Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Kim Park Nelson in the news

http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2007/07/18/72097

July 18, 2007

Author discusses adoption and abortion issues

By Diane White

Emotions dispersed through the crowd in the Elmer L. Andersen Library on Friday as Ann Fessler's work brought many back to the realities of their own lives.

Birth parents, adopted adults and others involved in the adoption process listened as Fessler described her experience in writing "The Girls Who Went Away." The book features birth mothers' reflections on giving up their children for adoption in the United States in the '40s, '50s and '60s.

Kim Park Nelson, an adoptee from Korea and an American studies graduate student at the University, participated in a question-and-answer forum with Fessler.

"The response of the birth moms is extraordinary," Nelson said. "What happened 40 years ago (in the United Sates) is happening in other places today."

After World War II, attitudes toward having a child out of wedlock changed. Many social workers in pre-war years tried to keep mother and child together. But afterward, ideals of an unflawed, nuclear family structure prompted social workers to encourage women to give up their babies.

Also, sexual education, accessibility to birth control and abortion were unheard of or illegal in most places at the time, Fessler said. She described a similar conservative push she feels today toward abstinence-only education.

Nelson said she'd consider finding her birth parents but only after finishing her dissertation on adoption.

Fessler, an adoptee herself, said her interest in pursuing the topic sparked when she met a woman at an exhibit. She said she'd seen the woman in a dream the night before. The two approached one another, Fessler said, recalling the woman's words: "You could be my long-lost daughter." They realized after talking that Fessler's birth date didn't match up with the woman's daughter's birth date, despite commonalities the two shared.

The woman's story of grief over the loss of her daughter matched the detailed accounts of many other birth mothers, Fessler said. "I had to find a way to collect these stories … and get them out there," she said.

Ultimately, Fessler, who is also a visual artist and professor at the Rhode Island Institute of Design, realized her goal through art exhibits and an oral history project.

After her work gained publicity, publishers approached her about writing a book, forcing her to put aside a documentary film she was working on, she said.

Fessler spent two days researching at the University's social welfare archive, archivist David Klaassen said.

"What she found here was the other side of the desk … a perspective she went way beyond with her interviewing," he said.

Fessler researched internal documents from a Florence Crittenton home, a place that housed unwed pregnant women during the era covered in her book.

Fessler said many adopted children and adults feel abandoned by mothers who they think didn't want them when in fact many of these mothers would have chosen to parent.

The years discussed in Fessler's book curtail at the '70s, when social norms changed and women began choosing their own destinies, she said. Divorce rates went up, women's earning potential increased, new laws made it illegal to force pregnant women to quit school and the Roe v. Wade precedent made abortions safe and legal.

Fessler said her book takes an objective stance on the issue of abortion.

Fessler, an adoptee herself, said her interest in pursuing the topic sparked when she met a woman at an exhibit. She said she'd seen the woman in a dream the night before.
The two approached one another, Fessler said, recalling the woman's words: "You could be my long-lost daughter."
They realized after talking that Fessler's birth date didn't match up with the woman's daughter's birth date, despite commonalities the two shared.
The woman's story of grief over the loss of her daughter matched the detailed accounts of many other birth mothers, Fessler said.
"I had to find a way to collect these stories … and get them out there," she said. Ultimately, Fessler, who is also a visual artist and professor at the Rhode Island Institute of Design, realized her goal through art exhibits and an oral history project.
After her work gained publicity, publishers approached her about writing a book, forcing her to put aside a documentary film she was working on, she said.
Fessler spent two days researching at the University's social welfare archive, archivist David Klaassen said.
"What she found here was the other side of the desk … a perspective she went way beyond with her interviewing," he said.
Fessler researched internal documents from a Florence Crittenton home, a place that housed unwed pregnant women during the era covered in her book.
Fessler said many adopted children and adults feel abandoned by mothers who they think didn't want them when in fact many of these mothers would have chosen to parent.
The years discussed in Fessler's book curtail at the '70s, when social norms changed and women began choosing their own destinies, she said. Divorce rates went up, women's earning potential increased, new laws made it illegal to force pregnant women to quit school and the Roe v. Wade precedent made abortions safe and legal.
Fessler said her book takes an objective stance on the issue of abortion.

"I interviewed a full range of women … both pro-life and pro-choice," she said. Though they are related, Fessler pointed out that adoption and abortion are separate issues.

Fessler supports legislation that would open records for adopted adults. Policies on what adoptees are given access to vary based on agency, circumstance and state, she said.

"(Adoptees are) the only citizens who do not have access to their identifying information," she said.

Adoptees should have access to records pertaining to medical history and nationality, she said.
Connie Roller, an adoption services counselor at Catholic Charities, attended Fessler's talk. She said she supports Fessler's work but not all her views.

"Adoption today is different … birth parents direct the process," she said. Most adoptions today are open and have been so since the '80s, Roller said.

Before that, particularly in the time period Fessler researched, a good amount of adoptions were done in confidentiality.

"I don't have the right to go back and take (confidentiality) away (in past adoptions)," Roller said.

Parents in past decades gave up their children under the condition of anonymity, Roller said. She feels it would be unfair to change that now.

Fessler said even if documents were opened to adoptees, birth parents could be able to file a no-contact form with the state.

Although they disagree on some points, Fessler and Roller feel the discussion surrounding the issue is important.

"We have some disagreements … but we support people coming forward (to share their stories)," Roller said.

Jane Jeong Trenka on the foreign-adoption double standard

http://www.startribune.com/562/story/1311001.html

Jane Jeong Trenka: The foreign-adoption double standard

The process has improved in America, but not overseas.

Jane Jeong Trenka

Published: July 19, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea - Many thanks to Gail Rosenblum for calling attention to the lives of American women who were forced to surrender their children for adoption between 1945 and the early 1970s.

However, her article ("They never forgot," July 8) did not mention the lives of the quarter-million foreign women who have been forced to surrender their children in subsequent decades.

In reaction to the perceived lack of adoptable children in the United States following the "baby scoop," Americans have looked to foreign countries. Currently, about 20,000 children from countries such as China, Russia, Guatemala and South Korea are brought to the United States each year to be adopted. Very few are true orphans.

I found it particularly telling that a representative of Children's Home Society and Family Services, a St. Paul agency that performed 777 international adoptions last year, was quoted as saying that today the agency is "night-and-day different in how we understand adoption and how we understand families." There seems to be a glaring double standard between how adoption agencies now understand the human rights of American families and how they understand those of foreign families.

The current situation of single mothers being forced to surrender their children in South Korea almost exactly mirrors the situation in the United States a generation ago. Yet despite our understanding that separating American mothers from their children was a "conspiracy of silence," the broader American society views doing exactly the same thing to foreign mothers as "humanitarian."

I hope that articles such as Rosenblum's contribute to giving a human face not only to American mothers, but also to the foreign mothers of international adoptees. They are all mothers with human rights, and they all deserve to be treated as such.

Jane Jeong Trenka, internationally adopted to Minnesota from South Korea, is a writer living in Seoul.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

An A-List Event on July 23rd!

It's always great to get a nod from the Twin Cities' City Pages who just declared Bryan Thao Worra's upcoming reading at DreamHaven Books an A-List event.
***

On Monday, July 23rd, at 6:30PM at DreamHaven Books, Bryan Thao Worra is reading selections from his forthcoming book of poetry, On The Other Side Of The Eye as well as new works as part of the Speculations Reading Series, a co-production of SF Minnesota and Intermedia Arts. His work has also appeared in Outsiders Within and international anthologies and publications from around the world.

Dreamhaven Books is located at 912 W Lake Street in Minneapolis!

Hope to see you there!

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Gibney's Report from the US Social Forum

http://www.mnartists.org/article.do?rid=153396

Pictures of Change? U.S. Social Forum

July 16, 2007
Shannon Gibney

Shannon Gibney attended the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia, at the end of June, and came away with this report on art in the service of social advocacy.

The U.S. Social Forum (USSF) was a nationwide conference held in Atlanta, Georgia at the end of June. Its organizers wrote, "The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression." It was an outgrowth of the recognition at the World Social Forum that the solutions to many of the intractable problems in the world lay of necessity in the hands of U.S. citizens. –ed.

The notion that art can change people's minds, and in doing so can change societies, is quite an attractive one – which might explain its staying power. But at a recent panel at the U.S. Social Forum, a lively debate about the efficacy of this strategy was ignited.

The panel was titled "A Hammer to Shape Reality: Art and Social Movement," and was organized by the San Francisco Print Collective (SFPC), as well as by Liberation Ink, a T-shirt and garment printing company, and Just Seeds. These are all visual arts and social justice organizations which have taken different but related courses in using visual imagery to change peoples' thinking about their world.

"What we were doing was very much shaped by a year of campaign work. There were people in the streets, public meetings, and the images themselves," said Fernando Marti, of the SFPC, explaining the group's 2000-2001 campaign to highlight the problems faced by residents in San Francisco's Mission District.

"We were working with the homeless coalition, working with South of Market around a different kind of displacement," Marti continued. "The Mission District was becoming increasingly gentrified. The Collective made posters, but also did other art projects. We worked with neighbors to define how they wanted to see their neighborhood. They created a 'People's Plan' to define what the community wanted to see in their neighborhood in terms of housing, transportation, education, etc. So the basic strategy was to integrate the images into other organizing elements. We never intended for the images to do that work on their own."

This multifaceted, multi-pronged coalition helped the SFPC's images convey the power and voice of an otherwise unheard community. This in turn forced local politicians and developers to respond, and take action.

Josh MacPhee, the mind behind Just Seeds, which bills itself as a "visual resistance artists' cooperative," offered another view of the art and social justice conundrum. "I think there are two kinds of conflicting truisms: One is that you can't confuse representations of direct democracy with direct democracy. You can't draw the new world into being. But the flipside of that is that culture is so big and messy that you don't know how things are going to impact communities, or what they'll mean to various people. So it's about finding some balance for yourself while you're trying to negotiate it. And part of that is about sharing your work with people before you put a lot of time and energy into it. I know a lot of people who have rolled out 1,000 posters that were completely misunderstood because someone didn't just get on a bus and ask people, 'What does this mean to you?' So doing your research and development is well worth it."

MacPhee has been doing just that in Chicago, for a while now. He initiated the "Celebrate People's History Poster Series," which includes "Mothers of East Los Angeles," "The Silent Majority," "El Agua is Nuestra Carajo," and "Fred Hamption 1948-1969."

"We have produced 44 posters so far, and they are close to being able to produce around 10 a year. Different artists do each one, and it's a way to build a network," said MacPhee. "The posters were inspired by a bunch of my friends who were teaching in the public school system and had absolutely no materials to use to engage their students."

Toward the conclusion of the discussion, an audience member posed a related question, about how to keep mainstream/capitalist forces from appropriating images – a process that is becoming more and more pervasive with every Malcolm X image printed. Le Tim Ly, of Liberation Ink, "a worker owned apparel printing and design collective created to fund social justice organizing" in the Bay area ( www.liberationink.com), said, "At Liberation Ink, we try to place all our images in time and space. We go deeper than just an image by including text. So if we had a t-shirt of Che, we would include something significant that he said."


Related Links

* U. S. Social Forum
For more information on the U.S. Social Forum, visit here.
* Street Art Workers
Street Art Workers are at this webaddress.
* Twin Cities delegation to the U.S. Social Forum
To get involved with the Twin Cities delegation, contact Ryan Li Dahlstrom here.
* Articles Forum
Comment on this article here.

Author Bio

Shannon Gibney
Shannon Gibney is a writer who lives in Minneapolis.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Star Tribune profiles Bryan Thao Worra

The Star Tribune just recently did a profile on Bryan Thao Worra, one of the contributors to Outsiders Within, a few weeks before the release of his first full-length book of poetry, On The Other Side Of The Eye, coming out in August.