Transracial Adoption Quotes

“so when people asked me about my family, my features, the fate I’d been dealt, maybe it isn’t surprising how I answered — first in a childish, cheerful chirrup, later in the lecturing tone of one obliged to educate. I arrive to be calm and direct, never giving anything away in my voice, never changing the details. Offering the story I’d learned so early was, I thought, one way to gain acceptance. It was both the excuse for how I looked, and a way of asking pardon for it.”
― Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

“Dear Diary,
My pen is finally touching your pages. It is time to tell our story. Our story began in China and now it continues in America. I want to write about our old life and I want to write about our life now. I will write it all down with hopes that somehow I can connect the two worlds I have lived in. Right now those worlds seem so far apart.”
― Diane René Christian, An-Ya and Her Diary

“Dear Diary,
All that she left inside the box was a blank book and a name. You are the book, and I am the name...An-Ya. As you know, my name is printed on your first page. Did She write it? What did She look like as She stood over you with Her pen? Were there tears in Her eyes? Why were you left empty inside?”
― Diane René Christian, An-Ya and Her Diary

“Dear Diary,
We flew to the other side of the world, and I never stopped holding you close to my chest. You were empty and so was I. My only friend in the world. The only one who understood where I began and where I was going. We flew together and everything we knew before was gone.”
― Diane René Christian, An-Ya and Her Diary

“What many black and biracial transracial adoptees were not prepared for was that the societal realities they faced were the same as those facing other people of color. The information that white transracial adoptive parents needed to give their children did not exist in the white world; these parents would have to interact with black America in order to understand the problems most likely to trouble transracially adopted children.”
― Rhonda M. Roorda, In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption

“[Phone interview transcript between author Roorda & Vershawn A. Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, a book based on his Ph.D dissertation]

Now the subtitle, Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, what does that cover?

It covers the range of enactments in speech, in dress, in the way we behave, the way that we interact with other people. Basically, it is the range of enactments that black people have to go through to be successful in America. I call it the burden of racial performance that black people are required, not only by whites but by other blacks as well, to prove through their behaviors, their speech, and their actions the kind of black person that they are. Really, there are only two kinds you can be. In the words of comedian Chris Rock, you can either be a black person, which is a respectable, bourgeois, middle-class black person, or you can be a nigger. As Chris Rock says in his show, "I love black people, but I hate niggers."

So . . . when a black person walks into a room, always in the other person's mind is the question "What kind of black person is this in front of me?" They are looking for clues in your speech, in your demeanor, in your behavior, and in everything that you do -- it is like they are hyperattentive to your ways of being in order to say, "Okay, this is a real black person. I can trust them. I'll let them work here. Or, nope: this is a nigger, look at the spelling of their name: Shaniqua or Daquandre." We get discriminated against based on our actions. So that is what the subtitle was trying to suggest in performing race. And in performing literacy, just what is the prescribed means for increasing our class status? A mind-set: "Okay, black people, you guys have no excuse. You can go to school and get an education like everybody else." I wanted to pay attention to the ways in which school perpetuated a structural racism through literacy, the way in which it sort of stigmatizes and oppresses blackness in a space where it claims it is opening up opportunities for black people.”
― Rhonda M. Roorda, In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption

“One participant described her frustration when she joined the Asian American Association in high school: 'I totally did not fit in...It kind of made me mad because I looked like them, so I felt like I identified with them, but once I got in, I learned I really don't at all.' Caught between the expectations of two groups, [transracial adoptees] often felt rejected by White people due to physical differences and by people of their birth ethnicity due to lack of language and cultural knowledge.”
― Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

“Maybe that’s too big of a question. Let’s back up. May Ling has been with you for fourteen months now? What have you done, in the time she’s
been with you, to connect her to her Chinese culture?” “Well.” Another pause, a very long one this time. Mr. Richardson willed Mrs. McCullough to say something, anything. “Pearl of the Orient is one of our very favorite restaurants. We try to take her there once a month. I think it’s good for her to hear some Chinese, to get it into her ears. To grow up feeling this is natural. And of course I’m sure she’ll love the food once she’s older.” Yawning silence in the courtroom. Mrs. McCullough felt the need to fill it. “Perhaps we could take a Chinese cooking class at the rec center and learn together. When she’s older.” Ed Lim said nothing, and Mrs. McCullough prattled nervously on. “We try to be very sensitive to these issues wherever we can.” Inspiration arrived. “Like for her first birthday, we wanted to get her a teddy bear. One she could keep as an heirloom. There was a brown bear, a polar bear, and a panda, and we thought about it and decided on the panda. We thought perhaps she’d feel more of a connection to it.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“I am a cultural Frankinstein”
― Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

“Some people have suggested that Mirabelle will lose touch with her birth culture,” the producer said. “How do you respond to those concerns?”
Mrs. McCullough nodded. “We’re trying to be very sensitive to that,” she said. “You’ll notice that we’re adding more and more Asian art to our walls.”
She waved a hand at the scrolls with ink-brushed mountains that hung by the fireplace, the glazed pottery horse on the mantel. “We’re committed, as she gets older, to teaching her about her birth culture. And of course she already loves the rice. Actually, it was her first solid food.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Does May Ling have any dolls?” Ed Lim asked.
“Of course. Too many.” Mrs. McCullough giggled. “She loves them. Just like every little girl. We buy her dolls, and my sisters buy her dolls, and our friends buy her dolls—” She giggled again, and Mr. Richardson’s jaw tensed.
“She must have a dozen or more.”
“And what do they look like, these dolls?” Ed Lim persisted.
“What do they look like?” Mrs. McCullough’s brow crinkled. “They’re—they’re dolls. Some are babies, and some are little girls—” It was clear she didn’t understand the question. “Some of them take bottles, and some of them, you can change their dresses, and one of them closes her eyes when you lay her down, and most of them, you can style their hair—”
“And what color hair do they have?”
Mrs. McCullough thought for a moment. “Well—blond, most of them. One has brown hair. Maybe two.”
“How about the doll that closes her eyes? What color are her eyes?”
“Blue.” Mrs. McCullough crossed her legs, then uncrossed them again. “But that doesn’t mean anything. You look at the toy aisle—most dolls are blond with blue eyes. I mean, that’s just the default.”
“The default,” Ed Lim repeated, and Mrs. McCullough had the feeling of being caught out, though she wasn’t sure why.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“I shook my head a little, not disagreeing so much as acknowledging the impossibility of ever knowing: it was hard to say, three decades later, what would have been best for the largest number of people.”
― Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

“If families like mine were better understood, if more people knew that adoption was far more complicated than common media portrayals might suggest, maybe fewer adopted kids would have to answer the kinds of questions I had gotten, or feel pressured to uphold sunny narratives even they might not necessarily believe in.”
― Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

“I am a cultural Frankenstein”
― Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

“Of course Mirabelle would have a good life with Mark and Linda. There was no question about that. But would there be something—something—missing from her life if she were to grow up with them? Mr. Richardson was suddenly keenly conscious of Mirabelle, of the immense weight of the complicated world on this one tiny, vulnerable person.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Currently not enough is being done to make sure adoptive parents receive continued education and counseling in transracial adoption to help support them as their child ages. There is some focus on introductory information like haircare and navigating the adoption system, but little information is provided about identity formation, cultural immersion, and anti-racism work; this type of information needs to be prioritized.”
― Melissa Guida-Richards, What White Parents Should Know about Transracial Adoption: An Adoptee's Perspective on Its History, Nuances, and Practices