Two Adoptees Uncensored

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