Somewhere in Between and Nowhere to Be Seen: A Look into the Asian American Transracial Adoptee Experience through Educational Programming

Throughout the 1990s-2000s, the number of international adoptions into the United States increased drastically, reaching a little over 20,000 international adoptions in 2002 with 25% being from China and 9% from South Korea (PRB, 2003). As these adoptees begin to age into their 20s and 30s, and experience life outside of their hometowns, they begin to gain a larger awareness of their identities alongside their coming of age years. Balancing the in-between nature of being Asian and having parents who are of a different race, often white, is something that Asian-American transracial adoptees constantly must navigate. There are shared experiences, and experiences that vary for each adoptee. With all of these different stories and experiences in the real world of transracial adoption, it is surprising that the experiences adoptees have are seldom spoken about, especially from the viewpoint of the adoptees themselves. Often faced with representations in only one type of narrative that praises adoptee parents, and discusses very little about the adoptee’s perspective, the work I created gives more agency and voice to Asian-American transracial adoptees who have often been silenced in popular media and Western society as a whole.