The First AFAAD Dinner

Here’s an announcement courtesy of the TRARepresent listserv.  I hope they don’t mind me throwing up a little promotion for their org, I just thought some of you out in the Bay area would be interested.  -G.S.
Hey all -

Its time to have our first AFAAD (adopted and fostered adults of the
african diaspora) Bay Area dinner! I’ve been doing lots of work
getting us to non-profit status, developing some marketing strategies
and thinking hard about the international nature of where we want the
organization to go.

This is not a working meeting, even though I will be discussing what
each and everyone of you want out of our gathering together. This is
more of a meet and greet, tell stories (or not) but just be together
‘thang’. If you are interested in the development of the organization
itself, make sure I know about your interest -
we’ll be having a working meeting soon.

Please bring other folks you know!! and please also be sure you are
sending me emails and names when you come across folks so we can add
them to the AFAAD member email list.

DINNER Details -
Siam Bay Thai Resturant
1009 Clay Street (btwn 10th and 11th)
Oakland, CA

(510) 452-1499

I hope you can make it. Please call me or email me if you have
questions. 510-836-0133

I cant wait to see everyone. PLEASE RSVP!!
Lisa Marie

To join AFAAD email list:

groups.yahoo.com/group/afaad/join

http://afaad.wordpress.com
TRA Represent!

A Day for Adoptee Rights

Sorry for all the posts-I’ll take some time off after this post to let you chew on all my previous posts today.  I just thought this was an interesting email I got from the K@W listserv that you would all be interested in.

G.S.

A day for adoptee rights!

Please forward to all adoption forums and list:

A DAY FOR ADOPTEE RIGHTS!
July 20 -27, 2008
New Orleans, LA

The National Conference of State Legislatures is the largest group of
its kind, the national organization of STATE LAWMAKERS, the people
who DECIDE whether you may access your records… OR NOT.

We propose a one day PROTEST FOR ADOPTEE RIGHTS at the National
Conference of State Legislature’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA,
on a date to be determined during the week of July 20th, 2008. We
propose a mass action of adoptees representing all fifty states, a
one-day rally that will be an opportunity for adoptees demonstrate
their commitment to adoptee rights and to meet their state
delegation. WON’T YOU JOIN US?

WE NEED EVERYONE WHO SUPPORTS THE RIGHTS OF ADOPTEES TO ACCESS THEIR
RECORDS OF BIRTH TO COME AND SHOW THESE LAWMAKERS THAT YOU CARE!
Adult adoptees, first families, adoptive families, friends and
supporters… EVERYONE.

To find updated information and to sign up for AR 2008 New Orleans,
please go to www.adopteerights.net. Organizations interested in
participating and sponsorship are encouraged to contact Ron Morgan,
bb_church@adopteerights.net. See you there!

Adoptee Rights 2008 Committee

Suicide at UC Davis

Suicides a symptom of larger UC crisis

As more students with mental health problems enroll, campuses lack the resources to cope.

By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer
May 23, 2007

 

Ok I really don’t want to have to paste this article in because it is sooo long but please take the time to take a look at this article.  I think it is really indicative of a major major health problem that has occurred as a result of the VT incident.  Health officials on campuses across the United States look to VT as an indicator that depression is on the rise.  And while that may entirely true, there are some rather important factors lurking in the background that are not considered.

 

For instance, not once in this article is there any mention of race except for comparing Tse to Cho Seung Hui in the same sentence.  It’s as if healthcare is colorblind.  There is no particular consideration of race when analyzing these particular cases.  Just health practitioners commenting that suicide and depression is on the rise and that baby boomers can no longer sit idly by and watch their children succumb to their deaths.  I really do think this is where mental health breaks down in the U.S.  When there is no attempts to look at societal factors, or stereotypical portrayals that influence the ways in which many people of color, in this case Asian Americans are cast.  Asian Americans are cast as the Model Minority-a title that harshly becomes the fulcrum for many students’ discontent and perhaps depression.  These are serious and real issues affecting the Asian American community, and there are no REAL services out there for Asian Americans to turn to other than the mainstream mental health services that pat you on the back say “many young students such as yourself struggle with depression,” give you a bottle of Prozac, and send you on your way.  Looking at racialized societal pressures is a good gauge to measure the inadequacy of U.S. mental health services in addressing the ways in which Asian Americans are pedestalized as the Model Minority and are increasingly buckling under the pressure.

 

I’m not saying that all Asian Americans are depressed or suicidal, but I am saying that these sort of suicide stories in newspapers are so removed from perhaps what might be the much harsher racialized reality in many of these young peoples lives.  Many journalists and health officials seem almost perplexed by these young people, and advocate for increased funding for “General” health services on college campuses.  These are not the sort of services that are needed the most from the Asian American population perhaps.

 

In conclusion, health practitioners need to take an Asian American studies course!  All kidding aside they do need to understand that depression and suicide for Asian Americans does not happen within a societal vaccuum.  You can’t just add them to the annual youth suicide statistics or depression medicated.  While we may be seen as the Model Minority, we are still a “minority”-a population of 5% in this country.  Colorblind methodologies within mental health institutions become a sort of tunnel vision that inevitably hurts the Asian American community by glazing over the societal roots at stake.  Ironically this same sort of tunnel vision is the same sort of pain that many go through day to day who are unable to see that there is a way out, or that their lives make a matter to anyone else.

What is Pro Busqueda?

Thanks to the K@W listserv for reminding me of Pro Busqueda.  Some of you may recall a few posts in the past referring to El Salvadoran adoptees and various organizations that have sprung up since then.  Pro Busqueda is one of them, and I just thought I’d highlight it for everyone to see.

What is Pro Búsqueda

What is Pro Busqueda? Pro Busqueda is an Association of Salvadoran families who have suffered – and in some cases continue to suffer- from the forced disappearance of their sons and daughters due to the civil war in El Salvador.

The activities carried out by Pro Busqueda are situated within the civilian victims of war movement in El Salvador together with the heroic committees of the Mothers of the Disappeared: COMADRES, CODEFAM, Y COMFAC.

Pro Busqueda was founded on the basis of a simple but brutal question that rips with pain the hearts of the mothers and fathers who live in anguish: Where is my son? Where is my daughter? From these questions the Association has over time evolved its mission to its now solid form of to “Search and locate children who disappeared as a result of the armed conflict in El Salvador, and once found, to promote the reunification and reintegration of the family unit. In this fashion the demands for truth, justice and reparation, which the victims have against the Salvadoran state, come to pass.”

The most notable aspect of Pro Busqueda’s members is their ability to maintain their unity for such a long time. 12 years have passed and more than 500 families of farmers from humble homes maintain their unity with the hope of finding their disappeared sons and daughters.

Other countries of the Central American region who also suffered from armed conflicts during the 70`s and 80`s are not exempt from the problem of missing children. Pro-Búsqueda has regionalized and extended the topic at hand by sharing their experience in other countries, particularly with the Human Rights Institutions in Guatemala, which form the Guatemalan National Search Commission (Comisiòn Nacional de Busqueda).

The Association of Pro Busqueda has reached a level of development, in which compared to human life, is equal to a mature age. From this perspective it is noted that the Association is at its peak in its struggle of political advocacy due to the decision and sentencing of the International Human Rights Court in the Serrano Cruz case. From this Pro Busqueda has become a direct activist when dealing with the topic of justice and its relations with the Salvadoran state.

Crazy Cakes?

I just found this interview in the Boston Globe about author Rose Lewis of Needham, MA. I can’t say I’ve read or heard of her first book about her daughter who is a Chinese adoptee, but judging by the content of this interview, I’m a little concerned. I know I can’t really judge since I haven’t read it but I do think there are a number of issues that I’d hope she’d set straight in her book.

In the interview below she discusses the “universal chord of falling in love with your child adopted or biological.” Perhaps she means well, but I smell some colorblind parenting in between the margins-Somebody may have to set me straight who has read her book, but my initial adoptee-radar went off when I read that sentence.

—————————–

Take Two

(Boston Globe)

Crazy Cakes, her first children’s book about her adopted daughter, Ming, was a bestseller. So naturally, Needham’s Rose Lewis revisits the subject of children in her second book.

By Amy Yelin | May 27, 2007

I Love You Like Crazy Cakes was a runaway bestseller. Did that surprise you?
I am still surprised by its success. I guess it struck a universal chord, because it’s about falling in love with your child, biological or adopted. The thing I was most humbled by was how this book inspired other women to adopt.

What about children’s responses?
I remember when a mother introduced me to her daughter once, and I was with Ming. She said her daughter was a huge fan of the book, so I asked her if they wanted to meet the little girl in the book. The mother quickly waved me off and whispered, “No, no. She thinks the story is about her.”

What is your new book, Every Year on Your Birthday, about?
The underlying message is the loving bond between any parent and child. I put it in the context of birthdays, because children love celebrating their birthdays. For their parents, I think it’s more powerful. Who doesn’t wonder “Where has all the time gone” after each birthday?

And why wait seven years between titles?
[The illustrator] Jane Dyer wasn’t available for five years. I wanted to wait for her.

How did you two begin your collaboration?
I was a huge fan of Jane’s, even before I wrote Crazy Cakes. When I contacted the publisher, I asked that Jane illustrate the book – I wasn’t aware at the time that you’re really not supposed to do that.

Why did you start writing?
I was looking for a book that summed up my own experience and what I wanted to say about adopting. . . . I decided to go after Jane Dyer’s publisher because I was a big fan of her books. So I contacted Little, Brown – in fact, they were the only publisher I contacted – and they said yes.

Wow. That’s almost unheard of.
It was wonderful.

You and Ming, 11, recently returned from a visit to the orphanage where she lived in China. Why did you go back?
Ming has been curious about her birth parents since she was about 5. I know she will always have a hole in her heart because she won’t know anything about her birth family. The trip was a way to help her fulfill some of that curiosity.

Did it?
There was something comforting about the experience. While neither of us said it exactly, I think we both felt that some questions had been answered, and we could now visualize Ming’s beginnings. My hope was to give her a sense of place that she can refer to, a sense of where she came from – her roots.
– Amy Yelin

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, the First Person interview in today’s Globe magazine misquoted author Rose Lewis. Lewis did not use the term real parents when referring to her daughter Ming’s birth parents.)

Kris Pak of K@W Poses Real Questions about Adoptees and Current Immigration Bill

Thanks to Kris Pak of the Korean Adoptees Worldwide listserv for posting this response to the recent proposed immigration bill on the table. I think she brings up some very real consequences for the thousands of adoptees who are not naturalized in the U.S.

By Kris Pak

Everyone who is in the US should be contacting their Senators to tell them
that this “bargain” is too costly-don’t support the proposal.

The “Grand Bargain” that is being proposed as law right now is not a
favorable solution for immigrants either documented or undocumented. The
worst part will be the “touch back provision” that requires people to
petition for legalization from their countries of origin. Do I really have
to spell out the implications for international adoptees whose parents
failed to get their status’ straight? The $5000 in fines is prohibitive for
most people and will especially burden families with more than person who
wants to change their status. The guest-worker Z Visa program will put many
people in a very dangerously exploitative position with their employers
because immigrants will be deportable if they EVER are unemployed. What will
that mean for their children born here? More adoptable kids available? Hmmm.

The bill also will establish English as the official language of the United
States. This could mean that ethnic stores and business will be required to
use only English, that church services in other languages could be deemed to
be illegal, and media in non-English languages could be shut down. This
would also supercede the official bilingual status in New Mexico which is
officially English and Spanish since it joined the union and became a state
and Hawaii.

How are immigrants supposed to learn English? Online. Not easy if you don’t
have a computer or if you have a disability.

Finally, the end of the ability for citizens and green card holders to
sponsor family immigration may have grave consequences for all of us but
international adoptees, especially men often marry immigrant or second
generation non-adopted women from their countries. This bill is bad and it
is NOT amnesty. (I wish that it were! With the same POSITIVE results as the
1986 amnesty.)

Just as a point for one of the largest group of adoptive parents and
adoptees: The FIRST immigration laws passed were all to stop immigration
from China to the U.S. This includes of course, the Chinese Exclusion Act
AND in 1904 the first border patrol was established to stop CHINESE from
crossing the Mexican/U.S. border.
www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/index.html

Adopted man returns to Colombia, finds birth mother had died

::gives a nod to SJ from the K@W list yet again for this article::

(By the way sorry for dropping a huge post load today, but I’ve been out of it lately so I thought I’d make up for lost time) -G.S.

Adopted man returns to Colombia, finds birth mother had died

Jason Tait

HAVERHILL — Chris Hallock was standing near a dirt trail in Colombia
when his quest came to an end — he was told his biological mother was
dead — and he wept.

Hallock, who grew up in an upper-middle-class white family in
Bedford, N.H., was adopted as an infant from an orphanage in
Colombia.

Cut off from his native land, he yearned to learn his roots, setting
off as an adult three times to Colombia to find answers to his past.

“I had to know what this woman looked like,” Hallock said of his
quest to meet his biological mother. “I had to know her face.”

It was on the last trip to Colombia in 2004 he learned the truth
about his mother, Ana Isabel Chunza, who died more than 10 years
earlier. He filmed the trip, including the emotional moments he found
out about his mother and later met his half-brother Roberto, and
created a 120-minute documentary film called “Rebirth.”

Hallock, 36, will screen the film at Maria’s Family Restaurant on
Locust Street in Haverhill tonight, headlining a festival celebrating
Colombian culture.

The film aims to help children who are adopted from Latin America who
want to learn about their homeland.

“Searching for the answers … burning in my thoughts for so long
have made me feel complete as a person,” Hallock said.

Haverhill resident Carmenza Bruff, who moved to the United State from
Colombia 28 years ago, has been helping Hallock learn more about
Colombia. She is a member of the Colombian Cultural Committee of the
Merrimack Valley.

“I commend Chris for taking the time and exploring where his roots
are,” Bruff said. “I think it plays a role in the identity part for
any human being. It’s a right an individual has is to look for roots.”

Tonight’s festival is sponsored by the Colombian Cultural Committee,
a group founded by Lawrence City Councilor Nunizo DiMarco to fight
Colombian stereotypes — cocaine production, corruption and
kidnapping, among them.

Tonight’s event costs $20 and includes a dancing show by Boston-based
BAJUCOL Colombian Folkloric Dance Group and a presentation by
Colombian writer German Ortiz.

The profits will benefit an orphanage or adoption agency in Colombia,
DiMarco said.

Hallock’s story starts in Bedford, N.H., where he grew up with his
adoptive parents, Bill and Judy Hallock. They told him early on he
was from Colombia, and would sometimes give him gifts heralding his
home nation, such as a parking sign for “Colombians Only.”

The younger Hallock remembers the moment he knew he had to know even
more about this past.

His father dropped him off to play pick-up basketball, and to his
surprise, several Spanish-speaking Latino men from the inner-city
were there.

Hallock, who was 15 at the time, thought he knew their type from
watching television — knife-wielding troublemakers. Teams were
divided into shirts and skins, and bare-chested Hallock took a quick
break to the bathroom. He prejudices hit him in the face.

“I ended up looking in the mirror and thinking, `oh my God, I’m one
of them,’ ” Hallock said of seeing his darker skin.

He has since been eager to learn the language, culture and history of
Colombia and his family.

On his third trip to Colombia, he found the small town his mother
came from and went from door-to-door with a translator looking for
her. Eventually he found his aunt who took him to a decrepit white
shack where his mother once lived. It was then he found out she died
in 1993.

But he also found out that he had an older half-brother, who he later
found and who told him the story of why he was adopted.

Hallock’s mother was working as a waitress in a restaurant, living in
a back room at the diner. She gave birth to him and the restaurant
owner said the baby could not live there with her. She wanted to give
the baby boy a better life and allowed police to take Hallock to an
orphanage.

More then three decades later, Hallock visited his mother’s grave in
the city of Bogota with Roberto.

“The visit to her grave site was never a thought in my mind before
the trip,” he said. “I had always thought I would meet her in person.”

http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_story_139013257.html

Deann Borshay Liem’s NEW Film

For those of you who saw Deann Borshay Liem’s “First Person Plural” documentary on PBS, just thought you’d all be interested in her new film titled Precious Objects of Desire. Thanks for Sunny Jo as always for her great posts on the K@W listserv.  If you’re interested in seeing Deann’s “First Person Plural” check my links section called “Adoptee Film Bibliography.”

IN PRODUCTION

FILMMAKER’S STATEMENT: Cha Jung Hee was a fellow orphan at the Sun Duck Orphanage in South Korea in the 1960s. She and I had nothing in common and I did not know her personally. And yet, at age 8, just before I was sent to the U.S. to be adopted by the Borshay family in California, my identity was switched with hers without anyone’s knowledge. I was given Cha Jung Hee’s name, birth date and family history and told to keep the switch a secret. Simultaneously, through a bureaucratic sleight of hand, my previous identity was completely erased.

For years, Cha Jung Hee was, paradoxically, both a stranger and also my official identity – a persona unknown, but always present, defining my life. In Precious Objects of Desire, I will search for Cha Jung Hee to finally put her erstwhile existence to rest by meeting her in real life and finding out how she has fared.

In the course of searching for Cha Jung Hee, I will interview a diverse selection of Korean orphans and adoptees, each with their own quests and extraordinary stories to tell. A biracial Korean-Black war orphan, shunned by Korean society, who as an adult meets potential biological siblings; twins adopted and raised in France, who speak only the French language, on their way “home” to Korea to visit their birth mother; an orphan from the North who was sent with several thousand War orphans to Romania who recalls what it was like to grow up in a boarding school in Eastern Europe; and many others.

These stories will be contextualized within a history of adoptions from Korea starting with the Korean War. Together, they will illuminate how international adoptions from Korea are closely associated with U.S. military involvement on the Korean peninsula, the prosperity and optimism of American society following World War II, and Cold War politics, all of which have led South Korea to become the number one “exporter” of children overseas and the U.S. the largest “importer” of adopted children in the world.

- Deann Borshay Liem

Adoptee Sifts Through Stolen Past

Thanks Sunny Jo and the K@W listserv.

Adoptee Sifts Through Stolen Past 

At the age of 3, Lily Schur was kidnapped from her parents and adopted away to the United States.
Now 22, Lily is a brightly smiling young woman with a positive outlook on aspects of her past that are just beyond the reach of her memory.
Having been adopted by a white American family, she first returned to the Korean Peninsula at age 13 as part of an adoptee program. “There was that feeling that I’d been here before,” said Lily, whose Korean name is Kim Jang-mee. “Even to this day, I’m not sure if it’s a real memory.”
It was during that trip that she first met her birth mother. “I found out a day before that I was going to meet my mom,” she said. “She was very emotional, constantly apologizing.” Lily’s smile doesn’t falter as she describes the experience. “She seemed like just another person,” said Lily. “I think my experience would have been different had I been older.”
Her mother insisted on explaining what had happened. Her birth father’s strict parents did not believe that Lily’s parents were capable of taking care of her. One day, they took her to Seoul (the family lived in Busan), and quickly put her through the adoption process. “By the time my parents found out I was gone, I had already been adopted,” said Lily.
Now she is back living in her native country and studying Korean from the ground up. She is writing a thesis for the University of Minnesota about the experience of the many Korean children, now adults, who were adopted during the years of economic hardship after the Korean War.
“People would joke that Korea’s main export was babies,” she said, estimating the number of adoptees around the world at 200,000.

By Richard Scott-Ashe Contributing Writer [richard@joongang.co.kr]

Joon Hyun Kim’s a Success

Some of you may remember the story of Joon Hyun Kim. It echoes several similar stories of adoptees caught up in the immigration and citizenship process exacerbated by their criminal records. If you’re interested in reading Mr. Kim’s story again check out my post on May 7, 2007.

I just received word that a judged ruled in his favor canceling the removal (deportation) charges originally brought against him. I’ve been told that the judge said “everybody has family problems,” and that paired with expert testimony have paved the way for his deportation charges to be dropped.

I’m thrilled to hear that Mr. Kim’s case was successful-but I also feel that again, this brings up many more unanswered questions in regards to citizenship and the immigration debate which currently is being revisited. Prior to Mr. Kim’s deportation charges being dropped, in a sense, many transracial adoptees waited with baited breath. I mentioned this concept a month ago in reaction to one discussion on TRA at the AAAS conference. It’s almost as if transracial Asian adoptees are the model minority within the model minority. How do most deportation trials go when family members of Latino descent ask to stay with their children in the U.S.?

I just hope that we can look at these nuanced experiences as adoptees residing within current immigration debates. How do we exist as immigrants, and how do we not? How are we privileged immigrants in ways that non-adoptee immigrants are not? How is it that many of us take it for granted that we were naturalized in the U.S. and pay no attention to the thousands and millions of immigrant families who are just as entitled to the lives we lead? It’s a success story for Mr. Kim, and to many other adoptees in similar situations. But I think that even further, it is a testament to the fact that there is room to reapply these same leniencies to the thousands of immigrant families who ironically, have waged symbolic campaigns to legally adopt those illegally in residence. How many conservatives will see Mr. Kim’s case as amnesty? This case was obviously not predicated on any notion of amnesty, it was based solely on his character as an American and caught between dueling worlds-not very different from immigrant families who are caught between their home countries and the very real needs of their families and the very real visceral feeling that any parent can attest to of wanting to provide the very best. But how many of these families are evaluated on the basis of character or realizing like Mr. Kim’s judge did that learning a new language and culture are extremely difficult and far near impossible. These same immigrant families deal with this every day living in the U.S. and yet are treated much worse than Mr. Kim was in his deportation hearing. Most aren’t even granted fair hearing or trial.

Not to put a dampen on his victory which I think is a huge victory for the many adoptees whose parents for whatever reasons did not naturalize them, but I do think there are ways for us to take this victory and move towards a more universal goal of civil liberties and citizenship for all undocumented immigrants.