There is a popular (albeit misguided) belief that BIPOC kids adopted into white families live white-approximate lives and grow up with white privilege. This belief asserts that adoption is beautiful and is one of the purest kinds of love, a love that has the power to transcend racial boundaries, replacing a lost family with one newly gained. But this simplistic vision of adoption is propaganda in service to the multibillion-dollar adoption industry and its paying customers: white, adoptive parents with access to power and privilege. However, our proximity to white privilege also correlates to our proximity to white violence. Packs of white boys riding their bikes through my neighborhood, shouting anti-Asian slurs as they passed my house. The white woman down the street who perceived me as polluting the neighborhood. Veterans who compulsively told me about their Korean War experiences when I was just a little girl. Racist nicknames and comments about eating dogs. The erasure and isolation. Fetishism and hyper-sexualization. The rape. To acknowledge one’s adoption trauma is devastating on its own. Doing so …

Around age 10, I got a bad sunburn on my face. My adoptive mother didn’t really take sunscreen seriously. She, a white woman, was always trying to tan. A cancer survivor, she liked tempting fate. She admired my skin tone, particularly in the summer months when her skin reddened and mine caramelized. The tanner I became, the more she admired (envied?) my body. “Look at the color of your skin!” she would exclaim, taking a step back to gaze at my bare arms and legs while I played at the pool or the beach, her voice a mix of incredulity and admiration. “You tan so nicely; your skin is the perfect color.”  I did not know then about fetishes and colorism; I just felt proud of my tan skin. While I never asked, I imagine my adoptive mother’s preoccupation with my skin tone was driven by her hyper-awareness of our biological differences, for these biological differences poked at her insecurity that I was not “really” her daughter. My adoptive mother once admitted that, early in …

Our recent heartbreaks and heartaches from the past five years shaped us to be the people we are today. As Eric. As Linda. And mother and son. As advocates. Here are a few snippets and snapshots from our lives from the past 5 years that I hope will inspire you. Eric’s Heart Eric’s gift is his profound spirituality. He has had a thirst for GOD and a fascination with the church since he was a child. Always say his grace before meals and he prays before going to bed. He even wears the name of Jesus shaved on his head. He never wants us to miss church. Eric takes notice of the things we take for granted, like flowers and sunshine. Children, the elderly, and the homeless hold a special place in his heart. When Eric was 11, it wasn’t so much being autistic that concerned him. Being autistic has become a part of the way he lives. Finding out he needed heart bypass surgery took him by surprise. He felt the hand that life …

B Side We had hardly anything but proximity and seasons of birthing in common.  Only a couple of leaves still clung to the trees and the wind whipped against our cheeks, but my neighbor and I still ambled down our street because we had strollers and a lot of quiet. My daughter’s afro puffs and her son’s wisps of blond hair were barely visible over the top of the strollers.  She texted me to tell me about her son’s autism diagnosis; her son would start at our neighborhood school in the exceptional children’s program next month. My daughter began in the exceptional children’s program two months before, at a school that treated exceptional children as a euphemism for difficulty learning, where the fence stopped before it made its way around the playground. A playground that sat next to the city bus stop on the busy street the school was named for. Even though we pushed our strollers down our neighboring driveways to meet for our walks, she had her son placed in a school right …