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 […]
Tag Archives: return
In a previous question [link] I asked whether you as an adoptee would repatriate yourself if your place of birth afforded you some kind of re-entry to the country, language, culture, etc. Girl4708 replied at the time: The power differential on a smaller scale doesn’t change: the haves will always overpower the have-nots. As an […]
Whether cliché or heartfelt, we often speak or hear of the adoptee search as being a “journey”, implying a destination. I’ve often said that the journey replaces the destination, but recently for reasons having simply to do with sheer mortality, I find myself a bit more desperate to know family, to know origins. Perhaps this […]
“Through me you pass into the city of woe.” —Dante As adoptees who live on the razor’s edge between places, we are often asked to broker for or engage on behalf of those who are looking for roots as well, either as adoptees, or more often for me I must say, adoptive parents wanting to […]
This comment came in on the RAD discussion, and I thought it expanded nicely into a topic of discussion on its own: Got to your Twitter feed somehow and have been reading some of your articles and wanted to share something that I guess is not necessarily on topic, some points resonated with me. I […]
Let’s forget about falafel, and kimchee, and dumplings, etc.; let’s forget about lamps, and dragons, and carpets and I don’t know what else; all the other superficial aspects that the “West” sees as “culture” from abroad. What instead have you learned from the culture of your place of birth that contradicts what we now refer […]
Many adoptees who were adopted for charitable reasons discount barren-ness as being a valid motivation for adoption, as they feel that it puts too much pressure on the child to fill holes in their parents hearts and that no child can or should be asked to substitute for the first choice/dream child they can never […]
Sometimes I catch myself thinking/acting in a privileged or colonizer way and I’m appalled. I feel like I’m 99% white inside and the more I learn about the world, the more I regret that, despite all my opportunities. How white are you? Do you want to reduce that? Is that even possible? How much does […]
Let’s imagine a point in time when the power differential in the world reverses (not as far off as we might imagine, given current revolutions taking place in the world, and efforts of mothers in Guatemala, etc.) And let’s imagine that your country of birth creates a program to repatriate its diaspora, including adoptees. This […]
Having lived over half my life abroad now and having done a fair bit of traveling, I have constantly been forced to deal with the question of “Where are you from?”. From the perspective of my physical appearance, the confusion that sets in when I respond with “I’m from the States” is somewhat understandable. The […]
I’ve often wondered about the differences in the portrayal of the “arrival home” of the adoptee, based on mediated works like Daughter from Da Nang and The Lost Princess (published by Reader’s Digest). There is a focus on the return of the adoptee to her country of birth as bringing out the entire clan or […]
Transracialeyes 