adoptee academic | InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)

September 18, 2022September 19, 2022

Ryan at K-Box Adoptee Takeover Night

On Friday 9 September, I co-hosted with Ra Chapman (Korean intercountry adoptee and playwright) an adoptee artist event in Melbourne, Victoria at the Malthouse Theatre. This event followed the performance of Ra’s incredible comedy play, K-Box which is the story of Lucy (a Korean intercountry adoptee) who is a 30+ year old Korean adoptee who brings some humour and hard truths to the dinner table.

I was honoured to be at the reading of Ra’s play last year when she was awarded the 2020 Patrick White Playwrights Award in Sydney for this piece of work.

Following the play, we had some of our talented intercountry adoptee artists present a small 10 minute segment on their artwork.

The next few blogs will bring to you a couple of these adoptee artists in their presentations, followed by some of the artwork we captured for the ZINE, a small magazine showcasing their artwork as a take home memento from our evening.

For me, the highlight of the evening was a reading by a Korean adoptee who is an academic, a writer, and co-host of podcast Adopted Feels, Ryan Gustafsson. Ryan is a writer, researcher, and podcaster. Their most recent publication is ‘Whole Bodies,’ which appears in Liminal’s anthology Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory (Pantera Press, 2022). Ryan is also co-facilitator of the Korean Adoptee Adoption Research Network (KAARN).

Ryan’s presentation was powerful, eloquent, and poignant and presented with such raw honesty, it resonated within my soul as I could relate to so much of what they shared about how we can feel about our first mother.

Have a listen to Ryan’s reading from an excerpt of their writing titled – We met each other with different names.

Resources

You can follow Ryan at:
website: http://www.ryangustafsson.com
IG: @crewneckgreen

Check out our Photo Album of the evening.

Coming Next is Ebony’s presentation from the evening.

October 3, 2018April 16, 2020

Research into China’s Intercountry Adoption

It’s wonderful to see more adult intercountry adoptees exploring their origins and adding to the wealth of research in intercountry adoption.

I’d like to introduce you to André-Anne Côté who is a Chinese intercountry adoptee who grew up in Quebec, Canada. She has been studying International Relations at Peking University. Lately, she has produced 3 very interesting research papers which she is willing to share at ICAV.

The first is a A Comparison of Adoption Policies between China and South Korea. Worldwide, these make up the two largest sending (birth) countries for children via intercountry adoption.

The second looks at Chinese Identity and Nationalism through Chinese Adoption and Immigration into Canada.

The third investigates Causes of International Adoption from China.

It is timely that we read research papers like this from adult Chinese intercountry adoptees because around the world enmasse, Chinese adoptees are growing up and starting to form their own ideas and thoughts about their adoptions from China.

Like all intercountry adoptee communities by birth country, we all grow up to eventually question why and how our adoptions occured as a natural phase in the journey of exploration about our mixed identities and beginnings.

We look forward to sharing more of André-Anne Côté’s papers in the future. Stay tuned!

At ICAV we have compiled a list of research conducted by adult intercountry adoptee academics and posted at our Research page.

June 1, 2017January 3, 2019

Human Rights for Intercountry Adoptees

It fills me with hope and inspiration to see intercountry adoptees growing in our understanding of the wider context of intercountry adoption to include the politics, ethics and rights of intercountry adoptees.

Years ago, I started off having very little understanding of my own adoption journey, let alone the bigger picture. As the years went by, I explored my own issues and then through reaching out and connecting to many adoptee peers, I started to realise the similarities within our journeys, regardless of birth country. Finally, I came to understand — I am but one of hundreds of thousands around the world, impacted by the policies and governing international agreements that indelibly re-shape our lives forever via intercountry adoption. My journey of understanding is reflected around the globe as we adult intercountry adoptees mature enmasse and start to speak out and question the fundamentals of intercountry adoption.

To illustrate this point, I want to share an essay by Sri Lankan adoptee, Gabbie Beckley, also adopted and raised in Australia. She is a social worker and has submitted this essay to fulfil the requirements of her MSW Masters in Social Work. She has reunited with her Sri Lankan family and was adopted by an Australian family who always supported her and enabled her to embrace and learn about her birth culture.

Gabbie has also journeyed and explored what adoption has meant for her individually and has travelled beyond that now, to understand the larger picture of what intercountry adoption means for many of us worldwide. I loved her ending paragraph in which she rightly questions why our human rights as adoptees are not considered beyond childhood.

Have a read of what Gabbie has to say and let us know your thoughts.

GBeckley Human Rights in ICA

Coming shortly will be our newest Perspective Paper on Adoptee Citizenship which will highlight the lack of human rights for adult intercountry adoptees in the USA.

June 2, 2015December 8, 2020

Adoptee Academic on UNCRC and Intercountry Adoption

It’s awesome to have academics give their input into the field of intercountry adoption – especially academics who are also intercountry adoptees.

Check out the latest research article submitted by Patrick Noordoven who has an in-depth look at the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and Intercountry Adoption (ICA).

What do you think?

You can read more from other intercountry adoptee academics.