Whatever Next? E-Book

Josephine Jay

• Herausgeber: 404 Ink
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Inklings
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 106

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

For adoptees, the word 'lucky' gets thrown around a lot. They're regularly told they're lucky to not be in an orphanage, lucky to have been brought into a family, lucky to be adopted at all. Often they're depicted in media as being broken, in need of saving and fixing. Then they're expected to become the hero of their own journeys and overcome their origins. Whatever Next? considers how these traditional narratives surrounding adoption have both dominated and damaged adoptive communities for many years, and what we should do to avoid these pitfalls. Inspired by the conversations within their Whatever Next? community project, Jo, Addie and Hannah explore the key tropes that adoptees grapple with and how these conversations are evolving, with the goal of kickstarting new dialogues around the adoption experience more broadly, and showcase how beneficial shared discussion can be.

Leseprobe

Whatever Next?

Published by 404 Ink Limited

www.404Ink.com

@404Ink

All rights reserved © Josephine Jay, Adaline Bara, Hannah Feben-Smith, 2022.

The right of Josephine Jay, Adaline Bara and Hannah Feben-Smith to be identified as the Authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the rights owner, except for the use of brief quotations in reviews.

Please note: Some references include URLs which may change or be unavailable after publication of this book. All references within endnotes were accessible and accurate as of July 2022 but may experience link rot from there on in.

Editing: Laura Jones

Proofreading: Heather McDaid

Typesetting: Laura Jones

Cover design: Luke Bird

Co-founders and publishers of 404 Ink:

Heather McDaid & Laura Jones

Print ISBN: 978-1-912489-62-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-912489-63-3

Whatever Next?

On Adult Adoptee Identities

Josephine Jay

Adaline Bara

Hannah Feben-Smith

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Jo: ‘Lucky’

Chapter 2 – Addie: ‘Broken’

Chapter 3 – Hannah: ‘Heroic’

Conclusion

References

Acknowledgements 

About the Authors

About the Inklings series

Introduction

Whatever is this?

Like a trio of boomers converging on a spicy political meme, we met in a Facebook comment section. Specifically, we met via a Facebook group for UK-based Chinese adoptees, of all places. It was 2019 and we learned that Addie, who grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, was at that time in Scotland visiting her now-husband, while Hannah grew up in Dorset and was studying at The University of Edinburgh, and Jo, who grew up in London, was working in a restaurant in Edinburgh’s city centre. We often look back at that moment with a bit of wonder at the serendipity and oddness of it all that we three, all born on the other side of the world, moved our online conversation into the real world and came to meet in a small café in Scotland where those first few discussions blossomed into a project and now this book.

Whatever Next? – our project and our baby – officially started in January 2021. It was born out of conversations we found ourselves having again and again, questioning what it was like growing up as a Chinese adoptee in the West, the high points, the low, the questions, the self-doubt, the ugly and the in-between. We wanted to share conversations surrounding adoption with other adoptees and those curious about it as we grow up to reflect on our entry into adulthood. Adoption theory, history and culture were all topics up for discussion and we began work on creating a resource with whatevernext2020.co.uk and a podcast that provides questions and answers for topics such as racism, adulting, ‘lucky’ narratives, white saviourism, interracial adoption and so much more.

Whyever did we write this book? 

Adoption is a lifelong process. It is not a ‘one size fits all’ experience. The most dominant adoptive narratives that exist within society and media today are reductive stereotypes that are resistant to individual nuances. Stereotypes such as the ‘white saviour’ narrative, the ‘permanent child’ concept and the ‘Hero’s Journey’ all operate with specific ideological intention and often result in harm, stigma, and racial injustice. These narratives have been ingested and perpetuated by society at large, including the well-intentioned, those who have never really paid much mind to the subject, even people such as yourself. This is why we wanted to write our book – to challenge and counter.

We want to address the culture of silence that has dominated the lives of previous generations of adoptees, both internationally and domestically. We want to create a space in which adoptee-led discussions about adoption can develop alongside our own reflections of our journeys into adulthood. We want to open dialogue about what it means to be an adoptee in today’s world for those both within and outside of what is known as the adoptive triangle (a term used to describe adoptive parents, birth parents, and the child)*, to bridge gaps in the wider adoptee narrative.

Saying this, today’s conversations surrounding adoption are changing as the current socio-political climate is shifting to include and centre marginalised voices. Throughout the generational and international range of adoptees, there is an overall movement towards adoptee-led discussion that promotes a greater understanding of the intersectional elements of adoption. We believe that adoptees should have access to narratives and stories similar to their own. There are no textbook ways to deal with or digest adoption (although there are definitely some bad ones). Our main aim is to spark conversations and bring them outside of the adoptive triangle to make the experience a little less isolating for all those involved.

As Chinese-American and Chinese-British adoptees, we have grown up straddling the borders of several identities. Identities contain multitudes and adoptees hold so many. The purpose of Whatever Next? is to gently unpick a few of these identities and to explain how traditional narratives surrounding adoption have dominated and harmed the community at large.

This is not meant as a rant (we have our podcast for that); its purpose, instead, is to look at how our individual experiences, and those of many others, have been shaped in opposition to the narratives that reduce us to stereotypes. We grew up in quite different environments, and yet, through talking to each other, and to other adoptees we have encountered throughout the project and in our personal lives, we have found symmetry in our adoptive experiences. We have identified three dominant strands within traditional adoptive narratives seen commonly depicted in media portrayals of adoptees. The ones which we want to home in are ‘lucky’, ‘broken’ and ‘heroic’ and the ways in which they have shaped us.

To begin our unpicking, we’ll go back to the very beginning and give a brief history of ourselves, adoption and the role it has played across the ages. Given some of the current conversations surrounding women’s bodily autonomy and rights**, adoption is still a pressing topic within today’s political landscape.

Whoever are we?

Jo was adopted from Fuyang, China at sixteen months old. She was raised in London as an only child, including all the isms that come with it. At eighteen, she made the decision to go on a birth-search and reconnected with her family, discovering in the process that after eighteen years of living life as a Libra, she is, in fact, a Scorpio. She read Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh and currently works for Intercultural Youth Scotland, as well as freelancing as an artist and writer, and she was longlisted for a Scottish Portrait Award. Bill, her sausage dog, is Whatever Next?’s fourth honorary member.

Addie was adopted from Hunan at eight months old. She was raised by two mums alongside two adopted sisters in Kansas City, Missouri. She is currently studying Population Health and working as a freelance artist. At nineteen, she moved to Hanoi in Vietnam, where she lived for four years while studying design and worked as an events coordinator. She loves connecting with adoptees wherever she goes in the world, and were it not for her, the three of us would have never connected and Whatever Next? would not be where it is now.

Hannah was adopted from Nanning in Guangxi Province at twenty months old. She grew up as an only child in Dorset, home to the best, and most beautiful of beaches as well as many cows and sheep. At the time of writing, she is in her final (and most stressful) year studying Linguistics and Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. It was not until moving to Edinburgh for university that she began to reflect upon her identity, which has fed into her dissertation looking at online adoptive communities and the role this plays in identity and belongingness amongst Chinese-British adoptees. In her spare time, Hannah is a talented piano player and enjoys solving Rubik’s cubes whilst blindfolded.

Whatever does our name mean?

We chose the name Whatever Next? after the children’s book of the same name that Jo’s mum used to read to her at bedtime. In this story by Jill Murphy, probably best known for the Worst Witch series, a little bear wants to go to the moon in a cardboard box before his routine bath. Full of questions and imagination, we felt Whatever Next? grasped at the same themes of uncertainty and confusion we felt upon our own entry into adulthood. We also started this project in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and the title resonated with the idea that it was okay not to know exactly what was around the corner.

Whoever is this book for?

A sound tunnel effect can often be found emanating from some of the adoptee spaces we find online as the same ideas around adoption whistle back and forth on the same social media platforms, pitching to an insular audience. A tendency towards gatekeeping is another element we have noticed and, while we see the benefit of adoptee-only spaces that are managed by adoptees, for adoptees, we also see the harm in restricting these conversations to the adoptive triangle only which is why this book is aimed towards everyone and anyone interested in the topic.

Bringing these conversations to those outside of the adoptive triangle is one of our main objectives, as is involving our loved ones in the dialogue to promote inclusion, education and empathy. In the beginning, as we began to tentatively dip our toes into online adoptive communities, we discovered intricacies and controversies within these spaces that fascinated us. We felt these were being eclipsed by the media’s fascination with and upholding of reductive adoptive narratives and we wanted to explore them further. The acceleration and complexity of these conversations address societal understandings of parenthood and identity, bringing new depth to the subject as we begin to acknowledge and accept that parenthood is not limited by blood or gender.

As alternative methods of family planning are becoming increasingly popular,1 particularly amongst younger generations who choose to start families at a later stage than their parents, adoption is no longer a last resort. Indeed, IVF and surrogacy are on the rise and feed into these discussions. We believe that those looking to adopt should have access to fuller resources that can improve their understanding of the process.

We were initially hesitant at the idea of committing our thoughts and opinions to paper. Assembling this book has been a challenge in many ways, particularly when it came to processing personal thoughts and feelings in a public arena for scrutiny. We are worried about being frozen and tied to these opinions considering adoptive identity inevitably fluctuates across a lifetime. Additionally, our opinions on these topics are not uniform – we regularly disagree amongst ourselves and have tried our best to reflect these divergences of thought throughout. The largest problem we have encountered within the whole project of Whatever Next? is how to share and raise awareness for this deeply personal topic without exploiting our own trauma within it. At the same time, however, we think it important to throw our two pennies’ worth out there for a fuller picture.

This fuller picture regularly includes a ‘fog’. The term ‘fog’ is often used to describe adoptee mindsets, where the adoptee has not yet fully processed or come to terms with the implications of being adopted and so actively seeks to repress the parts of their identity associated with adoption. Those ‘in the fog’ are hesitant or unwilling to look at their adoption critically while those who have ‘come out of the fog’ have or are in the process of addressing this.***

To us, ‘coming out of the fog’ suggests a sign-off date and a finality to the process which we are hesitant to fully endorse. When we say that adoptive identities fluctuate, we mean that, as with most other things, there are high days, holy days, and hellish ones. We are all of us works-in-progress and each adoptee will have different reactions to and relationships with the topics we discuss. Overall, we want to stress that these are merely three strands of an incredibly rich and diverse tapestry of thought and opinion, and so ought to be viewed in this context.

Whatever is the history of Chinese

adoption?

The three of us were adopted from China. Introduced in 1979, the One Child Policy was designed to curb rapid population rises with the aim of fostering economic growth. This was a reversal of the significant push during the 1960s when the government married procreation with patriotism, promoting the idea that having children was a vital duty to ensure China’s survival as a nation.