Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Edited by Jane Jheong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin
South End Press, 2006
Paper, 336 pgs., $20

The new anthology Outsiders Within is an outstanding compilation of stirring narratives and analysis of transracial and transnational adoption, written by adoptees themselves. The editors, Jane Jheong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, describe this book as a corrective action and a counternarrative to the dominant story about adoption across race. They posit that professionals have dominated the transracial adoption discourse, while adoptees have served primarily as “poster children” for success stories. This book will open new perspectives for most readers interested in adoption, race, and class and the complex issues of identity and belonging.

The book’s 39 writers tell their personal, gripping stories, ask deep questions, and offer remedies to the sense of isolation and loss they and other adoptees cope with. Told through memoir, essay, poetry, and photographs, Outsiders Within includes dramatic voices from around the world, including those of Native, Black, and biracial Americans. Also represented are the estimated 150,000 Korean adoptees spread throughout Western countries, raised by white families in mostly all-white communities — “a black-eyed pea in a bowl of white rice.”

The book is organized to take the reader to points along a transracial adoptee’s journey: childhood isolation and racial bullying, adolescent identity angst, adult searches for healing and connection, and affirmative moves to create supportive community and define themselves. The authors speak of chronic conflicting emotions: love for adoptive parents and rage for an inability to deal with racism, belonging to their families yet always feeling a sense of “other.”

Many contributors counter generalized assumptions — for example, that poor children of color will have a “better life” with a more affluent white family, or that the American Black community failed to adopt Black children. Revealed is the reality that many adoptees have living parents who were deemed unfit, due more to poverty than any other factor, or had a grandparent or aunt who was denied the right to raise them; the system instead selecting a white middle-class couple. These writers describe this with the terrible angst of those denied their natural ties. Personal narrative is interspersed with historical and political analysis that places these traumas within a larger systemic context, with “transracial adoption as the intimate face of colonization, racism, militarism, imperialism, and globalization.” Some writers analyze transnational adoption as an industry: Who benefits and who profits? They review the language of policies and promotion, track the exodus of post-war Korean children, and identify similar patterns of other migrations from poor countries to the industrialized West. Viewed within this context, they describe foreign babies as a cultural commodity requiring the “help” of white couples, whose needs come first.

These writings also offer inspiring stories of strength and the healing power of self-discovery. Essays outline cogent policy recommendations for transracial adoption, such as cultural training and long-term counseling, and describe the emergence of an international movement of transracial and transnational adoptees.

Anyone who followed the recent discourse around Madonna’s adoption of a “poor African orphan” (who happened to have a living father) have heard arguments that belie the notion that the ignorance and racism described in this book is a thing of the past.

Voices in this anthology may be difficult for many to hear, yet the challenges they present and solutions they offer call for honest soul searching. These narratives stand as an example of the defining power of the “studied” to speak for themselves. Outsiders Within is an important book for transracial adoption issues and beyond.

[Online]

The book counts 36 organizations worldwide for adoptees who support each other as they negotiate their identities and learn about their roots. They include the Seattle-based Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington (www.aaawashington.org) and the Vietnamese Adoptee Network (www.van-online.org).