Matthew Salesses on the dilemma of how to talk about adoption without hurting loved ones.
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1.
It was the first time I had met an adoptee with an adoption agent for a mother. It was amazing to talk with someone who had been raised to think openly about adoption and yet who had the same troubles I had, who got everything that was on my mind. I was feeling generous, and open, as if I was a part of something bigger than sides.
As I walked back through Harvard Square, a homeless person asking for money called out exaggeratedly, “Ni hao.” I was the only Asian in sight. He had placed me. He had shouted this while holding a sign silently for the white passersby. I didn’t want to let it go. What was the purpose of saying that? If I had been Chinese and answered in Chinese, he wouldn’t have had anything more to say.
You’re the homeless one, the homeless person was saying to me, you’re the outsider. Marking me as the outsider was as simple as saying hello in another language.
“Fuck you,” I said, and gave him the finger.
Then a remarkable thing happened—and this has never happened to me before, after any of the other comments I have heard from strangers, even in front of my kid—he apologized.
I was so stunned I simply walked off.
The apology didn’t make me feel better, though—that he had realized he’d done something offensive. He had still done it. I was still different. By apologizing, he had given himself acceptance and left me more on the outside—I looked like the crazy one for having sworn at him. I looked like I was putting my trauma on him for no reason.
That is often the complaint I see in the comments of my articles on adoption. “It’s just your problem, man. You’re projecting it onto us white people.” Well, okay. If you could leave me alone with my problem, I might even be satisfied with that.
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2.
Recently, I read an essay by writer Nicole Callahan in which a white couple asks about her experience being adopted, in order to help them decide whether to adopt. The couple is asking Callahan to devalue her trauma, or interpret her trauma, into something supportive of a decision they have clearly already made.
I have been put in this position before, asked to evaluate adoption, to affirm it, basically. Usually, I do my best to keep quiet. If it is someone I don’t mind offending, I am more honest.
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3.
I haven’t written anything about adoption—anything new—in months.
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4.
For the past two months, my wife and daughter have been in Korea, my country of birth. I have spent the time watching Korean TV, listening to K-pop, eating Korean food, both trying to get closer to them and to avoid thinking too much about adoption.
The last time my family visited Korea while I stayed behind, I fell deep into depression. I let my loneliness overtake me. I wrote about adoption constantly. It was productive and it was terrifying and it almost or did break me.
This time, my wife told me she did not want to hear me say I was depressed. She didn’t want my problems to affect her, my staying behind to spoil her trip.
On the one hand, that seems totally fair. Why should personal trauma so affect others? But there was no way to keep it to myself and yet deal with it at all. The effects of adoption do not exist in a vacuum of self. Others are necessarily involved.
And of course, every day, out in the world, people identify the adoptee and judge him and engage with him by privileging his lost life.
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5.
There was a time when I was writing twice a week about my life, my trauma, my family.
Then I took a trip with my wife and daughter to see my parents. They sat me down and said they were bothered by my writing about them. My wife said she too was bothered by it, but I kept ignoring her opinion.
That was my own family asking me to stop. All I could do was to try to cut my writing off at the source.
But of course the source, as I have said, had to do with them. How do you cut yourself off from your trauma and yet allow yourself to deal with it?
Nicole Callahan says to the parents, No, adoption has not been a problem. Because it’s not a problem for them. She is answering for them.
To be honest, that is not a terrible option, or an easy one, or a cowardly one.
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6.
When I was writing often about race and adoption, I felt like I was being asked to write certain things. Over the summer, I pulled an article about the diverse books movement, in which I mentioned a few anecdotes I had heard from other writers of color. The white editor wanted me to name names. The white editor wanted me to ask publishers directly if it was true they were looking for certain kinds of books from writers of color. She didn’t understand that this would put those writers of color in danger. Would put me in danger—in the industry and, as it were, “on the couch.” She thought nothing of the consequences, because she didn’t have to.
But you know, she is probably a good person and is exactly the person the article hoped to reach.
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7.
November is National Adoption Month. There is a hashtag floating around that adoptees should #flipthescript and take control of the adoption narrative. I am all for this, and have written articles arguing that same point. Our narratives, though, are often painful not only for ourselves but for others.
I can’t figure it out: the paradox. How do we tell the truth about love without hurting the people we want to love and to love us (including ourselves)? That is the writer’s block I have been in.
This essay has no conclusion. I am not writing this with an answer. I am writing it to write something. To struggle. To say that I struggle. To wonder if it’s okay to struggle. To let that struggle be known.
This piece has left me feeling sad for you and all the adoptees who are constantly being told to shut up and to write the way “we” want you to write. I don’t know what it feels like to be adopted, but I can see that there are wounds and they are only made deeper when readers don’t try to understand you. I think you should keep writing and you should keep writing as you need to; those who don’t like it can go read something else. There are many adoption stories that end like fairy tales, but we need… Read more »
Your longform Tumblr story was incredibly hard to read for me because it was so raw and true, and, as an adoptee, that’s what I appreciate most about your writing. I just started writing outwardly, rather than inwardly, about adoption, and I will not be doing it under my given name. I’ve spent almost 4 years in reunion balancing other people’s feelings, and decades before that trying to protect my parents from my own confusion and pain and anger. Sometimes, I think we have to own our truth, but quietly, in a corner, as we are unprepared to deal with… Read more »
Matthew, I enjoy & admire your writing quite a lot. I found this piece very powerful in its rawness & simplicity. Also, as a writer myself, I really appreciate your efforts to tackle the dilemmas around vulnerability, writing authentically about yourself & those close to you, & feeling blocked. I found this essay to be very rich; it will stick with me.
I continue to be a fan of your work, and the courage it takes for these risks. Here’s a site by a friend of mine that may touch a few chords for you, though you’re far younger than this generation: http://secretsonsanddaughters.org Looking forward to the day our paths finally cross. –E
My brother and his wife adopted a baby girl from Korea….we are all Asian so she looks just like everybody else in the family….we all adore her and she is well-adjusted…my mother marvels at the charmed life of my niece — she is doted on by two sets of grandparents and lives in a McMansion (meanwhile, my mom tries to regale everyone about her own awful upbringing in war torn Asia suffering with poverty and near starvation)….I guess everyone projects one’s own story on what one sees in the present….
Matthew– I know you are feeling angry (Story #1) …and my mother and I have been accosted in Paris with “Konnichiwa!” (but we are Chinese!) and my mother and I laughed it off (how could anyone mistake us for affluent Japanese tourists….it’s crazy…we look so Chinese!)….and I am sorry that someone made you feel like an outsider…(hug from afar)… All I know is that when I think of my niece, I feel grateful that my brother and his wife adopted her into our family….she has made our lives more fun and spontaneous…here is a note she wrote to me after… Read more »
I am not an adoptee but I found this personal essay to be moving and I think the author’s perspective (and that of other adoptees, especially overseas adoptees) is an interesting one. I am a 48 year old woman with no children. I was single for a long time and did not date much. When I reached my early 30’s, and it was obvious that I did not have a man lined up, my friends and family members started mentioning adoption a lot — even though I wasn’t complaining about my “biological clock” or expressing any longing for children, they… Read more »
My brother adopted two small children, brother and sister, from Russia. When he and his wife went to the orphanage to pick them up, he said that the orphanage was horrible. My nephew had a cleft palate and a clubfoot. As they were driving away a little girl stood at the window crying. On the way to the airport, they found out that the little girl was their older sister. My brother knew nothing of a 16 year old sister. The following year, they adopted her as well. All three kids adjusted very well, medical needs were taken care of… Read more »
I’m a KAD too, and I think I understood Matthew’s post. It’s a dilemma that befuddles me too, makes me angry, and sad. Once again, adoptees, for the sake of everyone else needs to accommodate to the requests of others, to protect the feelings of those we love or have loved (and who are supposed to love us too). Everyone else is entitled to be sensitive and have boundaries to protect themselves (and often adoptees cater to them). Yet, where’s the reciprocity towards people who have experienced the effects of adoption? I heard another adult adoptee say recently that he… Read more »
I’m adopted, I’m white, I teach English Composition on a college level, and I find it hilarious, infuriating, and typical that Frank does not recognize himself in your article about projection. I think this post is brave, effective, readable, and well-organized. Comments like Frank’s are part of why many so adoptees close down and shut up about our experiences and our truths. Strip your soul naked and talk about what adoption really feels like to you, and some jerk will come along and nitpick your failure to teach him/her to read stuff that isn’t pitched to a high school level.… Read more »
You took the words right out of my mouth. This article is basically for adoptees, and it’s great. I’m a white adoptee minister. I occasionally preach on the complications of adoption, knowing that both my birth family and adoptive family listen to the podcasts. Telling a hard truth with compassion is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
Thanks for your thoughtful work Matthew. Just because some people don’t get it, doesn’t mean it’s not spot on.
Right, it’s clearly me that’s the problem here and not the fact that the article is poorly written. I’m not an unreasonable man, but I do resent being taken to task randomly and without cause. If adoptees are feeling like this, it’s not us that’s doing it. Just take some time to actually think through what you’re wanting to say. And for God’s sake, don’t write articles like this without bothering to run it by an editor. I’d like to understand what the article says, but the facts and anecdotes fail to support the headline and the rest of it… Read more »
I agree with Frank, Im kinda lost about exactly what message is being conveyed here. Are you upset about white people not understanding your perspective and fellings on adoption and writing in how it relates to your ethnicity? Am I interpreting that correctly?
He says there’s no conclusion. Draw your own conclusion. He’s not going to tell you how to feel about what he just wrote.
Read the story. Take it in. If you don’t get it, it’s not on Matthew to try to explain to to you.
That’s just lazy writing. The point is that he doesn’t have a particular thesis here and so there’s not really anything to hang the points on. I can’t figure out how or if the points relate to each other and the headline itself seems to have little or nothing to do with the article itself. If we read the story and don’t get it, Mathew is precisely the source of the problem. This isn’t a conversation, this is an article and it’s up to the writer to adequately explain what’s going on. It’s not on us to figure it out,… Read more »
Frank, I’m not a high school student.
Clearly, because a typical high school student would know that you don’t write articles just to write articles. This isn’t so much an article as ego stroking.
I’m embarrassed for you. That’s how bad this article is.
I tried reading the article, and I don’t even see a thesis in there. I’m guessing that you’re saying that adoption is bad, but you don’t really come out and say what you’re getting at. There’s just a list of points that don’t support anything because you couldn’t be bothered to tell the reader what you intended them to support. Then there’s the article headline, which seems to have nothing to do with anything here except for that first point. And even there that’s coincidental, I don’t see any reason why that homeless guy couldn’t have been an insensitive black… Read more »