I was thinking about how disorienting it is, the inside-out-and-backwards kinds of parallels between parents of young transracially adopted children learning to enable cultural connections to their children’s heritage, and adult transracial adoptees deciding if and how rigorously to “educate” our families and friends about our heritage and discoveries as we come into our own ethnic & cultural identities.
I don’t mean to imply that the two are the same. In fact, if the former task were executed more — shall we say — “effectively,” perhaps the latter task might not need to exist. Or at least perhaps it might not be such a battle.
As for the latter: Do we go there? If so, how much energy are we invested in expending?
Is it even our responsibility to educate them? If not, do we take it on anyway?
How persistent are we prepared to be, if we encounter resistance? If there is already a perceived cultural rift present, do we risk widening that rift at this stage in the game? Or is it in everyone’s better interests to maintain the peace we’ve fought to come by with our families as adults?
For those of us who have two families to make room for, we ask ourselves these questions twice.
Perhaps it is wiser to maintain the separation of the spheres, if that is how we adoptees can best reconcile our dichotomous identities.
I’ve chewed on this before, masticating out loud in previous blog entries, but as always, I continually return to and question the conclusions I’ve drawn in the past, and realize anew … there really are no simple endings.
(Addendum: Thanks to an off-blog conversation with a thoughtful adoptive parent, I would like to emphasize that the adult adoptee and the adoptive parent certainly have different circumstances on their hands. I wasn’t so much comparing our positions as equal and/or opposite parallels, but more juxtaposing them as warped through-the-looking-glass mirror images, when it comes to making these “cultural connections.”
I would say something about “coming full circle” if those words didn’t prompt my gag reflex to kick in.
It’s sort of like when Jor-El (birth father) tells Superman (trans-planetary adoptee) in the crystal Fortress of Solitude: “The son becomes the father, and the father, the son.”
Hmm. Or maybe not quite. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure what that means. How did Jor-El become the son? Whatever.
Korea is my Kryptonite.
You know, my abeoji did actually mumble a little bit like Marlon Brando.)
This is such a tough and tedious subject to think about and to talk about. I find myself as an adult faced with more and more adversary reactions to my beliefs as an adoptee from my parents (adoptive) than ever before.
My mother will plead fervously that she “wanted the best for you, and I was never like those other parents. I knew and accepted you were different, and that you were Korean and that I was Caucasian.”
Despite my efforts in trying to describe to her (or any of my family members and friends for that matter) the great strides or even the huge steps backward that I undertake each day in finding my own identity, the question always comes back to: Aren’t we good enough for you?
As if they are completely missing the point. That it is all about they’re wanting of acceptance from me, rather than really seeing the inner workings of my struggles day by day as I find my identity and a peace with myself.
It, unfortunately, has become a very lonely world. One where I have learned that not everyone is willing to take the time to listen – and even further, to try to understand (when I do find those who listen).
Is it our right or responsibility to educate them? At another time and another place I would have said yes. Because I wanted so desperately for those around me to understand what I was going through, to at least have the smallest companion even if strewn about in bits and pieces among my friends (ie, Sally understands my abandonment; Jon understands my anguish) but even so, I have come to be sort of half and half on the situation. It depends on circumstances…ie; a roommate thinks it’s perfectly okay to joke with me about racial stereotypes on Asian Americans due to being adopted and thinking that I “understood white people” with: “Aren’t you going to put a ton of bonsai trees in your room and eat lots of rice?”
I mean, I just had to knock his lights out.
Kick ‘im where it counts, Eun-jung!
I change my mind about this almost on a daily basis. Self-impose the task of “educating” in the most digestible and minimally painful ways (i.e., strategically placing copies of Outsiders Within, elaborating on my Korea travel plans, etc., etc.), or just accept the fact that the adoptive family (and non-adoptee friend) landscape is a nation apart from the “Korean me” and focus my energy elsewhere? Or, to hell with cutting it all up into bite-sized pieces and just open the floodgates?
I weeble and I wobble, and then — *thud* — ouch!
You’re right. It can be a lonely world. If you can find a few gems who “get it” and are “with you” there, hold onto them. They can be your lifeboat in troubled waters.
Still looking for my lifeboat, but it doesn’t look like my lifesaver is going to let out its air anytime soon…so I think I’ll just keep treading carefully until I find those special people I need in my life.
ps. Those are almost the very same questions I ask myself every day.
I often wonder about the value of “educating” adoptive parents too, I mean sometimes even the ones who are nice and say they learn so much from me la la la la la la, I just want to say, yeah, okay nice to know I am the wreck that you are trying to drive around so your child won’t in up like me.
Plus it seems most of these adoptive parents are under the impression they can out think adoption and separate an adoptee from their family in a NICE way. Which is crap as far as I am concerned—-
My High School Aged son’s teacher showed his class a video recently about int’l adoption and all the places one could acquire chidlren from and gushed about her adoptees and how she got to “be a part of their culture too by learning about it for them”
He said, “She thinks taking her kids to China town is going to make up for this? What is she retarded?”
I just don’t see how parents of another race could possibly offer something, they simply don’t have.