As a transracial and transnational adoptee scholar, organizer, and activist, I’m interested in using postcolonial feminist frameworks to analyze the material and cultural productions of adopted people (who are most often adopted as infants, children, and less often as youth), especially within transracial and transnational adoption.
By productions of adopted people, I mean the way people, namely infants and children who eventually become adults, are made into transracial and transnational adoptees. This occurs materially, for example, through their/our legal and embodied transfer from families of origin through adoption industries and overall child welfare systems, often moving from working class communities of color (and in the case of transnational adoption) from countries impacted by colonialism, imperialism, racism, militarism, “natural disasters”, etc to middle/upper class predominantly white populations in western countries that have participated in/profited from colonization, imperialism, militarism, racism, etc. This production also occurs culturally, for example, when the social phenomena of adoption and adoptee subject (not necessarily the adopted person themselves) reinforce state-sanctioned norms of the heteronormative patriarchal nuclear family and geopolitical value systems (i.e. transnational political power dynamics between western countries and “developing” countries). I’m also very interested in sitting with how these productions affect the holistic well being of adopted people, communities/families of origin, birth/first families, and groups/families vulnerable to separation. These are the kinds of things I’m interested in exploring more broadly.
In my workshop, I would like to further investigate the confluence of social injustices, adoption industries, and foster care systems. I’m curious about how feminist approaches in Gender Studies have interacted with Children and Youth Studies on issues related to adoption. I’d like to pair some perspectives that may not often be heard next to each other, such as adoption scholars and adoption abolition activists to reflect the possible overlaps/gaps/tension points and visions/desires for the future. I might use some of my own legal adoption documentation to explore the language invoked to declare my adoption official, and how this demonstrates some ways the law conceives of and produces the child, their best interests, and the adoptive parental figures. Who knows! Anyway, I’m excited about potential collaborations with people interested in the above. Please reach out to me for a chat if you’re keen. Thanks!
