Shownotes:
Meet Christopher: "I use he/him/his pronouns. I identify as a queer transracial adoptee. I was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, formerly known as Saigon, Vietnam. I was adopted from Vietnam when I was about a year old. I grew up in Sacramento, California. I was adopted by a white family and raised in a predominantly white community."
"We don't walk around with like a sign over our heads that says 'I'm adopted'....The adoptee identity is an invisible identity."
Here's some of what we talked about:
- Developing his racial identity and his adoptee identity
- Finding language to understand and express his experience
- Why the word "transracial" is so important
- Proximity to whiteness as adoptees of color with white parents
- Questioning the idea of being Asian "enough" and finding a third space
- The intersection of his queer and adoptee identities
- Why adoptees have a unique position in understanding race and racism
- What kinship and family ties mean to adoptees
Annie's take-aways for adoptive parents:
- Language matters. I need to find the most empowering language I can, and switch whenever I find more empowering language.
- My kid has an important voice in the future of adoption and race and it's totally his to find and explore and express.
- Adoptees need the biggest seats at the table where adoption gets reimagined.
Katelyn's take-aways for adoptees:
- The concept of enoughness is so helpful. I will never be "asian enough" in the context of white supremacy. I am enough.
- If we are not listening to the voices of adoptees, we are just theorizing and we will fall short.
- Adoptees have the least power in the adoption constellation, and we must re-empower them.
shownotes at https://www.listeningtoadoptees.com/episodes/6
