Beyond good intentions

With each passing hour that ticks by, the available space in my e-mail inbox slowly expands, breathing a sigh of relief from its bursting-at-the-seams state in which it found itself earlier this week. That’s not to say I didn’t partly bring the influx of heated, indignant cries upon myself by publishing what I wrote, which was just about as honest as it gets from me. (But maybe not quite.) I know this. I anticipated the reactions, somewhat — but I didn’t expect them to be as off-the-mark as many of them were.

Incensed adoptive moms shout-typing “SHAME ON YOU” and “Your mother must have done a pretty sloppy job raising you,” and “I feel so sorry for your mother” … waving pitchforks and lit torches alongside outraged, offended waiting APs who said things like, “I only hope my daughter doesn’t grow up to be as ungrateful and selfish as you are,” and, “Your hatred of loving acts such as adoption are irrelevant to me, as a Christian. Jesus loves us all. I hope you someday find your salvation in Him.”

*straight face*

A fascinating study in humanity. I had to keep reminding myself that these e-mails represented the thoughts of real people, not caricatures or parodies.

And so it begins for their children: the lifetime of guilt and shame. The proselytization. The indoctrination of the forced, artificial dichotomy of the right way to be an adoptee vs. the wrong way. The saving. The taming.

These children have already had the most important choice of their lives made for them. What I fear is that many of them will grow up having the rest of their choices taken away from them as well — the choice of being sad about feeling different (too depressing!); the choice of feeling angry at being made the target of racism (too scary!); the choice of yearning and searching for something that’s not there, without knowing what that empty space is, or whence it came (too antisocial!).

“No, no! Bad little adoptees! Feel happy! Be grateful! Be proud to be different! (Alternative admonition: ‘Don’t acknowledge that you’re different! You’re exactly the same!’) Ignore the taunts! Don’t examine the past — that’s unhealthy. Don’t acknowledge your feelings — unless they’re happy.”

(DS al coda)

I have been reading, a chapter at a time, Cheri Register’s book, Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children. I strongly encourage all adoptive parents — especially those whose internationally adopted children are still young — to read this book, in addition to the growing collection of memoirs and essays by adult transracial adoptees. A mother of two adult Korean adoptees, Cheri is an excellent writer, in addition to being a highly respected and perceptive member of the intercountry adoption community.

I’d like to cite a few brief excerpts from the introduction of Cheri’s book, which are available on the publisher’s Web site.

“… [I] have been listening to the voices of adult adoptees. They testify to the strengths and faults of adoptive family life on Internet lists and websites, at conferences on international adoption, and in poetry, memoirs, and documentary films. Their voices are on the leading edge of adoption literature, claiming the fertile ground where new truths arise to squeeze out the old, tired ones. Many of the voices are critical, and some of the testimony is difficult for parents to hear. Sometimes this listening has the furtive quality of eavesdropping. The adoptees are not always talking to or about us, but about themselves and their own present needs. They have more to gain from talking to each other and building community than from arguing with adoptive parents, either their own or the collective bunch of us.

“Nevertheless, we parents are eager to join the conversation, and we are accustomed to setting the terms. I watched this happen at the publication reading of Jane Jeong Trenka’s memoir, The Language of Blood, at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis in September 2003. The adoptees in the audience affirmed Trenka’s account of her childhood in rural Minnesota and her reunion with her Korean birth family; they added their own stories, which were sometimes halted in mid sentence by tears. Some of the adoptive parents seemed perplexed and distressed by this emotional intensity. They homed their questions in on the reasons for it and even tried to explain it away. An earnest couple, prospective parents waiting for a child from Guatemala, asked what they could do differently to make life turn out well for their own child so she would not end up sad or angry — in other words, like Jane and the adoptees in the audience.

“As a memoirist myself, I am mindful that readers cull personal stories for general advice and even measure the legitimacy of the personal account against what they already believe to be true. … We need to remember that adoptees are as unique and diverse as any other population. If we listen intently to their testimony, we curious parents can begin to discern patterns that will answer our questions. That’s more considerate than asking adoptees to plumb their pain for foolproof advice.

“Those who examine the abandonment and displacement that have shaped their lives owe us parents neither congratulations nor apologies nor explanations. It is not their duty to rescue us from our mistakes or to relieve the discomfort we feel when they are unhappy.”

“There is no foolproof way to raise children, especially children uprooted from their original families and cultures. The risks are tremendous, and it is the risks I have chosen to present: ten pitfalls that adoptive parents can easily slip into, with unfortunate consequences for their children and their family relationships.”

I could go on testing the limits of fair-use copyright law all night, transcribing quotations from this book that I find worth repeating, which echo ideas that I’ve attempted to express elsewhere in this blog — sometimes less effectively than I’d like. But just as many of us adult TRAs find an easier, more authentic sense of familiarity and comfort in communing with our fellow TRAs, I think adoptive parents, likewise, will consider this “adoptive parent speak” more compelling and genuine coming straight from the source — AP to AP.

So, I leave you with this unsolicited book plug, and a shout out for the upcoming release of another exciting book, Outsiders Within: Racial Crossings and Adoption Politics, a collection of essays written by transracially adopted adults who are scholars, writers and artists, including several of my friends and peers. Preorder it. Read it. Think about it.

The Yobo Adobo and I are jumping bail for the next several days, escaping to a neighbor isle (Which one? I’ll never tell! Muah-hah-ha-ha!), where we’ll be sunning, exploring, playing and — of course — eating, just like the old days. In honor of our interisland getaway, and to alleviate some of the e-mail swelling that recently has occurred, I have temporarily disabled my online contact form, and I probably won’t be monitoring my inbox for love letters or blog comments. I’m going on vacation, damnit! Aloha!