Peyton Place, the book, the movie, the TV nighttime drama, is all about repressed sexuality, illicit sex, bastards, and unwed mothers. I love it. I can still see TV Allison (Mia Farrow) running downstairs each morning on her way to school, kissing the magazine cut-out of her “father” that her mother Constance MacKenzie had so lovingly framed and placed on the mantle. The dead war hero. Hmmm, not exactly! Connie has issues, but they’re for another time. Then, there was Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) and Rodney Harrington (Ryan O’Neill), small town beauties made for each other, except… Rodney the rich boy and Betty, the not quite from-the-other side-of-the-tracks but low enough on the social ladder to be unacceptable. (Adding to the lovers’ problems was the ick factor affair between Betty’s mother and Rodney’s father.) I could write about Peyton Place for days, and at some point I will probably return to it. Since I’m still strapped for time tonight, though I’m posing this clip from the TV show. I love Betty’s talk with Allison at the pillory on the town square; her knowledge that they stand as a silent mediator of female transgression, especially for those who know and then Continue Reading →

God’s Heart Adoption: An Adoption Theology Cheat Sheet

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I’m working on a paid typing job for the next couple days and have limited time to devote to writing tonight. But NaBloPoMo calls. So here, for your delight is God’s Heart: Adoption, a video flogging orphan adoption (Tomorrow is World Orphans Day 2010, an evangelical marketing tool placed right in the middle of NAAM to move “orphan” product. I’ve decided not to write about Orphans Day, but I’m sure someone will). Orphans or thereabouts, of course, are only secondary to the real message of God’s Heart: the Great Commissioning of “Christians” via adoption. You can not only save a child for Christ, but the kid(s) seals that promise that you’ll make it to the Face of God. A friend of mine says of his devout Catholic adoptive parents: Adoption was their stairway to heaven. I have a video (not online, but a personal possession) of Kansas Senator (and Governor-elect) Sam Brownback, sobbing that adopting children is the way to heaven. He picked up two from China, so he and the Mrs. are on their way, gold seals in hand. If you’re one of those ungrateful adoptees whining about having no history or context or roots or birth certificates, shame Continue Reading →

Mary Gauthier: The Founding clip

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Mary Gauthier is one of the great and grand treasures of AdoptionLand. She recently released a new CD, The Foundling, about…guess what! Below is a video of a live performance of the title song performed by Mary and Tania Elizabeth performed and at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre in June. On her webpage, Mary writes of the adoptee rights movement: There are so many people involved in the Adoptees Rights Movement. There are birth mothers who have grown and changed and come to a place where they want to meet their children, or have lost the chance to meet their own but recognize how valuable the knowledge of origin could be to the children who do seek. There are adoptees who are working together to counteract the shame and deep loss they’ve experienced, and to co-create a world where children are no longer seen as commodities. There are adoptive parents who see in their children their true natures, and honor them by letting the children keep their original names, taking them to where they came from, keeping in contact with birth parents when possible, showing them, quite literally, that their love for them does not hinge on them pretending Continue Reading →