I saw a post that compared adoption to Stockholm Syndrome, the name given to those kidnapped who eventually identify with their captors [link to article]. It got me thinking about adoptees who no longer identify with their adopters, for reasons having to do with age, evolution, rematriation, etc. But I wanted to expand a little […]
Author Archives: Daniel Drennan ElAwar
In a separate post we discussed the “slumming it” [link to post] of adoptive parents. Along these lines, I came across today a CHIFF supporter blog which reads: “After all, the poor will always be with us”. Rather Calvinist, as I’m fond of saying. There was also this, from an article about Kenya entitled: “Treated […]
Amy’s comment on knowing more about Korean cooking than her compatriots got me thinking about food and culture/identity, especially because we’ve already discussed this in terms of the negative of racist food analogies [link]. I mentioned to my sister (a pastry chef/wedding cake baker) the other day that I really missed our “first Sunday” monthly […]
This was a recent search phrase: When adoptees find their family, do some members of that family get jealous? Interpret/answer at will….
Jae Ran Kim has referred to Asian adoptees as “the model minority of the model minority”; this came up in an item discussing the arrival of a French Korean adoptee to the government ministerial level in that country [link]. We’ve also discussed the “glass ceiling” which might be described as racism suffered out of the […]
Comments on this, the movie, the musical, the comic strip, the mediation of orphans, popular culture and adoption? [link]
Can you share any “glass-ceiling” moments you might have had in your life when you realized the limits of “meritocracy”, “working hard to succeed”, and other assimilationisms?
In speaking of “rematriation” as opposed to “repatriation”, we take a different and gendered view of our adoptions and our return [link]. I’d like to expand on this with a notion that I have been painfully aware of these past years as I’ve worked with returned adoptees in Lebanon, male and female. As a male […]
Random snippets behind this post include this quote I came across on Twitter [link]: “Getting rid of your Chineseness by losing your accent, it’s like grinding away your face.” —Richard A Lou, artist; from the book War Baby/Love Child It makes me think of a former and historical/egalitarian “cosmopolitanism” or mixing of cultures in an […]
I’m touching back here to a discussion we had about AP entitlement [link], and how our discussions, which we would hope help us “break out” of the status quo discussion of adoption in fact feed back into the “adoption loop” as it were. Recently the reactions to NPR’s mediation of transracial adoption, as well as […]
I was describing my return to Lebanon to someone and the word “repatriated” came out of my mouth. It went without notice, but I was stuck on this term afterward, and it was bothering me to refer to myself this way. For one reason, it seemed too much to echo “expatriate” as well as “patriarchy”; […]
On Twitter, I came across a discussion of adoptive parents talking about the questions they get asked about adoption; they were defining themselves as having been “ostracized” for their adoptions. I asked myself—and wanted to ask them, but 140 characters is dismal for this kind of discussion—is this at all valid? When you have the […]
I found an article online: Scientists have found that memories may be passed down through generations in our DNA: New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that […]
This tweet recently appeared on Twitter: I WILL constantly #judge you if you #adopt a child and constantly refer to them as: “my #black #adopted child”. It was followed up by the above question. I’ll leave it open to your interpretation and response.
In a separate post, I mentioned tangentially: I was writing up my piece on trauma because of a conversation with a friend and fellow adoptee; we were comparing stress symptoms, and discussing the health effects of stress. There is something disturbing in the idea of a body in a constant state of “fight or flight”, […]
