Outsiders Within - The Blog About the Book

Conversations on transracial adoption healing

2011-01-17T16:51:00.001-08:00

I've started a new blog focused on what healing is or can be for transracial adoptees and our community, please come visit and comment/make a contribution:

http://www.sunyungshin.com/tra_healing/

Updates?

2010-07-14T10:16:00.000-07:00

Hopefully Outsiders Within contributors and editors will share some of the exciting updates they've had since the release of Outsiders Within in 2006. Next year will mark 5 years since it was first published by South End Press and we've definitely seen a lot of TRA issues come forward in the news. The dialogue continues!

Cette nuit imposée

2010-04-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Cette nuit imposée

(de la chanson originale "La nuit est levée" de Téléphone)
2010, Montreal

Cette nuit imposée

Souvenir étranger

Que je vis et non rêvé

Ce matin me rappelais

du bébé enlevé

Plein d'anxiété

Si mon coeur se soulève

Qu'il doive s'en aller

Oublier

Comme la vie avançait

En moi je doutais

Si endormie, je me lève

J'ai tout refoulé

Quand cette nuit allongée

J'ai réalisé

Que ce n'était pas une trêve

Que ma réalité

Vous êtes ici pour croire

Rien d'autre à vouloir croire.

Croire que l'on sauve ce soir

Pour qui veut savoir

Mensonge levé

Sur mon délaissé.

Qu'ai-je donc éviter ?

Qui m'est enlevé

Oui, mensonge arrangé

Tout est décoloré

Ai-je donc pardonner ?

Que la nuit m'a soufflée

Et ils ne veulent pas y croire

Que nous autres à vouloir

Croire qu'une vie sans pourboire

Et qu'elle déjà en vaut

Déjà l'taux

Mais bien trop haut

À toi de voir

À toi de croire

Ces vies détournées

Sur cette belle réalité

La vie n'est qu'une soirée

Et la nuit qu'une mort

Sans vie détournée

Que si la vie a tort

Follow-up to Outsiders Within?

2010-02-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

As we approach 4 years later since the release of Outsiders Within, how might we consider the state of the TRA community? Is a follow-up volume in order or have we exhausted all there is to say on the matter for now?

Exposition de groupe : L'art se donne des LLL (Namru, Belgique)

2009-01-30T18:47:00.000-08:00

L'art se donne des LLL
avec Melissa Dae Sook Kim, AUde Lespignard, Kims, Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine

Book Release: Friday August 10

2007-08-09T12:12:00.000-07:00

Real fast: Bryan Thao Worra's book release party for On The Other Side Of The Eye is Friday. 7PM at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. For more information: http://thaoworra.blogspot.com Thanks! And we look forward to seeing you!

Korean birth mothers protest intl adoption + quotes from Jae Ran Kim

2007-08-07T15:22:00.000-07:00

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2007/08/05/8/0302000000AEN20070804001600315F.HTML

Korean adoptees from abroad and birth mothers protest overseas adoption By Kim Young-gyo

SEOUL, Aug. 5 (Yonhap) - Roh Myung-ja has gotten together with her son every year since 2004, when she was reunited with him after giving him up for adoption about 30 years ago. She is one of thousands of Korean women whose children were adopted overseas.

The 49-year-old Roh believes what she has experienced in the years before her son returned to her should not happen to anyone. Now, she works as a staff member of Mindeulae, (Dandelions), a civic group of South Korean parents whose children were adopted overseas and who oppose the nation's adoption system, which sends thousands of orphaned and abandoned children abroad.

"We hope that no other mothers have to go through the pain and suffering that we went through. Overseas adoption leaves deep-rooted scars both on the birth mothers and the children," Roh said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency on Saturday.

About 30 Korean adoptees from abroad and 10 birth mothers, including Roh, came together Saturday for a rally in downtown Seoul calling for the government to abolish international adoption from South Korea. The mothers and adoptees were not all related to each other.

They held up picket signs that read, "Real Choices for Korean Women and Children,""Korean Babies Not for Export" and "End Overseas Adoption."
A signature-gathering drive also began to express opposition to overseas adoption. The civic group plans to collect one million signatures nationwide.

Government figures show that there have been about 87,500 domestic adoptions, versus 158,000 international adoptions, since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

In 1977, Roh had to give up her 11-month old child, and had no idea that her son had gone to the United States.

"I was literally shocked when I got a phone call in 2004 saying that my son is coming from the U.S. to look for me," Roh said.

Roh said that no one asks or is responsible for what happens to the children after they were adopted overseas.

"My son luckily turned out fine. But who knows what other kids undergo?" she said. "The day when I took my son shopping for the first time, he said to me, 'This is my first time in my life that I went shopping without caring that I am not white,'"
Roh's son, who was not able to make a trip this week to Seoul from South Dakota, wholeheartedly supports her actions, she said.

Jaeran Kim was one of the adoptees from overseas who joined in Saturday's protest. A social worker focusing on domestic adoption in the U.S., Kim was adopted from South Korea by a U.S. family in 1971.

"When people talk about the adoption, they don't care about how the child grows up or how it affects the birth mothers," she said. "The adoption system is too much dominated by the adoptive families and the adoptive agencies."
Kim stressed that she did not have negative experience as a Korean adoptee in the U.S. and is in a good relationship with her adoptive parents.

"It is not a matter of whether you had a good experience or bad experience as an adoptee. The adoption system goes way beyond that. It works within a political, institutional structure of society," she said.

Kim, who was on her third visit to South Korea, has not been able to find her birth parents yet, but plans to live in South Korea with her husband and children for a while in the future.

"Adoption does not only affect me as an adoptee, but it also affects my family -- my husband and children. My children do not have their grandparents in South Korea, and they lost their part of the Korea culture, too," she said.

She argued that a child should be adopted by the extended family or extended community at least, and that international adoption should be the last option.

South Korea, the world's 11th-largest economy, was the fourth country in 2004 following China, Russia and Guatemala to send the most children to the U.S. for adoption, according to a research paper by Peter Selman, a British scholar.

Kim Park Nelson in the news

2007-07-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

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.

An A-List Event on July 23rd!

2007-07-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

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!

Gibney's Report from the US Social Forum

2007-07-17T06:39:00.001-07:00

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.

Star Tribune profiles Bryan Thao Worra

2007-07-15T20:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Shannon Gibney Leading the Way!

2007-06-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

Shannon and ally/colleague Lisa Marie Rollins will be taking transracial adoption to the US Social Forum, next weekend! Check out our website, Calendar, for more information www.outsiderswithin.com

is possible to change my name nathalie_cho

2007-06-10T18:31:00.001-07:00

is it possible to change it into my official name ,, mihee-nathalie lemoine
thank you.. hope all is good
www.myspace.com/nathalie_cho

2007-01-10T04:32:00.000-08:00

Outsiders Within

Good one Bryan!

2007-01-10T04:31:00.001-08:00

Tending Denial

2007-01-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

You can rest now Grama, I am home

Sandy White Hawk!

Upcoming events

2007-01-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

www.outsiderswithin.com/events

2006-12-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

Shopping For Children In the International Marketplace

Kim Park Nelson

2006-12-31T07:10:00.000-08:00

Hunger

Shannon Gibney

2006-12-31T07:08:00.000-08:00

Outsiders Within Anthology Release

Jane reads Intro Part 1.

Scattered Seeds

2006-12-31T06:58:00.000-08:00


Writer Jae Ran Kim reads her piece Scattered Seeds at the Outsiders Within (www.outsiderswithin.com) book release party in Minneapolis, Minnesota on November 18th, 2006.

2006-12-31T06:48:00.000-08:00

Evolve

Bryan Thao Worra, poet and master You Tuber. Thanks Bryan for recording and posting these on You Tube!

2006-12-31T06:44:00.000-08:00

Outsiders Within Introduction Part 2

Sun Yung Shin reads and is graceful.

Thinking Souls: Book Review: Outsiders Within

2006-12-10T02:39:00.000-08:00

mnartists.org

December 5, 2006
Juliana Hu Pegues

Juliana Hu Pegues reviews "Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption," a book of diverse genres of writing by transracial adoptees that transmits the ambiguous and manyfold consequences of such lifechanging events.

Racism, poverty, colonialism, the “War on Drugs,” slavery, Indian boarding schools, economic globalization and import commodities. Sound like a book on adoption? These very issues engage our understanding in the compelling new anthology Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (South End Press, 2006). Editors Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin conceived this collection as a corrective to the “experts,” a challenge to the existing work on adoption largely written by white adoptive parents and those within the industry of adoption. Through this lens, transracial adoptees and their allies take in old landscapes and produce new essays, poems, and artwork.

Artists and communities often debate the relationship between art and politics; the desire to create meaningful expression is haunted by fears of didacticism. But this anthology offers us a dialogue rather than a screed. The poetry, fiction, and visual art are not an additive to the political essays; they ground the facts and footnotes in a visceral and collective experience. The works of these authors are meant to be read in conversation with each other.

Take, for example, Kim Park Nelson’s essay “Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace,” which looks at the commodification of transnational adoptees within economic globalization. We can feel the weight of response, the relationship of adoption and sweatshop, production and consumption, in Sun Yung Shin’s poem “Economic Miracles”:

Light reflects off my computer
monitor not the glittering
rice paddy, not the sewing
machine’s glittering
needle dipping like a cormorant into tomorrow’s
Nike shoe and this is
the Culture at work.

From physiognomy to economy, what
does any sky know
of impracticality? What does woman know
of miracles?

Neoconservative agendas supporting racism and poverty examined in Ellen M. Barry’s “Parents in Prison, Children in Crisis,” and Laura Brigg’s “Orphaning the Children of Welfare: ‘Crack Babies,’ Race, and Adoption Reform,” are powerfully answered by Kimberly R. Fardy’s voice in “The Finer Meaning”: “It is my perspective as a child born to a father in prison facing deportation and a teenage mother on welfare. It is my perspective as a person who was put into the system from birth and later adopted by white Americans to face the cruel world of a black-eyed pea in a bowl of rice.”

In her poem “If I Pull Away,” Shandra Spears confronts her loss, “I live within a myth about adoption / that conceals the truth of my birth / And I live within a myth about Indians / that conceals the truth of my future / and my past,” paralleling the conditions elaborated in Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark and Kekek Jason Todd Stark’s historiography of the Indian Child Welfare Act. The heartbreak in their essay is apparent in Spears’ achingly honest words, “In the story of my life, I am meant to be a pet, or a companion, / To fill in missing pieces in people’s lives, / To be a bandage over the wound in adoptive parents’ hearts.”

The enormity of dislocation underlying Tobias Hubinette’s “From Orphan Trains to Babylifts: Colonial Trafficking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering” is visually emphasized in Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine’s art piece 50 Numbers, which intersperses years, text, numbers of children adopted from Korea, and the faces of adoptees in a checkerboard pattern. This repeating theme of colonialism is encapsulated in Patrick McDermott’s “Disappeared Children and the Adoptee as Immigrant,” with “disappeared” serving as a powerful reality and metaphor for both Salvadoran children stolen by the military and the mental and emotional effects described by Beth Kyong Lo (“Korean Psych 101”), “To belong nowhere is to be invisible and to be invisible induces a deep rage.”

The writers in Outsiders Within bust the binary that transracial adoption either leaves damaged children or creates multicultural ambassadors. It’s just more complex. As these authors illustrate, adoptees are neither victims nor embodiments of a “colorblind” society. Jeni C. Wright tackles the absurdity of the latter stereotype in her creative prose: “What I had been told about race by my parents could be summed up in three words—Love Is Colorblind. My mom hand-stitched that ideal into the quilt hanging in my childhood bedroom. It is a beautiful ideal but one I had learned the limits of by first grade.”

The authors challenge us: are we not asking the right questions (if we are asking at all)? Instead of weighing in on the debate of whether or not Black children should be adopted by white parents, Dorothy Roberts chooses to ask, “Why are there so many children in foster care in the first place, and why are so many of them Black?” The editors question how the adoption conversation would change if we, “asked about the right of low-income parents to receive adequate economic support … the right of women with additions to receive treatment … the right of mothers in the global South and nations surviving the aftermath of war to food, housing, health care, and education for themselves and their children?”

While asking unflinching questions, this book is not a collection of answers. Starting from the loss expressed by longtime adoptee organizer John Raible-- “I regret that adoption had to happen to us in the first place”-- these writers insist on placing the adoption experience within a historic context. They also assert, however, the primacy of their own lives and viewpoints, never homogenous and sometimes contradictory. This is the powerful presence of the “outsider within.” In “Power of Periphery” author Kim Diehl reminds us, “I had to form an analysis about racism while being lovingly embraced by white people.”

Transracial adoption may be a story about loss, but is one of reclamation as well. This reclamation is not only an individual’s endeavor to make sense of one’s life, but also a journey of self-determination which includes the building of transracial adoptee networks, organizations, and communities. This collection self-consciously witnesses, giving voice to and for the transracial adoptee.

Outsiders Within is not an easy read, nor should it be. These authors dare to say that one has lived through, possibly even benefited from, a broken system. It will have an uncomfortable and meaningful impact on adoptive parents and those involved in the world of transracial adoption. As someone outside this world, as a mixed race writer with no children, Outsiders Within makes me rethink my own assumptions—about family, about nation, about race, about belonging. Ultimately, this anthology provides the breathtaking power of artful politics and the breathgiving possibility for change.

Midwest launch of OW

2006-11-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

Well, it finally came together! They came, we read, there was a peace pipe and a wiping of tears, there was eating and signing. All in all, a successful (if long) evening. Thanks everyone!

I just turned in an interview with Boston Metro--it will be published on November 27th. More to come...

Coming up on the Adoption Show

2006-09-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

Asha Tall, editor of OW at South End Press-- September 24

Sandy White Hawk, contributor to OW -- October 1

Link to internet radio archives:

http://www.theadoptionshow.com/pastshows.htm

Key elements of a good public reading

2006-08-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

So, you've got your copy of Outsiders Within hot off the presses
or right out of the box or delivered into your lap and you want
to share it with the world. What do you do?

If you think: "A reading!" Go for it. It's not that hard.

A typical reading is only about an hour or so.
Even less sometimes.

I've seen readings as short as 30 minutes.

I've seen readings go 4 hours, but let me tell you, the audience
secretly hates you afterwards. It reminds me of the old Shaw
anecdote at the end of one such marathon where he finally
announces: "Ladies and gentlemen! The conversation is not
yet exhuasted, but we are! Good night!"

Pick a night and a time that's convenient for people.

Remember: You CAN keep it simple, so in many ways, you
can plan for an elaborate reading if you want to, with slideshows,
choreography and surprise guests leaping to the stage all afire,
but there can be something deeply stirring about the humble
human voice well used.

But let's hear from some of the others who have some ideas of
what they like to see in a good reading regarding Outsiders Within.

2006-08-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

I want to go to Minneapolis!! But I probably cannot. Any more news on an autumn Toronto event? Congratulations authors & editors on making this book happen!

Shandra

Baapeno Kwe/Wolf Clan/Ojibway Nation

OW website...

2006-08-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

is chock full of amazing blurbs! www.outsiderswithin.com

We are so grateful to all the scholars, artists, and activists who spent the time and energy to comment on Outsiders Within. Kamsahamnida!

Book Launch in Minneapolis

2006-04-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the energies and organizing skills of Sandy White Hawk, we are planning our Midwestern book launch of Outsiders Within on November 18, 2006. Mark your calendars and spread the word!

Welcome to our blog!

2006-04-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

I decided to start this blog as a more conversational adjunct to our under-construction website, www.outsiderswithin.com. I was inspired by another project I'm participating in, as a contributor, not an editor, The Encyclopedia Project, which has a great site and blog. I hope that this will be a good space to report about our events -- soon to begin -- and the great folks we meet along the way. - Sun Yung