Adopted Territory

While reading Eleana J Kim’s Adopted Territory, I thought about a crazy conversation I had with my sister a couple of years ago. My sister is known for her big heart and crazy antics, so when she told me that she had planned to adopt a Chinese baby girl in about ten years, I wasn’t surprised. As usual I questioned why she would do that when there are healthy Black children in the foster care system that could also benefit from her love. Part of me thought that she was just trying to be trendy because that’s what Angelina Jolie and a number of other high profile celebrities were doing, but when she explained that it was because little girls aren’t desired in China, it made sense. I still wasn’t sold though. So then she proceeded to tell me that she was going to raise her as a Black woman, and that everything would work out fine because she was going to give this little girl all of the love that she would not have gotten in China. Although that always sounded problematic to me, I did not have the tools to articulate it until I read about transnational adoption from the perspective of the adoptee. Obviously my sister’s intentions were in the right place, but like other Americans involved in transnational adoptions, she did not think about the ways in which it would affect the adoptee. The development of identity and personhood is complicated with transnational adoption, and how that experience really shapes the perspectives adoptees have of themselves and others around them was probably never considered. When Kim discusses disidentification for Korean adoptees, she states “The misrecognition of adoptees whose socialization as white is at odds with their racialization as Asian is, following Judith Butler, an “uneasy sense of standing under a sign to which one does and does not belong”(93). If my sister were to raise a Chinese girl as a Black woman, there would at some point be major identity issues. She probably would not be accepted into either community, and it would be very hard for her to form a community with others who are also processing and negotiating their positionality in the same manner. The fact that my sister would also be participating in global capitalism in such an exploitive manner would also probably deter her from transnational adoption as well. As we have learned in this class there is no way to escape Global capitalism because it is so endemic in our society; however if she realized the way in which these children were being commodified, she would probably have a change of heart.

            Until the readings for this week I did not understand how identity and labels could really validate or invalidate someone’s position in certain communities. Part of that is because I never really had to think about it. My passport allows me to enter and exit into most places very easily, but I can’t help but wonder how I would be perceived in this particular moment if I had a passport from Guinea instead. In the wake of the Ebola outbreak and the ignorance surrounding that, I would probably be stigmatized and my mobility would be drastically limited. When Mohanty speaks about the racism that she faced as a South East Asian in America, and how the labels “international student” and “student of color” brought about different experiences for her, it really made me question why I have never interrogated some of these things before. The readings this week made me re-read Massey’s “Global Time and Space”, and use that framework to understand Kim’s position a little more. The space that transnational adoptees have to occupy is essentially dependant on the way their white American parents do, despite the fact that they will never be able to experience it the same way due to them being Korean and the stigma of being considered “waifs” or “orphans”. I really enjoyed the readings this week and look forward to discussing them in class on Wed.