I sit down with Alicia Soon Hershey, 41, a Korean transnational adoptee now living in Barcelona. Soon Hershey was the very first adoptee interviewed on the podcast back in 2016 and our conversation book-ends the podcast in the 165th episode (!). We get a chance to hear how she has evolved in the past eight years and her outlook for life now that she is a mother herself.

Audio available Wednesday, August 28, 2024 at 7 am CST.

Transcript by AI.

(0:00:05) speaker_0: Welcome to Adapted Podcast. This is Season 7, Episode 26, and it’s the 165th episode, and it all starts now.

(0:00:17) speaker_0: This is a podcast that centers the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees. Adopted people are the true experts of the lived experience of adoption.

(0:00:30) speaker_0: I’m Kaomi Lee, and I was adopted from Korea.

(0:00:34) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our own adoptive families, and society that only wants a feel-good story.

(0:00:46) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. Please listen to our stories.

(0:00:52) speaker_1: I don’t want that to be the thing that I’m talking about to my child at age 70, or that I’m, uh, in terms of what is the definition, what is the representation of the life that I’ve led.

(0:01:03) speaker_1:

(0:01:03) speaker_0: This next episode is a conversation with Alicia Soon Hershey.

(0:01:07) speaker_0: It’s a bookend of sorts, as Alicia was the first adoptee interview on Adapted Podcast back in 2016.

(0:01:16) speaker_0: I remember lugging up my recorder up many stairs in the Nokseon-byeong neighborhood in Seoul to Alicia’s apartment, only to hear a devastating story of pain, loss, and so many life experiences that seemed unfair and unjust.

(0:01:34) speaker_0: Fast-forward eight years, and I caught up with Alicia, who is now living in Spain.

(0:01:40) speaker_0: You might hear the sound waffle in and out a bit because of internet connections, but the stories shared are consistently all heart. Here’s Alicia.

(0:01:51) speaker_1: Hi. I am… I go by Alicia Soon, or Alicia Soon Hershey now, professionally. And I am an English teacher now living in Barcelona, Spain.

(0:01:51) speaker_1: Um, grew up in rural Pennsylvania, adopted by Mennonites, born in Busan.

(0:02:06) speaker_1: I was in the mid- the 1985, class of 1985 (laughs) in terms of, um, adoptee imports, and I was lucky enough to be adopted with my biological sister. We…

(0:02:29) speaker_1: Yeah, long story. Yeah, I don’t know. Uh, h- what else? Should I bring us up to today, or do you want more information about my adoptee

(0:02:36) speaker_2: Yeah. Yeah. So, so tell us, uh, how old you are today.

(0:02:39) speaker_1: Okay.

(0:02:39) speaker_0: Um-

(0:02:40) speaker_1: I’m-

(0:02:40) speaker_0: … and what your pronouns are-

(0:02:42) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:02:42) speaker_0: I don’t know if I asked you that before, but-

(0:02:43) speaker_1: Oh yeah, I’m 41 now. My pronouns are she and her, and they always have been. I think I missed that that is a thing now that people, um-

(0:02:53) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:02:54) speaker_1: … declare, which I love because I live in Spain, and you know, I don’t, I don’t think that people ask that, which is yet, you know? Uh-

(0:03:02) speaker_0: True.

(0:03:02) speaker_1: … or people make it well-known bec- with the adjectives they use to describe themselves. So mine are still feminine, and, um, yeah. I am 40 now.

(0:03:12) speaker_1: I’m mother of one, a young lady named Ruby Sun. Um, she has an Italian last name, because she has an Italian dad, and we are living here in Barcelona.

(0:03:26) speaker_1: What else? Um, it’s very interesting to be a mom, and also an, um, Asian American mom in a very white country.

(0:03:36) speaker_1: Um, I do feel sometimes that I’ve gone back in time to 1980s rural Pennsylvania (laughs) in terms of, uh, all Asians being Chinese and in terms of like, that’s the perception I mean, not that all Asians are Chinese, but just like the word for Asians is Chinese, but I get asked every day if I’m Chinese or Japanese.

(0:03:56) speaker_1: I get asked to translate Japanese things all the time. (laughs) We’re very weirdly mistreated by strangers. I get people shout “Ni hao” at me regularly.

(0:04:04) speaker_1: But just, um, an interesting place to have chosen for myself, so that’s very interesting and…

(0:04:12) speaker_1: Um, actually it was in the interview with you that I maybe heard myself say aloud for the first time that I wanted to be a mother, which is kind of funny and interesting and full circle.

(0:04:24) speaker_1: And even at the time, not, I didn’t really believe it, but yeah, I think that, hmm, part of my story begins with, mm, a huge distrust in family in general and kind of like, um, feelings of despair around what it means to be family, what mothers are, what mothers, what b- mothers mean to me personally, and then like what my capability and capacity for family and for love are.

(0:04:52) speaker_1: And I think obviously sitting around and f- and conjecturing and feeling bad about it and then like living your life are very different things, and yeah.

(0:05:01) speaker_1: I’m learning day-by-day, and I think that, and the answer to a lot of that is just loving and being present, and so that’s what I’m trying to do.

(0:05:10) speaker_1: I’ve been at it for, I guess a year and eight months she is, so.

(0:05:16) speaker_0: Aw.

(0:05:17) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:05:18) speaker_0: Um, well, congratulations.

(0:05:21) speaker_1: Thanks.

(0:05:21) speaker_0: And I, I do love that for you, that it, that it’s, that it happened, that you became a mother.

(0:05:27) speaker_1: Thanks. Yeah.

(0:05:29) speaker_0: Um, you know, it’s kind of funny because even though it was so long ago when I first met you and interviewed you for the podcast, your epi- Season 1, Episode 1.

(0:05:40) speaker_0:

(0:05:40) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:05:42) speaker_0: Um, and, and so it was, you know, 2016, so many years ago, and yet, um, there’s people who are just discovering the podcast just now, and part of it is, you know, it’s always, um…

(0:05:57) speaker_0: You know, people are coming into their…… adoptee consciousness-

(0:06:02) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:06:02) speaker_0: … always at different times in their lives.

(0:06:04) speaker_1: Right.

(0:06:04) speaker_0: And so, they might be coming in and I know (laughs) I met someone who recently discovered my podcast, um, and then she had to start, she refused to just, she wanted to go right to the beginning.

(0:06:19) speaker_0:

(0:06:19) speaker_1: Okay.

(0:06:20) speaker_0: So she went and heard, found your, your episode.

(0:06:23) speaker_0: And so, I think there’s a lot of folks that maybe are doing it that way too, that they just, they wanna start from the very beginning.

(0:06:31) speaker_1: Okay.

(0:06:32) speaker_0: Um-

(0:06:32) speaker_1: It’s-

(0:06:33) speaker_0: And there you were.

(0:06:34) speaker_0: So, and you, and so, uh, my point in bringing this up too is that folks can go to season one, episode one, to hear more about that point in time, Alicia’s story-

(0:06:44) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:06:45) speaker_0: … um, reflections.

(0:06:46) speaker_0: And just to kinda sum up a little bit, but you know, you talked about having, you know, difficulties with your adoptive family, and very kind of, uh, you know, abusive memories.

(0:06:57) speaker_0:

(0:06:57) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:06:57) speaker_0: Um, and then also, kind, um, you know, there were, i- it’s complex to be-

(0:07:06) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:07:06) speaker_0: … in reunion.

(0:07:07) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:07:07) speaker_0: To find your first fam.

(0:07:10) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:07:10) speaker_0: And so how did you go from, you know, family being kind of just bringing up all these kinda difficulties in your life, and then thinking it might not be for you, and then making that turn to it could be for you?

(0:07:25) speaker_0:

(0:07:25) speaker_1: Yeah. I think that’s a good question. I don’t know. I think when I was younger, I was very, you know, we loved to make these different, like, characters.

(0:07:35) speaker_1: I know I’ve heard people refer to themselves as the angry adoptee, and I definitely, I was an angry, upset person who maybe felt that, that my experience sort of existed in like a, you know, the a- the abuse, but also this feeling of it happening to me as an adoptee.

(0:07:54) speaker_1: Like, obviously, we were put in our situations. So, that, that sort of existed in my mind and my experience of it was very, like, in a vacuum, I think?

(0:08:04) speaker_1: And when I lived in Korea, it took me a while to kind of, you know, get, really get to know my Korean family and then, like, confront sort of how I felt.

(0:08:15) speaker_1: And honestly, being around other adoptees in Korea helped me so, so much.

(0:08:19) speaker_1: I have, like, you know, shout out to Corey and AK, and like other, uh, and you (laughs) obviously-

(0:08:25) speaker_0: Oh, that’s sweet.

(0:08:25) speaker_1: …

(0:08:25) speaker_1: but other adoptees, uh, Lara, that were in my life that just, it just felt good to be around other stories and other, yeah, stories that resonated with me.

(0:08:34) speaker_1: And I, I, I don’t know, I think maybe going through that, shedding some of those layers and shedding maybe some of the, those, like, “I’m alone in this,” or, “It just happened to me,” kind of feelings, allowed me to open up space in my heart to maybe communicate in a more clear way with both of my sisters, and realize like, no, actually there, there are a lot of people, and I think yourself included, who did experience it alone.

(0:09:00) speaker_1: And I think, uh, my narrative of it is that I was alone, but in fact I wasn’t.

(0:09:05) speaker_1: You know, I, I was with a sister who had very distinct experiences and very intense experiences as well, and I had this Korean sister in Korea who had her own intense experiences that we were, over years, able to figure out and understand.

(0:09:20) speaker_1: And then for me to see the kind of like, loving mother and just generous sister, and resilient, hardworking businesswoman and person that she is, uh, it just helped to inform a bit more of my story.

(0:09:33) speaker_1: I didn’t need to keep living this kind of singular narrative. And also, I think that there was a really big element of blame.

(0:09:40) speaker_1: I, I, I know that you’re not, (laughs) this isn’t a confessional bit, so I really like maybe try to like slow my roll when I say it.

(0:09:47) speaker_0: Hm.

(0:09:47) speaker_1: But I do think that, like, a lot of that just sort of opened up in me.

(0:09:51) speaker_1: And I, I, I did go through my own struggles too, like here and learning, you know, like I talked lightly about what it’s like to be Asian American here, but sometimes I feel like I am the only Asian American in Spain.

(0:10:03) speaker_1: Maybe I am.

(0:10:04) speaker_1: But, um, that rather than just being maybe a first generation Asian immigrant to a predominantly White country as an adult, I’ve already experienced this, and then I have sort of this, the American, “I have a right to be myself,” kind of mentality behind my existence here.

(0:10:24) speaker_1: And so that was, that kind of sent me through a few loops as well.

(0:10:28) speaker_1: And I think over the, the years in my time here, and particularly, like then sort of, uh, like, going through quarantine and the pandemic here, needing to reach out to my importance, and that including both sisters, and being in touch and finding myself really, like, alone here, and very…

(0:10:49) speaker_1: I don’t know. I think that we, I interviewed you just after quarantine, right? That was in 2020.

(0:10:56) speaker_0: Yes.

(0:10:57) speaker_1: And I was going through s- you know, I’d just kinda gone through that all by myself with my cat, obviously, by myself, and then th- the time that followed, and I realized that I really had to call into question, like, what I was doing with my life, what was important to me, who was I with at the end of the day, at the end of the world, you know?

(0:11:16) speaker_1: And I think that-

(0:11:18) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:11:18) speaker_1: … hmm, I really kind of realized how, how much I, I wanted to, to have a family or to be part of a family.

(0:11:26) speaker_1: And then it just sort of accidentally happened, in the way that you desire things and they accidentally, you know, you will them into reality a little bit, you know?

(0:11:35) speaker_1: So, um, yeah. And I think that’s it.

(0:11:37) speaker_1: I, even until the moment that maybe I was, I held her, I didn’t know if I realized that that’s what I was doing, like, “Okay, yeah.

(0:11:46) speaker_1: Hav- having a family now.

(0:11:47) speaker_1: ” But, um, I think it just, a lot of that just kind of came about for me in the way that most of my life has, that you just sort of head in one direction and you kind of go with what’s happening and discover along the way and…

(0:12:03) speaker_1: It just, I think, yeah. I think most 12 kids probably get that way. You don’t really make a big plan. It just sort of happens.

(0:12:10) speaker_0: It’s not like-

(0:12:11) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:12:11) speaker_0: … you wake up and, “Okay! I’m gonna become a mother,” and then, (laughs) and then…

(0:12:16) speaker_1: I know plenty of mo- of mothers do that and have done that and, you know, for a lot of families who, you’re right, but having a kid is a much more conscious choice and effort.

(0:12:25) speaker_1: But in my situation, I was fortunate enough that it’s something that I, I unblocked o- I took out of the I don’t want list.

(0:12:35) speaker_1: (laughs) And then it, it came to me, so. And I feel, yeah, really fortunate.

(0:12:42) speaker_1: She’s such a wild, amazing person and, and child and strangely looks so much like my sister, my, um, my sister in America and because obviously we don’t have baby photos, right?

(0:12:55) speaker_1: So everything, seeing her face, seeing her come through, having her be like half white, half Italian, a lot of these things, and I’m sure all adoptees have this feeling of when, when you see, uh, like kind of matching up your childhood or your lack of babyhood with your biological babe, I don’t know.

(0:13:14) speaker_1: There’s something strange and amazing there and it comes with its own complications too.

(0:13:19) speaker_1: You can, as you can imagine, as I’m sure many people know, uh, in terms of like she’s now approaching the age where like my birth father would’ve died and I would’ve been taken away from my parents, and I think, or my birth mother, and I think about like how that trauma could affect her and did affect baby me.

(0:13:37) speaker_1: And it’s something I can’t really talk about with most of the people in my life, so maybe if any adoptees listening to this wanna have like a support group together (laughs) with me, like yes, please.

(0:13:48) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:13:49) speaker_0: Oh, absolutely.

(0:13:50) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:13:51) speaker_0: Um, remind us again, how old were you when you were separated from your first fam?

(0:13:56) speaker_1: So I came to America when I was two and a half.

(0:13:59) speaker_1: Um, so I know we’d been in the orphanage for a while, but I think probably just around my second birthday or just before my second birthday is when I was separated from my family.

(0:14:11) speaker_1: I don’t think that Erica and I spent a long, long amount of time.

(0:14:14) speaker_1: And actually since I had the interview with you, I’ve learned even more about my family because I hired a, a Korean American friend to come down and translate for me on my very last week in Korea and spent like uh, a special weekend with my birth mother and my, um, my siblings and it was, it was really clarifying.

(0:14:34) speaker_1: I just felt like I had a lot of unanswered things by way of language barrier and also, you know, how Korean works in its indirect ways, you know?

(0:14:42) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:14:43) speaker_1: And I just really needed the an- answers to the direct questions. Uh, but yeah.

(0:14:48) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:14:48) speaker_1: I, I think that, yeah, some nice things were cleared up for me .

(0:14:53) speaker_0: Well, that must’ve been cathartic to actually… Did you get some answers from your birth mother?

(0:14:58) speaker_1: I did. I did, and I also got, um, like the unspoken answers.

(0:15:03) speaker_1: I think the, one of the main things I took away was I think maybe you heard it in your interview with me that I was at the time, what?

(0:15:13) speaker_1: Like I’m 41 now, so that was, I was 35, right? Or something like that.

(0:15:19) speaker_1: And I was still like very emotionally affected by the abuse of my childhood, and it’s something that I still kind of, I would say wore as part of my identity, which is very, a very strange thing to say or think about now.

(0:15:33) speaker_1: But I think that continued up until, and ma- maybe it took me a while to shed it, but up until I had that conversation, like really beautifully translated words of my mother, and at her age, I, I think at the time maybe she was just cresting 70, her, uh, ’cause it’s been six years now since I left Korea.

(0:15:53) speaker_1: Um, when I asked her about her upbringing and, you know, like her life, really the only things she wanted to talk about were her childhood abuse.

(0:16:05) speaker_1: And it made me, it was just like really shocking.

(0:16:08) speaker_1: I felt like kind of gripped with this reality of, and this scenario of, of course so much pain has happened in her life, so much loss and so much suffering, and she still attributes the largest of those to be th- her, the injustice and the mistreatment that she experienced as a child.

(0:16:28) speaker_1: Isn’t that wild? And also so sad and s- so painful for her. And I just remember telling myself as I listened to this like, “You will not carry this pain.

(0:16:43) speaker_1: You will not continue to carry this, and carry this blame, and carry this sorrow and bitterness inside of you until you’re 70, Aleysha. No, no, no.”

(0:16:52) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:16:52) speaker_1: Like, it’s been long enough, you know?

(0:16:55) speaker_3: (instrumental music)

(0:17:06) speaker_0: Hm. Mm. No. I mean, I, so yeah. I’m recalling back, you know, in our, our conversations at that time and, um, and you mentioned earlier like that you wanted…

(0:17:19) speaker_0: It was really on your sleeve and then something you wore as part of your identity and, and you, and you wanted to blame people or someone.

(0:17:31) speaker_0: Uh, you wanted to put blame somewhere, and then what happens when you sort of realize that you’re on a continuum of people who have survived, uh, such trauma and abuse and m- maybe there is no one to blame?

(0:17:48) speaker_0:

(0:17:49) speaker_1: Or maybe, yeah. Maybe there is no one to blame or maybe like that it, it’s my responsibility in some ways.

(0:17:55) speaker_1: It’s one of the hor- most horrible things about being a victim or abuse, but it’s my responsibility in terms of what I’m gonna do with this now, and I’ve heard that my whole life, right?

(0:18:06) speaker_1: Like, “You’re safe now. You’re fine now. Oh, but w- look at what you can do with…” And so maybe not doing anything-…

(0:18:12) speaker_1: was what I needed to blame someone for, right?

(0:18:16) speaker_1: So, I think also maybe the thing that came, like that really hit home was that it’s, like, it’s abuse or mistreatment or not being loved in this world we live in really isn’t that rare.

(0:18:31) speaker_1: Do you know what I…

(0:18:32) speaker_1: It’s not the most surprising thing but I think maybe, like, within the, the communities and the childhood and the privilege in A- in America that we have been brought up in, that did feel so unfair and unjust next to all of the pe- the family relationships and the people that we saw around us, right?

(0:18:55) speaker_1: But now having realized, like, what I was spared leaving Korea in some ways and also, um, what I have seen just being and living in the world, I, I think I’m maybe starting to kind of, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say, like, measure it against the other types of suffering that exists, but realize that in a lot of ways too I’ve had a, a lot of privilege and a lot of, mm, beautiful things and a lot of luck in my life, a lot of great experiences.

(0:19:25) speaker_1: So I don’t want that to be the thing that I’m talking about to my child at age 70 or that I’m, uh, in terms of what, what is the definition, what is the representation of the life that I have led because maybe I have let that shine a lot brighter than other really beautiful and amazing relationships and experiences.

(0:19:49) speaker_1: And it wasn’t a place that I started from and it’s something I can use to measure, like, the distance in my life (laughs) or, or measure time, I guess.

(0:19:58) speaker_1: But I think that I maybe have, yeah, in some ways stopped letting myself think about or talk about it as much or even maybe at all in a, in a, in any way that, that has meaning or takes up weight or space in my life.

(0:20:17) speaker_1: It’s something that, for example, my current partner, uh, Marco knows about, but it’s not something that we spend a lot of time talking about where maybe I, I felt like it was, um, a suitcase that needed to be brought along in my past relationships.

(0:20:30) speaker_1: So-

(0:20:32) speaker_0: I’m just imagining, you know, it’s like this stranger who, like, decamps in your living room.

(0:20:36) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:20:37) speaker_0: And is making a lot of noise and you’re paying attention.

(0:20:41) speaker_0: (laughs) But like now maybe you’ve decided that there’s other people and things you, like making room in your living room for other things and that person can maybe be sort of in the corner and be, be there, but not that you’re letting them be the, the life of the party.

(0:21:02) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:21:02) speaker_1: Yeah. Th- That’s nice. Yeah.

(0:21:05) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:21:05) speaker_1: A lot like… And I think I’ll…

(0:21:07) speaker_1: Another thing that has happened too with parenting and I, I think that I’ve had a lot more compassion for my adoptive parents.

(0:21:13) speaker_1: Not saying that I can understand and that’s complicated as well.

(0:21:17) speaker_0: Oh, really?

(0:21:19) speaker_1: Yeah. Just we’re… Because, yeah, I think it’s hard to explain because I’ll, I’ll never understand like what the, why… I mean, I don’t think that people…

(0:21:31) speaker_1: I, maybe I have more of a Ghibli understanding of villains now than a Disney understanding.

(0:21:36) speaker_1: (laughs) You know how in a Ghibli movie, like, all of the bad characters just become like deflated like old hamsters and like i- i- old, old ladies who are just like kind and sweet when they’ve, once they’ve lost their venom and power?

(0:21:50) speaker_1: I think that, that that’s sort of maybe how I feel now where in the past I, I believe saw them as these like powerful, stoic, evil out- like people.

(0:22:01) speaker_1: They made really bad decisions and in fact I’ve had some communication with my birth mom since I had… Or my birth mom. Oof, that was rude.

(0:22:09) speaker_1: But well yes, with her, but my adoptive mom since I had my child and I… Just not a lot, but a few messages here and there and some photos.

(0:22:19) speaker_1: And I think that just giving her kind of some, a little bit of grace and having l- allowed her to, to s- yeah, to talk to me a little bit about, um, her experience from that side of things, not by way of explanation or forgiveness, but by, by s- her…

(0:22:44) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:22:45) speaker_1: I mean I think she even said to me like, “I, if I had to do it again, we wouldn’t have adopted you,” which didn’t necessarily feel great, but I think I understood maybe what she meant, um, kind of knowing the pain that they, they had caused.

(0:22:57) speaker_1: So I think, you know, being young and having experienced real loss, um, and I think what it would look like, what I would look like as a woman having, losing a two-year-old, but now having ha- having one.

(0:23:10) speaker_1: Do you know what I mean?

(0:23:12) speaker_1: That I can imagine the kinds of like bitterness and, and hatred and, and mistakes that people are able to make after such a thing being tired, being overworked, et cetera.

(0:23:26) speaker_1: I, I don’t think there are any perfect moms out there, but I, I don’t think, um, I necessarily, I don’t think I had a good one, you know?

(0:23:34) speaker_1: But I, I can understand maybe that she wasn’t just… That there are circumstances that created her, where in the past I saw her as a very flat, evil character.

(0:23:42) speaker_1: That was a really long (laughs) defense. I heard myself defending her and I was like, “No.” (laughs) but I think-

(0:23:49) speaker_0: Yeah. I mean, some of the things you’re describing, like feeling like they adopted you to, to work you-

(0:23:55) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:23:55) speaker_0: … to work, have a worker on the farm and food deprivation and controlling y- you and also I believe your, you said your bio sister was abused as well.

(0:24:10) speaker_0:

(0:24:10) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah.

(0:24:11) speaker_0: Uh, sexually abused.

(0:24:13) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:24:13) speaker_0: You were also emotionally abused.

(0:24:17) speaker_1: And physically abused.

(0:24:19) speaker_0: And physically abused and-

(0:24:21) speaker_1: Really regularly. Yeah.

(0:24:22) speaker_4: Absolutely.

(0:24:23) speaker_0: And, and then to have…

(0:24:26) speaker_0: Yeah, and then to have your adoptive mom kind of, um, ad- you know, um, acknowledge in a way to say, “We wouldn’t have adopted you,” which it- in hindsight maybe.

(0:24:42) speaker_0: And I’m sure that, that, like you said, doesn’t feel great to hear, but it’s almost like an acknowledgement, like, that things happened and it- that harm-

(0:24:52) speaker_4: Yeah.

(0:24:52) speaker_0: They created harm.

(0:24:53) speaker_4: Yeah. Definitely, like she spoke about-

(0:24:58) speaker_1: She tried… So I- it was once… Would it have been after?

(0:25:02) speaker_1: Yeah, it would have been after we had, uh, had the interesting I, I believe that I met her in person, I think, just before I moved to Spain and I thought that, you know, like, I was in a place where I wanted to, like, talk and, and we did have some interesting conversation.

(0:25:21) speaker_1: But after that meetup, I didn’t speak to her again for like (laughs) four or five years.

(0:25:27) speaker_1: So, it wasn’t great, but that’s when she had said that and there was something about, like, um…

(0:25:34) speaker_1: I just felt like- Or she admitted to saying that she had been a shit mom, but I think the, the most striking thing for me was that she said that she hadn’t sought out therapy.

(0:25:45) speaker_1: And so, in that sense, or that can explain it, she wanted to speak to me about a lot of things.

(0:25:53) speaker_1: Like, maybe in some ways I’m the only one that “knows” and that she can talk to about some of her struggles, including issues with my adoptive father.

(0:26:04) speaker_1: And so, I made it very clear that I wasn’t the person to talk to about these things and that-

(0:26:10) speaker_4: Mm-hmm.

(0:26:10) speaker_1: … if she wanted therapy, then that’s-

(0:26:12) speaker_4: Not something on her, but theirs- it was definitely a fear of, like, people knowing. Do you know what I mean?

(0:26:17) speaker_4: And, and that will be- that will take them to their deathbeds, like, being afraid of people knowing and us giving them the grace of not telling anyone, besides obviously this podcast, which lost me the Facebook friendship of my adopted brother (laughs).

(0:26:31) speaker_4: And, and-

(0:26:32) speaker_1: Oh, it did?

(0:26:33) speaker_4: I think it did create a medium shit storm, because my sister posted it on my Facebook page. We used Facebook at the time.

(0:26:41) speaker_4: On my Facebook page, and, uh, I think people from my hometown had listened to it and he was, or is, like, a council person, I think, in our town.

(0:26:53) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:26:53) speaker_4: And my parents obviously were church-going people, et cetera. So, she (sighs)…

(0:27:00) speaker_4: My adoptive mother wanted to, in that same conversation, put the blame on the, the abuse of my sister, um, on other issues related to my adoptive father.

(0:27:13) speaker_4: But again, I’m not there for it and I, I don’t really have a case of ever wanting to see him again or have, like, and missing him or something.

(0:27:23) speaker_0: And she was, she was abused by your brother, right?

(0:27:26) speaker_1: No, my father. My adoptive father.

(0:27:28) speaker_0: Oh, your father. Okay. Oh, okay.

(0:27:31) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:27:32) speaker_0: Okay, so…

(0:27:33) speaker_1: And then that was something that I had found out later and went to, and it was I who uncovered and discovered it, which was not a, a good place for me or in my, my memory.

(0:27:45) speaker_1: Uh, I was 26 when I figured it out. And actually, that needs to be its own, like, zine actually, how I first-

(0:27:52) speaker_4: (laughs) Doubt and… I had… It was quite a, a difficult time for me.

(0:27:59) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:27:59) speaker_4: But worse for my sister, obviously, so…

(0:28:02) speaker_1: But that was s-

(0:28:03) speaker_4: That was a-

(0:28:03) speaker_1: It was another kind of like chapter in the uns- like, the unraveling of my…

(0:28:09) speaker_4: Mm-hmm.

(0:28:09) speaker_1: My family connection, right?

(0:28:11) speaker_1: Like, at that time, I had already lived in California and I decided to then completely end my relationship with them in all capacity, even the once a year visit capacity.

(0:28:22) speaker_1: And, and so it was a really… From then on, it was a very clean cut, but I never- I mean, I haven’t…

(0:28:29) speaker_1: I have only seen her once since then, and that was at 26, and I hadn’t seen or heard from my brother or my adoptive father since then either, so…

(0:28:42) speaker_0: What, what was it like, um, coming on the podcast for you? And, and it sounds like that, you know, it…

(0:28:51) speaker_0: One of the things that I think people fear about coming on a podcast is people in their lives hearing it for the first time. And whereas-

(0:29:01) speaker_4: Hmm.

(0:29:01) speaker_0: … it’s freeing as well.

(0:29:04) speaker_4: Yeah.

(0:29:04) speaker_0: But also, there can be some fallout, and it sounds like in your family, there were some things that happened.

(0:29:11) speaker_1: Yeah, but I think it’s- You- Whatever fallout it is, it is people not wanting to accept the truth. I mean, my brother knows everything that happened.

(0:29:22) speaker_1: He lived with that. I mean, he was there, right? But a- as you know, most middle class, middle America families don’t wanna…

(0:29:30) speaker_1: We were raised to not talk about things out in the open, you know? And even, I think there’s a lot of fear.

(0:29:36) speaker_1: When my sister and I divorced or broke up with our family officially, we wrote letters.

(0:29:40) speaker_1: But, you know, we didn’t- We never really ever talked about these things out in the open face-to-face.

(0:29:45) speaker_1: And, and I think that the podcast, in itself, is freeing in that way maybe, for people who haven’t confronted or haven’t been able to talk about it.

(0:29:55) speaker_1: I’m- Maybe I’m a bit lucky.

(0:29:56) speaker_1: When I, you know, moved to San Francisco and started studying creative writing, oh, I had many opportunities to write and talk about it.

(0:30:04) speaker_1: I think people got really tired of hearing about my abuse (laughs), honestly.

(0:30:08) speaker_1: So, for me it wasn’t, like, a new thing to talk about or explain, and maybe that’s when I joke about, like now.

(0:30:14) speaker_1: Like, I don’t really give that person, yeah, a place in the living room anymore, because it was a bit, uh, of- maybe a bit too much of, of something that I, I gave, um, precedence or gave attention to.

(0:30:28) speaker_1: So-I don’t know.

(0:30:29) speaker_1: I think, um, it’s a- it’s a bit sad that maybe he doesn’t want to or have a place in his mind or heart to ever talk to me again about it.

(0:30:40) speaker_1: But I do think that maybe it, mm, created a little bit of space for my parents to maybe not be so anonymous with…

(0:30:48) speaker_1: and to be- to go so quietly into the night about the kind of people that they were and really, really are.

(0:30:58) speaker_1: Um, but we have chosen, both of us, to kind of let them live their lives in peace so that we can live our lives in peace as well, you know?

(0:31:06) speaker_1: Like, they- they sort of, they leave us alone and we don’t stir things up too much for them, I guess, is sort of our unspoken thing. So…

(0:31:16) speaker_0: And you and your sister, your- that you were adopted with, y- y- you’re sort of, you- you two have become- had become somewhat estranged from the rest of your family?

(0:31:26) speaker_0:

(0:31:26) speaker_1: Um, well, we made a conscious decision. Like, we both had, in our early 20s, gone our separate ways and maybe even a bit estranged from each other.

(0:31:37) speaker_1: And then over time, things like, w- we, things got, yeah, stronger.

(0:31:42) speaker_1: Especially but when we wrote our letters (laughs), uh, leaving our family at saying that we never wanted to see them again, we’re definitely not family from here on out and you’re talking disgusting people and the whole thing.

(0:31:55) speaker_1: And we… But after that, it was just us, you know? And so… And like I said, that was 15 years ago.

(0:32:04) speaker_1: So the whole it was, it’s just us kind of mentality have been through many boyfriends on my end and a husband and another relationship on her end.

(0:32:15) speaker_1: So she, um, and I, even though we obviously live very far away, she lives in Pennsylvania, still are very united and I feel really, really grateful for her, to be honest.

(0:32:27) speaker_1: And after going through a really tough time here after quarantine, she brought me over for Christmas a few years ago.

(0:32:32) speaker_1: She’s bringing all of us over for Christmas this year to see her.

(0:32:37) speaker_1: They came out here after Ruby was born and, um, yeah, I think it’s- it’s important and really vital for me. I don’t think I could exist just on my own.

(0:32:47) speaker_1: I- I really need her and I think she really needs me as well. So… And for- for both of us, specifically for her, it has been just me.

(0:32:58) speaker_1: I have like our Korean sister as well, which she doesn’t have a relationship with.

(0:33:03) speaker_1: So, I think, yeah, it’s very important for us to be together and to have our- have each other. Mm-hmm.

(0:33:13) speaker_0: Alicia, um, he- it’s so…

(0:33:15) speaker_0: With the trauma and all the things you’ve gone through in life and you always- you struck me as just being a very joyful person, even though when I met you and even just talking, I don’t know, is that…

(0:33:31) speaker_0: Where does that come from?

(0:33:32) speaker_1: I don’t know.

(0:33:35) speaker_0: Like an adventure life, seeker of experiences, someone who, you know, um…

(0:33:42) speaker_0: This is my impression of you, that, um, really like loves and feels deeply and cares as- cares for people in your life.

(0:33:54) speaker_0: And it just seems, you know, from talking to you, I just think that wouldn’t you just be this dark person, but you have a lot of joy it seems like in your life.

(0:34:07) speaker_0:

(0:34:07) speaker_1: Thank you for saying that. Thank you. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I also wonder sometimes. (laughs) It’s not all…

(0:34:15) speaker_1: And the other thing that’s funny is, it’s definitely not like fake because I also sometimes wonder that about myself too.

(0:34:23) speaker_1: It’s not- I definitely have my moments like where I’ve- I’ve been depressed and I’ve had anxiety, but I think my modus operandi is this, is like f- like you say, deep feeling, full of love, positive.

(0:34:39) speaker_1: But like, I- I don’t know. The- the dark places maybe come from the things that are lacking. In Spanish we say the faltas.

(0:34:48) speaker_1: The faltas from like from maybe how I was raised, what I believe about myself, maybe, uh, issues of self esteem or imposter syndrome.

(0:34:59) speaker_1: Those- those things, they creep up, but I feel… When I was younger I used to say like, “The worst has happened.

(0:35:07) speaker_1: ” (laughs) The worst has happened and the rest is like, to, yeah, to, an adventure to discover.

(0:35:13) speaker_1: I used to call everything an adventure and I think I’m at that place in my life where I’m like a bit reflective about how well I used or didn’t use my 20s.

(0:35:22) speaker_1: But I- I’ve had a really great adventure thus far, and so I’m- I’m always really surprised, uh, about where life has taken me. You know what I mean?

(0:35:32) speaker_1: Like, I- I’m really lucky.

(0:35:34) speaker_1: I’ve had a lot of really beautiful, uh, friendships and relationships with people that have supported me and loved me and taught me how to love and- and to, yeah, and about the world.

(0:35:46) speaker_1: Because I really felt like at 19, I entered the world in- incredibly sheltered, just without much knowledge of anything, without much belief in myself, but I was, uh, very brave kind of in a there’s no going back or in a very naive way.

(0:36:04) speaker_1: (laughs) I was very brave.

(0:36:06) speaker_1: I had the courage of naivety and- and youth and I’m really grateful for that in a lot of ways because there really was no going back when I bought that plane ticket to California, that one way ticket.

(0:36:17) speaker_1: So, I feel really…

(0:36:20) speaker_0: Mm.

(0:36:20) speaker_1: … grateful for her, whoever that was, that version of me that kind of pushed me forward ’cause I- I don’t think as a- as young, um……

(0:36:31) speaker_1: a Korean adoptee, Alisha, on the farm, I could have ever imagined this life for myself and, and I really think that living in Korea was such an important step and, and part of my life.

(0:36:43) speaker_1: Like, there really is a before and after, you know?

(0:36:46) speaker_1: Like, I, I don’t think I could be nearly as at peace with myself and, and who I am where my identity isn’t really something that I ever really worry about or think about it.

(0:36:57) speaker_1: It’s secure now after having spent that time. Uh, maybe other Korean adoptees who’ve kind of fulfilled that bit of their life would feel the same.

(0:37:07) speaker_0: ‘Cause I, (laughs) I remember when I met you, um, I had just gotten to Korea to start my year there and I was just so in awe of you because here was this like, you seem very cosmopolitan, you know, you were a Seoulite.

(0:37:21) speaker_0: (bell dinging) Had been in Korea for a few years at that point, (bell dinging) um, and then you-

(0:37:27) speaker_1: I’d been five at that point, yeah.

(0:37:29) speaker_0: And that you-

(0:37:30) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:37:30) speaker_0: I mean, you could… You joked to some granny on the street in Korean and you… ‘Cause you know, you spoke some Korean.

(0:37:37) speaker_1: (laughs).

(0:37:37) speaker_0: You seemed really comfortable with your surroundings.

(0:37:41) speaker_1: Yeah, I know. (laughs)

(0:37:41) speaker_0: And I was just really in awe of… You knew where to get the, um, the authentic bread.

(0:37:46) speaker_1: Absolutely. (laughs)

(0:37:46) speaker_0: Like European bread. (laughs)

(0:37:49) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:37:51) speaker_0: And I just-

(0:37:52) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:37:52) speaker_0: I just remember just thinking, “Wow, you’re just, you know…

(0:37:56) speaker_0: ” Um, th- you know, hoping that maybe one day I would feel as good in my skin in Korea as you appeared to be at that time. I don’t-

(0:38:05) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:38:06) speaker_0: But, um, I’m wondering that… So for, for example, with your adoptive family story, really some dark things and-

(0:38:17) speaker_1: Yeah, some really horrible things.

(0:38:18) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:38:19) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:38:19) speaker_0: I mean, let’s, let’s not sugarcoat it and, um, and then for a lot of adoptees we, we have, we have this redemptive thing, right?

(0:38:26) speaker_0: We wanna go back to Korea and to reclaim something that we feel was taken from us, right?

(0:38:32) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:38:33) speaker_0: And then, and then going to Korea and, you know, with your first family, learning that it w- like life was really hard and for the, your, um, siblings that, that remained in Korea, that, that they told you that life was very hard.

(0:38:52) speaker_0: And, and somehow it doesn’t fit because you want to go back to Korea and say, “My life would’ve been better if you…”

(0:38:59) speaker_1: Yep. Yeah.

(0:39:00) speaker_0: And then you’re faced with this reality of that everyone there is saying, is looking at you like somehow you escaped a really hard life.

(0:39:10) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:39:10) speaker_0: How did you, how did you make s- how did you come to terms with that?

(0:39:14) speaker_1: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know if I, I, I don’t… I was gonna say I don’t know if I have, but you know what?

(0:39:19) speaker_1: I think I had to immediately come to terms with it. Like, the very first visit, it became quite clear that we were the lucky ones, right?

(0:39:29) speaker_1: And in fact, in that last interview that I’m telling you about that I did with my mother…

(0:39:34) speaker_1: Interview is a funny way to put it because I did record and then somehow ended up losing what I recorded, (laughs) which is stupid but I have it in my mind.

(0:39:40) speaker_1: Um, but I’m, there was a part where sh- my Korean sister was recounting to me again, and it had been a couple times I’d heard it but in a beautifully translated way about what had happened to her after my sister and I went to the orphanage.

(0:39:56) speaker_1: And at that time she would’ve been, I would say 13 or 14, and she was taken to be a cleaning girl in a medium wealthy family’s home and was, mm, treated so poorly and beaten so badly that she ended up in the hospital and she has this s- big white bump of a scar in the top kind of middle of her head.

(0:40:15) speaker_1:

(0:40:16) speaker_0: Ah.

(0:40:16) speaker_1: And at that point she, you know, had been, I think she was hit with, um, like, I don’t know, like a vase or something and she had been bleeding and was sent to the hospital and at that point was brought back to live with our biological mother.

(0:40:30) speaker_1: And when she tells it, her whole face is just full of tears and anguish and she’s living that reality of the shame and the loneliness of a 13-year-old probably living, sleeping on the floor, working for everyone completely without family, completely without protection, and how horrible it felt to be, to be treated like that.

(0:40:52) speaker_1: And there was no…

(0:40:54) speaker_1: At, at that moment, my, my Korean mother turns to me and hits me on the, the side, the side as Korean mothers do, it’s not angry but the hitting, getting hit on the arms and the shoulder and being told, “Look, look what she went through.

(0:41:08) speaker_1: You were so lucky.” And that’s how my friend translated it. “Look, look what she went through. You’re so lucky.” And (sighs) it was really hard.

(0:41:18) speaker_1: It was really hard to accept that but I can’t say anything. You know? Like I, if that’s what she believes, that…

(0:41:24) speaker_1: And I can’t negate my, my sister’s suffering and that was only the beginning for her.

(0:41:29) speaker_1: You know, she worked in a garment factory and slept on the floor next to the sewing machine for the next 10 years of her life, right?

(0:41:37) speaker_1: So I, I feel that if that’s…

(0:41:39) speaker_1: if it helps them to think that all of this suffering and all of the suffering they can feel relieved that Erica and I survived and are, in our way, then I, I’ll let her think that.

(0:41:51) speaker_1: But my Korean sister knows better because we were able to explain ourselves to each other a few times prior to that.

(0:41:57) speaker_1: But my, my friend who was translating turned and said to her like, “You, you… That’s not a very nice thing to say. You don’t know.

(0:42:03) speaker_1: ” But she didn’t really go beyond that and I told her, “No need to say anything else.

(0:42:08) speaker_1: ” But what my sister had experienced in that suffering, and I f- and I saw it in her face, it must have been so horrible, but I also felt that for probably a good 10 years of my life, that feeling that, of anguish.

(0:42:21) speaker_1: And I’m… I don’t know.

(0:42:22) speaker_1: I, I think that in the end I have to rest easy w- with knowing that what I have and what I received in some kind of strange karmic payment for-…

(0:42:35) speaker_1: the suffering that it seems like all of my family was kind of (laughs) like, weirdly doomed to, that at least I got opportunity, you know?

(0:42:43) speaker_1: W- what Erika and I got are, is opportunity.

(0:42:46) speaker_1: And my Korean sister made that opportunity for herself through hard work, through, you know, marrying somebody who was loving and kind and building a family, and just, and hard work.

(0:42:58) speaker_1: But my Korean brother is the example of taking the same route as my probably biological parents both did, which was blame, suffering, um, and also living in kind of a lonely isolation with one’s pain and suffering.

(0:43:15) speaker_1: And I haven’t spoken to him in a really long time-

(0:43:18) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:43:18) speaker_1: … to be honest. And s- it’s basically since then, since that six years ago is maybe the last time I saw him.

(0:43:24) speaker_1: And kind of up until the end, I think he’s always s- m- I wouldn’t say he’s jealous of me, ’cause that’s not fair, but I think that he definitely sees me as being quite selfish and, you know, I did loan him money or give him money and, and try to help him with his life in some way here and there, but, you know, he’s eight years older than me, he’s an adult as well, and his bad habits or the way he’s, he’s living his life, and the things that he…

(0:43:50) speaker_1: that were instilled in him that he didn’t get or that he did receive at a really young age are part of him now. Do you know what I mean?

(0:44:00) speaker_1: Uh, uh, and maybe he’s, he’s not listening to Louise Hay videos (laughs) and meditating and doing yoga every day to try desperately to change that, and maybe…

(0:44:08) speaker_1: and th- there’s where we differ, and I think that comes from opportunity and influence, and the people that I’ve met who have helped change me as well in my life, so.

(0:44:17) speaker_1:

(0:44:22) speaker_0: Yeah, it is really hard, uh, to come to terms with the fact that when we go back to Korea, that for, for a lot of us, we do come back as a privileged person, having-

(0:44:37) speaker_1: For sure.

(0:44:38) speaker_0: … just being raised in first-world countries, uh, having opportunities, but no less pain. You know what I mean? So-

(0:44:48) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:44:49) speaker_0: It, it, it can seem like to Koreans in Korea that we have so much more and we should just shut up, like, and stop complaining and whining.

(0:44:59) speaker_1: I think so. Um-

(0:44:59) speaker_0: We can make money just by speaking our language, you know? (laughs) By-

(0:45:03) speaker_1: Exactly. And I did, and that was a very obvious thing, right, for e- obvious reason for me to just, like, not have anything to complain about, I think.

(0:45:12) speaker_1: And, you know, and we know that too, that the Korean, you know, like, e- it was always very funny for me to look around and think, “Well, what, where were you?

(0:45:20) speaker_1: What were your parents doing?

(0:45:21) speaker_1: What were you eating, or what were you wearing when we were all, you know, living as orphans and our parents were starving to death?” Like, where was everybody?

(0:45:29) speaker_1: Because when I lived in Korea, all of those people…

(0:45:32) speaker_1: I don’t know if the same happened for you, where I would kind of look at former bosses or coworkers or people around me, thinking that, “What were they doing in 1985 when my family was, you know, going through poverty and we were given up for adoption so we wouldn’t starve to death?

(0:45:46) speaker_1: What, what was everybody else doing?” Because they were in Korea at that time.

(0:45:50) speaker_1: And I think that this, there’s this collective, “Just don’t talk about it. We’re all fine now. Look what, how we’re dressed,” right?

(0:45:57) speaker_1: And so, we’re, we, we fucked that up as adoptees. We impede that, or kind of like collective forgetting in a lot of ways. And I think us, we should just…

(0:46:09) speaker_1: This idea that we should just, like, shut up and be happy that we’re coming back with, you know, opportunities and wealth or privileged childhoods, et cetera, is part of that too, because everybody else also lived something difficult and rough, but we’re not…

(0:46:23) speaker_1: As a culture maybe, we’ve decided to just put that behind us. And so-

(0:46:29) speaker_0: Like it’s, like adoptees who come back we’re, we’re upsetting the unspoken-

(0:46:34) speaker_1: Exactly.

(0:46:34) speaker_0: … uh, agreement, right?

(0:46:37) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:46:38) speaker_0: To like, let’s just move forward and not look back.

(0:46:42) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:42) speaker_0: And, and adoptees are like, “But wait. This happened, and this happened.”

(0:46:47) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:47) speaker_0: “And um, we’re from here and got sent out because of… you couldn’t take care of us and…

(0:46:54) speaker_0: ” Um, so given your family backgrounds and your experiences did you ever feel-

(0:47:00) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:47:00) speaker_0: … like unsure if you could raise somebody and have a healthy, happy family? And-

(0:47:09) speaker_1: Girl, (laughs) girl, you, you know these are things I think, I think about, right? Like there’s…

(0:47:15) speaker_1: I’m sure there are all kinds of moms out there, and moms…

(0:47:18) speaker_1: I, I don’t think moms who are 100% of the time think that they’re the best mom ever really exist.

(0:47:25) speaker_1: But I definitely, you know, feel that there, there are moments… I mean, I definitely have, you know… well anyway.

(0:47:32) speaker_1: My birth, life for me cannot go d- go around easily. So like my birth itselfs, I had the, I had PTSD after, right? So, or the birth itself.

(0:47:41) speaker_1: So like, I definitely had like a little touch of postpartum. I don’t know if you’d have a little touch.

(0:47:45) speaker_1: But I felt a little bit not myself for the first few months after and it crossed my mind like, (gasps) “It’s the curse!” (laughs) maybe, you know.

(0:47:53) speaker_1: But no, six months ******* and I did some therapy. I, I had postpartum, yeah. Or I mean, it was undiagnosed, but I, I was diagnosed with PTSD.

(0:48:04) speaker_1: So I just, my partner and I, we both say that around six months is kind of when I started being myself again.

(0:48:11) speaker_1: But I told myself right o- like I knew that something was off and I needed to go to therapy because I said this is not one of these traumas that I’m gonna let linger around with me forever.

(0:48:22) speaker_1: I, I know what to do now because I’ve lived through traumas. I’m gonna deal with it right now.

(0:48:28) speaker_1: And honestly going like here in Spain, I’ll give it to their credit that if you have an issue you go and it’s part of the government healthcare, I was able to talk to someone several times, I was really heard, I was met with a lot of empathy and kindness….

(0:48:42) speaker_1: and I decided to not hush up and to talk to the people around me about it as much as I could in the beginning.

(0:48:49) speaker_1: And it helped me a lot, and I feel like I was able to put that behind me and move on. So I’m not bringing any new traumas.

(0:48:56) speaker_1: And I do definitely wonder, how am I gonna explain to Ruby as she gets older who I am?

(0:49:01) speaker_1: (laughs) But I think she’s seeing who I am every day, and I’m gonna have to figure out some interesting, insightful, and creative way to explain to her why she doesn’t have grandparents.

(0:49:12) speaker_1: She only has a nonna and a nono in Italy, so she doesn’t have grandparents and, (sighs) and these things.

(0:49:19) speaker_1: And I do obviously feel like there are a lot more things in my head, like what I briefly brought up about, um, what, what happened to me at her age, and you know, what it’s like to have all these kind of like fears and anxieties around like, for example, abuse, or what it is to raise your voice, or what happens when you lose your patience, right?

(0:49:40) speaker_1: But I think that I know that I’ll, I’m only me, you know? And my…

(0:49:43) speaker_1: I have a really loving and amazing partner who’s a wonderful dad, who is really good at reminding both of us that we’re just ourselves, you know?

(0:49:52) speaker_1: And if ourselves start with a base of love and joy, and I think that’s part of why we also just wanna have one child, (laughs) but joy, then that’s it.

(0:50:01) speaker_1: Then there’s, there’s never a chance that I’ll be like my adoptive parents, because we’re just coming to her as ourselves.

(0:50:09) speaker_1: We’re not pretending that we know everything. We grew up when, where parents were, like, huge authorities, and it’s just this way because it’s this way.

(0:50:17) speaker_1: And you know, we’re…

(0:50:18) speaker_1: And we live in Spain where maybe children are just like really loved and valued and seen, and also like making life easy for parents is kind of part of the whole thing here.

(0:50:29) speaker_1: Like, our health- our, mm, healthcare is free and our, um, uh, daycare starts in September, which is also free, uh, at age two, right? So-

(0:50:40) speaker_0: Mm. Wow.

(0:50:40) speaker_1: … I feel like I ha- we- I have… I’m in a good place for this all to be happening.

(0:50:45) speaker_1: I have the support in my partner and the support in our, in this society and culture here for it to go well, you know? But, I don’t think that…

(0:50:55) speaker_1: I don’t know. I think that there are a lot of factors in, at play that could make it go badly, (laughs) and I’m not allowing myself to get into those.

(0:51:03) speaker_1: You know, like, isolated, on the phone with five children, you know, like hating my life.

(0:51:08) speaker_1: That, those aren’t the context in which I wanna have raised this person. And-

(0:51:13) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:51:13) speaker_1: … I don’t think, I won’t allow myself to have that, so.

(0:51:16) speaker_0: Yeah, I think that’s an important takeaway is you’ve really made a conscious decision that you’re not your trauma, uh-

(0:51:24) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:51:25) speaker_0: … and that y- you don’t want your daughter to be your trauma, or your, your relationship to be that, to be, to be defined by that, or that-

(0:51:33) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:51:33) speaker_0: … to have her, to be 70 years old and to have this be an, your trauma be part of your relationship with her.

(0:51:42) speaker_1: Yeah, or my legacy to her, or-

(0:51:44) speaker_0: Yeah, your legacy.

(0:51:44) speaker_1: … given the-

(0:51:45) speaker_0: Right.

(0:51:46) speaker_1: … way in which I identify myself to her. No, no, and, and also, pfft, yeah, no.

(0:51:51) speaker_1: My, my siblings will talk about the burden that my mother was on them, my birth mother was on them while they were working in the sweatshops, how she would always come and need their help and need their money to go to the doctor, and sh- she just…

(0:52:05) speaker_1: I can see that like she had never really fixed or solved anything in herself before having kids, and it’s not her fault.

(0:52:12) speaker_1: Uh, her having children, like you say, wasn’t a conscious choice, and I’m lucky enough that I lived in an America where I could have an abortion if I wasn’t ready to have a child, and at this point in my life, I am, and I chose this person to be raised by this version of me now.

(0:52:29) speaker_1: And definitely like 24-year-old me would not have been a great mom, but I’m, I’m confident that I, I’m ready or I wouldn’t have done it, and so, so far-

(0:52:43) speaker_0: Oh, good.

(0:52:43) speaker_1: … so good. (laughs)

(0:52:44) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:52:44) speaker_1: So far so good, she’s still alive and she’s amazing. (laughs)

(0:52:47) speaker_0: (laughs) I know, I like-

(0:52:49) speaker_1: And she’s trilingual, and she-

(0:52:50) speaker_0: Trilingual.

(0:52:50) speaker_1: Yeah, or quadri- quadrilingual, actually.

(0:52:53) speaker_1: Well, she’s already got four sh- I mean, she’s got Italian, Spanish, and English at home, and then we read some Korean things, and we have like a little Korean like bus that plays songs, like electronic toy, and I swear to God, now every time we go past a Chinese business or store, ’cause in Barcelona most Asians are Chinese, she will shout, “Annyeong” at them and like by way of strange like reverse racism where she thinks all Asians say annyeong, so.

(0:53:18) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:53:18) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:53:19) speaker_1: Or, and she often r- she loves the words (Korean) because of a book that we read.

(0:53:28) speaker_0: Aw.

(0:53:28) speaker_1: So she’s got some words, and, and we, I taught her some basic normal words like it hurts, but ayya, ayya, like in Korean, so those are like the basis for how she knows certain words.

(0:53:41) speaker_1: She only knows them in Korean, for example, so-

(0:53:43) speaker_0: Does she-

(0:53:43) speaker_1: … that’s kind of-

(0:53:44) speaker_0: Does she call you oma?

(0:53:47) speaker_1: No, we go, I go “Mama,” because-

(0:53:49) speaker_0: Mama. Okay.

(0:53:50) speaker_1: I kind of, I preferred that, but she knows what oma is, and but she calls my sister in, in America imo.

(0:53:55) speaker_1: She, I asked her what she wanted to be called and she’s gone with imo.

(0:53:59) speaker_0: Ah.

(0:54:00) speaker_1: So at least she has that in her life. Yeah, unless-

(0:54:04) speaker_0: Were there-

(0:54:05) speaker_1: I don’t know. I know some people wanna be called oma. For me, no. I, the word is a little bit painful for me, I think, actually.

(0:54:11) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:54:11) speaker_1: So, I prefer Mama, yeah.

(0:54:14) speaker_0: Yeah. So why Spain a- after what, five years in Korea?

(0:54:20) speaker_1: Seven years in Korea, and now-

(0:54:23) speaker_0: Five in here, wow.

(0:54:23) speaker_1: … six years in Spain.

(0:54:26) speaker_0: Why Spain? And then-

(0:54:29) speaker_1: Great question.

(0:54:29) speaker_0: … was it almost, was it almost easier going to a third country than to going back to America?

(0:54:36) speaker_1: Oof, no, these are expat questions. These aren’t really adoptee questions anymore.

(0:54:40) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:54:42) speaker_1: I, I don’t know. Well, I came to Spain ’cause I was dating a Catalan at the time, and I think, like when you said about-…

(0:54:49) speaker_1: like, the vibe I was in in Seoul. I could have stayed in Seoul.

(0:54:52) speaker_1: And actually now, sometimes I think about maybe moving back to Seoul, so maybe the next time we have this interview I’ll be in Seoul again. (laughs)

(0:54:59) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:54:59) speaker_1: It’s just that the… Like, it’s too good.

(0:55:02) speaker_1: You know, it’s too easy here in terms of, like, you know, the health insurance and the social programs and, and how, the way that Spain takes care of people.

(0:55:11) speaker_1:

(0:55:11) speaker_5: Mm-hmm.

(0:55:11) speaker_1: It’s, it’s quite nice.

(0:55:13) speaker_1: I think that’s what’s kept me here, but I came with, um, the, uh, person that I was dating at the time who needed to come back for family reasons and we just weren’t at a place that h- I was ready to break up, but we weren’t really that, that serious.

(0:55:27) speaker_1: So I came and I stayed and we were together for another almost two years after I moved here and that relationship didn’t work out, but I still had some time in my visa and I thought, “Well, I’ll just stay and see what happens.

(0:55:38) speaker_1: ” Then the pandemic happened and then my life took me for a little bit of a low, and then when I came back up again, I met my current partner, Marco, uh, his son, and we got pregnant accidentally, and here I am.

(0:55:53) speaker_1: (laughs) So, uh, uh, he doesn’t like when I say accidentally, but we got pregnant and here we are.

(0:55:59) speaker_1: And, um, it was easier I think to go to S- maybe here than America, because I talked to my friends who have gone from Korea back to America or Korea back to Ireland, and they say, like, “You know, nobody understands, oh, people who’ve gone back,” and then we joke about being in, like, a self-help group of people who’ve, um, had to come out of all the luxuries of living abroad as an expat, and, and nobody understands us and everybody else is in, like, a different financial place, and, um, h- and I don’t know.

(0:56:30) speaker_1: I feel like, yeah, maybe I skipped that staying here. My friends who live in America definitely had different fates than me.

(0:56:36) speaker_1: But I feel lucky I guess in some ways, although most of my friends, including partner here, we don’t, aren’t really expats.

(0:56:42) speaker_1: I think we’re all just immigrants, which is kind of a, a different, a funny distinction.

(0:56:47) speaker_1: The people that maybe who are expats, expats here, have come with outside money and those of us who just, like, kind of jump into the Spanish way of life and are used to the- getting used to the low salaries and, and the kind of hard style of life here, I think we just, we don’t really, we’re not living in privilege.

(0:57:07) speaker_1: (laughs) But it’s still quite, mm, it’s a good place to live. I’m happy here. I think I’ll stick it out for at least another five years.

(0:57:14) speaker_1: You might see me in Seoul again-

(0:57:16) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:57:16) speaker_1: … when I was 70 years old.

(0:57:17) speaker_0: Maybe it will… I’ll be retired there.

(0:57:20) speaker_1: (gasps) Is that something you’re thinking about?

(0:57:22) speaker_0: (laughs) That is something I’m thinking about. Yeah.

(0:57:25) speaker_1: Ooh. Did y- I wanted to ask you-

(0:57:27) speaker_0: ‘Cause I-

(0:57:28) speaker_1: Oh, go ahead.

(0:57:28) speaker_0: Uh, yeah, because when I came back, I was only there a year, right? I, and I couldn’t take it for much longer. I really, I even moved up my-

(0:57:35) speaker_1: Oh, lady.

(0:57:35) speaker_0: … I even moved up my flight, because-

(0:57:37) speaker_1: Wow. Oh, yeah?

(0:57:39) speaker_0: … I had such a, like, love/hate relationship-

(0:57:44) speaker_1: Like, heartbreak.

(0:57:44) speaker_0: … with Korea.

(0:57:45) speaker_1: Oh, no. I’m sorry.

(0:57:47) speaker_0: But, um, I also think that, I hear this a lot, that people say the second year is easier, because you’re-

(0:57:53) speaker_1: Yeah, you only have to slug through it. It’s so… I mean, I was pretty depressed and I had a rough time the first year for sure.

(0:57:59) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:57:59) speaker_1: But then-

(0:58:00) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:58:00) speaker_1: … you have to… Mm.

(0:58:01) speaker_0: You can build on something in the second year and you have more language capacity and you have more-

(0:58:07) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:58:07) speaker_0: … uh, cultural knowledge. I think the first year was so…

(0:58:11) speaker_0: Because also I just dived in, like, I really hadn’t spent much time in Korea and then, like, I decided I was gonna move there, and as a, you know, middle-aged person, woman, and, you know, it was just, it was a lot to take in, like, all of the cultural differences.

(0:58:28) speaker_0:

(0:58:29) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:58:29) speaker_0: Um, and then the adoptee stuff on top of that, and, um, but-

(0:58:35) speaker_1: I’m sorry. Yeah.

(0:58:36) speaker_0: Even moving back to the States, I-

(0:58:39) speaker_1: Mm.

(0:58:39) speaker_0: There was, like, a big culture shock and there was a lot of things that I missed about Korea, like, moving back to the States-

(0:58:46) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:58:46) speaker_0: …

(0:58:46) speaker_0: moving back, I ended up back in Minnesota, and very white, and just things that I took for granted in Seoul, like just that comfort level of being surrounded by other people who look like you and being, that sort of comfort.

(0:59:01) speaker_0:

(0:59:01) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:59:02) speaker_0: And then being thrown back to the life that I had come from-

(0:59:07) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:59:07) speaker_0: … and just, like, realizing, “Oh, this doesn’t feel good.” And-

(0:59:11) speaker_1: How cool that it’s not normal anymore, what was always so normal.

(0:59:14) speaker_0: Yeah, like, the norm- the n- it’s a new normative, and like-

(0:59:18) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:59:18) speaker_0: … the thing that I, like, being back, like, and I realize, like, I didn’t, it wasn’t easy to go back-

(0:59:25) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:59:25) speaker_0: … to my life in the States, because I realized, like, “Well, Korea changed me,” and-

(0:59:29) speaker_1: Yes, definitely. Definitely.

(0:59:32) speaker_0: So wondering if, like, actually going to another country would have even been-

(0:59:38) speaker_1: Yes. Yes. But it’s also, like, I’m kind of already imagining more-

(0:59:43) speaker_0: It’s-

(0:59:43) speaker_1: It’s, like, a slightly, like, 1980s racist over here, so it’s a bit, it’s kind of hard to be, uh, a racial minor- I mean, it’s h- it’s hard to be a racial minority I would say, but it’s also not.

(0:59:57) speaker_1: Like, I, I tell myself, I mean, “God, I love my nation so amazing.

(1:00:01) speaker_1: ” But I definitely am- it’s annoying after living in Asia for so long, kind of also having lived in California before that, to have gone through all of this, um, slow and painful, like, uh, I want generational, um, growth or, yeah, generational growth to get to a place where people aren’t so close-minded and, and racist, to then coming to a place that is.

(1:00:25) speaker_1: (laughs) It’s like, “Shuck, what happened? Why did I choose this?” Uh, but it’s okay.

(1:00:32) speaker_1: I get to be part of that generation in Spain that, mm, creates a second gen and that starts representation, and, uh, tries to, is an integration and tries to stop, uh, or, or educate and, uh, illuminate people’s minds here a little bit.

(1:00:50) speaker_1: That would be nice. So I’m lucky to live in a really diverse neighborhood anyway, so that’s cool.

(1:00:57) speaker_0: You do? Okay.

(1:00:58) speaker_1: I do, yeah.

(1:01:00) speaker_0: Well, A- Alicia, what, I mean… Has it occurred to you, is your, that you’re ra- that you’re raising a Spanish daughter?

(1:01:06) speaker_1: I know. It’s a little bit strange. And the crazy thing is that she… Well, she’s not technically Spanish, because in Spain sh- y- she’s American.

(1:01:15) speaker_1: She’s American and, um… Oh, she’s calling me now for baby. She’s American and Italian, because you’re not Spanish just ’cause you’re born here.

(1:01:24) speaker_1: Isn’t that funny?

(1:01:25) speaker_0: Oh. But culturally, she will be if you, if you end up staying, right?

(1:01:29) speaker_1: Culturally. Culturally, yes. And at school, they will teach her in Catalan. Oh, she’s calling you.

(1:01:34) speaker_0: Oh, Ruby, do you wanna be on the podcast?

(1:01:38) speaker_1: If I let her in here, it might be a lot of screams. Do, do you wanna be able to edit this part out? I don’t know if Marco wants me to.

(1:01:46) speaker_0: Yeah, it’s up to you. It’s up to you. We can have her in or not, or however. If you wanna… She wants to be with you.

(1:01:55) speaker_1: I’m gonna see.

(1:01:58) speaker_6: No. Speaker 4: Leave it. No! No!

(1:02:02) speaker_1: Okay, come on.

(1:02:03) speaker_6: No! No!

(1:02:03) speaker_1: Stay, stay.

(1:02:04) speaker_6: No!

(1:02:04) speaker_1: We’re gonna get you messed up if you cry, okay.

(1:02:10) speaker_6: No! Aah!

(1:02:10) speaker_1: Here, I got her. I’ve got her.

(1:02:12) speaker_6: Help me!

(1:02:12) speaker_1: And we’re gonna calm down.

(1:02:16) speaker_6: Aah!

(1:02:16) speaker_1: Are you okay?

(1:02:18) speaker_6: Aah!

(1:02:20) speaker_1: Shh. Shh. We’re still here. What’d she say?

(1:02:28) speaker_0: Was she… Did she just wake up?

(1:02:30) speaker_1: No, no, she’s ready for bed. So this is like-

(1:02:33) speaker_0: Oh.

(1:02:33) speaker_1: … we were, we were eating dinner when I remembered that I had this with you.

(1:02:36) speaker_0: Oh. (laughs)

(1:02:37) speaker_1: (laughs) And so, it’s eight…

(1:02:39) speaker_1: In the summers, I’m working at like a special camp, and I have one day off between my two-week rounds, and today was that day.

(1:02:45) speaker_0: Aw.

(1:02:45) speaker_1: And I taught some other classes. And so, my partner is, is kind of full-time daycare these days for her.

(1:02:52) speaker_1: And so, we were spending some time together this afternoon, and had dinner together.

(1:02:57) speaker_1: And then he was just, uh, spending time with her while I was with you, and now it’s time for bed. So, she’s, this is when she misses me the most, at bedtime.

(1:03:06) speaker_1:

(1:03:06) speaker_0: (laughs) Was, were there parts that triggered you about your pregnancy?

(1:03:10) speaker_0: You know, thinking back, like, like just kind of thinking about your own, you know, origins into the world?

(1:03:18) speaker_1: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I ha- I got to have some nice video calls with my birth mother.

(1:03:25) speaker_1: Probably just one while pregnant, and two after Ruby was born, with my bi- biological sister and my, um, birth mom.

(1:03:33) speaker_1: But it was really nice seeing their reaction to me being pregnant and having a baby.

(1:03:39) speaker_1: But I don’t know, I didn’t really connect it too much to my, to her experience.

(1:03:44) speaker_1: I did think about how amazing it was like that in all of the difficulty of her life at the time, that she was able to carry all of us, and, and, and do all of the things, like breastfeed us, and keep us alive in such a vulnerable way, in such a…

(1:03:59) speaker_1: Isn’t it amazing how they can, how… They kept all of us alive in such like horrible conditions.

(1:04:05) speaker_1: You know, it depends on each person’s conditions, but I think that I’d heard that ours were particularly bad, you know?

(1:04:12) speaker_1: So, I don’t know what happened in e- in each of those moments in those first years.

(1:04:17) speaker_1: But I know that I was fed and I was kept alive, and I’m really grateful for that.

(1:04:23) speaker_1: So, um, that she at least was healthy enough while she was pregnant, that all of us turned out as full-formed human beings (laughs).

(1:04:31) speaker_1: I think I feel really grateful for that, because these days a week, we make everything seem like it’s so difficult and challenging and fragile.

(1:04:39) speaker_1: And I think remembering that it h- that this woman that I know, uh, was able to do that for us, makes me think, “Okay, we’re pretty hardy people.

(1:04:47) speaker_1: Or we’re hardy babies and we’re hardy people.” (laughs) We can get through this. Made me kind of proud to be Korean, I guess, in some ways.

(1:04:57) speaker_1: Another one of those adoptee things that I didn’t know, that my biological sister, we just never talked about it, had had all C-sections.

(1:05:05) speaker_1: And so that like, I didn’t know until it happened to me, that I should’ve known a C-section was coming for me.

(1:05:12) speaker_1: And that would’ve been kind of nicer maybe to have had a better understanding.

(1:05:17) speaker_0: Oh, you had a C-section?

(1:05:20) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:05:20) speaker_0: Is that a… Does that run in families?

(1:05:23) speaker_1: Yeah, apparently… Well, uh, for my Korean sister, yes. She said that that was something that had happened to her.

(1:05:30) speaker_1: And they, someone at our birthing book said that, “You should talk to your sister.” But I guess I just… I didn’t know.

(1:05:37) speaker_1: (laughs) That’s the way, it, it just didn’t come up. I should’ve asked her.

(1:05:40) speaker_1: I had a weird mental block, thinking like, you know, “I’m just gonna do it all naturally, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(1:05:46) speaker_1: ” But it was a pretty good indicator that I was gonna have one too.

(1:05:49) speaker_0: You know, uh, Alicia, you’re into cats, right?

(1:05:55) speaker_1: Very. (laughs)

(1:05:56) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:05:56) speaker_1: Or just my cat. (laughs)

(1:05:58) speaker_0: (laughs) That’s what I thought. So… And you know that adage about having nine lives? I feel like…

(1:06:04) speaker_0: Do you sometimes feel like you’re like a cat and you’ve had nine lives?

(1:06:08) speaker_1: Uh, yeah, I guess so. Does it seem like I’ve had nine lives? (laughs)

(1:06:13) speaker_0: You’ve had so many, yeah, different experiences and… Anyway, that’s… Maybe we’ll pick that up again.

(1:06:19) speaker_1: No, I like that, I like that you said that. Honestly, I feel sometimes that nobody knows me, I think, in some ways. Or that it’s hard to…

(1:06:28) speaker_1: It’s a little bit lonely, maybe sometimes to… And it… But also exciting, to think of some of the lives and experience I’ve lived.

(1:06:36) speaker_1: But lonely in the way that… It makes me sad too, that few people have carried over in my life to all of those lives.

(1:06:44) speaker_1: For example, even my Korean life, my, my sister Erica didn’t, and couldn’t really experience that with me.

(1:06:49) speaker_1: But she has experienced much of my other lives with me. But, you know, like, it, it can sometimes feel a bit lonely.

(1:06:57) speaker_1: But also, yeah, I feel really lucky and fortunate. I just hope it doesn’t mean I’m like a shape-shifter or something. (laughs) But I do feel……

(1:07:05) speaker_1: like I have lived many lives, yeah. Hmm. (instrumental music plays)

(1:07:20) speaker_0: Well, uh, you know, talking to Alicia, one of the things that we’re- when you were talk- when we were talking about Ruby is, um, we were talking about, like, you, you wa- you don’t wanna carry the traumas with you and have that be Ruby’s burden, and um, thing to, you know, have to go to therapy about, and her mom, and everything.

(1:07:39) speaker_0: But, uh, you know, it’s kind of like in a way is it like even just your f- like family preservation, you and little Ruby and Marco staying together, like that- eh- that’s work, right?

(1:07:56) speaker_0: It’s work, you know, migrant family, and also through language, culture, everything, but you’re- but the- it, you know, it’s the will to stay together.

(1:08:07) speaker_0: Is that like, um, your own kind of justice or, um, you know-

(1:08:16) speaker_1: That- just the actual like, um, organizational bits of us being a family are the things that are hard so that everything else can be easy, you know?

(1:08:25) speaker_1: Like the, you know, the emotional parts of a family and just the, the loving and the being here and the kind of understanding each other on a basic level is what’s easy and then maybe the rest they’ll get there.

(1:08:40) speaker_1:

(1:08:40) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. I heard this st- do you ever feel jealousy towards your daughter like she’s getting…

(1:08:46) speaker_1: No, not at all.

(1:08:48) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:08:48) speaker_1: Zero. Yeah. That she’s getting kind of like the love and support-

(1:08:53) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:08:53) speaker_1: … in some ways that I didn’t.

(1:08:54) speaker_0: Right.

(1:08:55) speaker_1: You know?

(1:08:55) speaker_0: With the family and ex-family.

(1:08:57) speaker_1: No. No. I just, all I wanna do is just give her the things, you know what I mean?

(1:09:02) speaker_1: I want, she’s got like a dad who loves her, who’s so pure hearted and kind and, and completely here for her and not th- you know, like, we’re living a very like non-gender role reality in our family, and I was like, “I like that so much for her,” and she laughs so much and receives so much love.

(1:09:21) speaker_1: And I, oh no, I think I would feel sad if she had to share all of that with a, a sibling.

(1:09:27) speaker_1: (laughs) But maybe she’ll curse us later and say like, “Why did you give me a brother?

(1:09:32) speaker_1: ” But I think just kind of like spoiling with her with love and letting her be like the protagonist in her childhood is what I want for her.

(1:09:41) speaker_1: And so, that’s, that’s maybe how I’m doing my retribution. But I’m not jealous because I created this for her, you know what I mean?

(1:09:49) speaker_1: Like, I’m doing this, I mad- I made this reality so that she could find this kind of joy and happiness. And I’m just proud of her and who she is.

(1:10:00) speaker_1: And no matter who she is, I’m proud of who she is and…

(1:10:04) speaker_0: Any, any last words you, or advice, or for adoptees who are going through it in Korea and (laughs) there’s…

(1:10:15) speaker_1: Yeah. You know, I wanted to say before like when you were saying you had a really rough first year, I’m really sorry.

(1:10:22) speaker_1: And I also had a really difficult first year. I think it was one of the loneliest times of my life.

(1:10:28) speaker_1: And I’m just really glad that I didn’t, mm, stop there and let that be the end.

(1:10:33) speaker_1: But I also had a different factor, and that was my Korean family that I, that motivated me to stay in some ways because I could go and see them every weekend, but that I needed to build my own life there.

(1:10:44) speaker_1: And I think once I finally stopped trying to be Korean and accept that I’m never gonna be Korean enough and I should just go back to being me, even if that made me feel that was complicated in some ways within like the white area, I have to be around like maybe white expats who acted like this way or treated Korea this way that I…

(1:11:06) speaker_1: In between all of that, I found my version of Korea, you know?

(1:11:10) speaker_1: It wasn’t perfect, but I found my version, the part that we’re all a bit like we know as Korean adoptees that we have this other race, this other part of ourselves, but we know that we need to be in Korea and to have that peace with our Korean selves too.

(1:11:23) speaker_1: And it took time. It takes time and try to learn the lang- language but just the best that you can, you know?

(1:11:30) speaker_1: And find the people that make you feel home and like yourself. It doesn’t matter what they look like.

(1:11:35) speaker_1: And keep trying and have those beautiful like peaceful moments in the countryside. Those are the best parts.

(1:11:41) speaker_1: And hiking, finding people who can take you hiking is the best.

(1:11:45) speaker_1: Uh, but I will, I just feel so grateful that someday I’m gonna take Ruby back to Korea and she’s gonna get to see this part of Korea through me that I already learned.

(1:11:56) speaker_1: And that’s really exciting, so.

(1:11:58) speaker_1: I just gr- appreciate you asking me these questions because, Carol Lee, I feel like s- the first part and this kind of like mark very different stages in my life.

(1:12:08) speaker_1: When I listened back to the first interview sometimes I thought, “What an old twat I was.” (laughs) So annoying.

(1:12:14) speaker_1: (laughs) So like hopefully I’ll think that about this version of me in a few years too.

(1:12:19) speaker_0: I love wha- where you are right now in your life. I love this and it’s…

(1:12:24) speaker_0: And, and you’re right, you know, these interviews like people are like, “Are you gonna revisit people?

(1:12:30) speaker_0: ” Because, or, you know, because people, people don’t stay the same and so it’s a point in time, and that’s not all who they are and all who they will become.

(1:12:38) speaker_0:

(1:12:38) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(1:12:39) speaker_0: And so, uh, I definitely am glad to r- you know, talk to you again and find out how your life has, has gone on, and you sound much more at peace a- with things.

(1:12:51) speaker_0:

(1:12:51) speaker_1: Thank you. I think maybe I don’t always realize it but I really am.

(1:12:56) speaker_1: And I don’t visit the woe is me kind of or how much it hurts places, but it’s not that I didn’t give those time and space ’cause I really did.

(1:13:06) speaker_1: I’m really grateful…. for that time and space. And I should also mention all of the therapy I did while in Korea.

(1:13:13) speaker_0: Oh, yes.

(1:13:14) speaker_1: Um… (laughs)

(1:13:14) speaker_0: Right.

(1:13:15) speaker_1: It was a lot. So, I am really grateful for that, and I’m so glad that I was able to get on to the next stage of my life as well, so.

(1:13:23) speaker_1: Emotionally, I mean, not just in terms of mom-ing or whatever, but, um, just emotionally to, to have space to just be in a different emotional place.

(1:13:34) speaker_1: So-

(1:13:35) speaker_0: Alicia, you’ve been such a special-

(1:13:36) speaker_1: Thank you.

(1:13:36) speaker_0: … person for the podcast too. It’s like a touchstone, sort of started with you and ending with you. So, I love that.

(1:13:43) speaker_1: Thank you.

(1:13:44) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:13:45) speaker_1: Thank you for giving us all s- a platform to hear ourselves and to hear each other, and you’re very special and I appreciate you and I would love to hear the episode again that I, where you talk about your story.

(1:13:58) speaker_1: I think I, I tried to find it recently and couldn’t, so you’ll have to let me know where I can listen to it.

(1:14:02) speaker_0: Okay. Um, if people wanna, if people wanna write you or follow you or, how can they do it?

(1:14:09) speaker_1: Uh, yeah. You can…

(1:14:10) speaker_1: I’m not very active on Instagram anymore in terms of posting, but I’m still there lurking in the corners watching things I probably-

(1:14:17) speaker_0: Oh. (laughs)

(1:14:18) speaker_1: (laughs) That probably don’t make me feel great about myself. So @soonalicia. So just my name inverted, Soonalicia, on Instagram.

(1:14:26) speaker_1: And happy to talk to other adoptees and hear what’s going on with them and fielding questions or please, I would love to have a Korean adoptee-

(1:14:34) speaker_7: Wee. Yeah.

(1:14:34) speaker_1: … circle started by me-

(1:14:36) speaker_7: Wee.

(1:14:36) speaker_1: … in Spain, so please come. (laughs)

(1:14:37) speaker_0: Yeah. Okay.

(1:14:39) speaker_1: We’d love other Korean adoptees.

(1:14:40) speaker_0: Uh, let’s, let’s meet up maybe in Korea some day or some thing. I would love to.

(1:14:46) speaker_1: I would love that. (instrumental music plays)

(1:15:02) speaker_0: First, I wanna say a special thank you to Alicia for sharing and reflecting so deeply, and for interviewing me for my own episode.

(1:15:11) speaker_0: I wanna thank you for your enduring friendship, even if we don’t communicate often.

(1:15:16) speaker_0: And thank you for inspiring me along the way, first in how you lived your life in Korea, and now, how you choose to deal with your pain and your determination that it not be Ruby’s to carry.

(1:15:28) speaker_0: I say this at the end of every episode, but this podcast would not be what it has become without the financial support of all the past and present supporters on Patreon, Kickstarter, and our T-shirt fundraiser.

(1:15:44) speaker_0: The funding allowed me to pay for things like podcast hosting, graphic design apps, website hosting, Korean translation, and for some episodes to be transcribed into text.

(1:15:57) speaker_0: I’ll keep the Patreon open for a little while in case folks wanna continue to donate towards continued website hosting.

(1:16:05) speaker_0: The plan is to have the website continue in perpetuity as a resource for our community and for those who love us.

(1:16:13) speaker_0: A special heartfelt thanks to the Korean translators, 이호형 in Seoul, 정근황 on Jeju, and 유근정 in Michigan. Their work can be found at the website adaptedpodcast.com.

(1:16:29) speaker_0: If you would like to drop a note, I’m at kaomig@gmail.com. This concludes the podcast and our amazing eight-year run.

(1:16:41) speaker_0: I couldn’t be prouder of the stories people shared and the courage it took to do so.

(1:16:47) speaker_0: I hope this podcast has helped you to process your own adoption story and to evolve in your life with grace, knowledge, and in peace.

(1:16:59) speaker_0: As Alicia so aptly reminds us, “We are not our trauma. Our lives are much bigger and hopeful than that.” In peace, I’m Kaomi Lee.

(1:18:38) speaker_0: (instrumental music plays)

Korean-American cultural anthropologist and scholar Eleana Kim (UC Irvine) talks about her research and observations in writing her seminal book, “Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging” (Duke University Press, 2010).

Audio available on August 16, 2024 at 9:00 am CST.

Geoffrey Winder (Jeong Kae-bin) (he/him), 42, of Oakland, CA, shares some of his story as a queer Black Korean transnational and transracial adopted man and about his activism in queer advocacy, adoptee community, education justice and leadership spaces.

Audio available Friday, August 2, 2024.

(0:00:09) speaker_0: Welcome to Adapted Podcast, Season 7, Episode 24 starts now. This is a podcast that since 2016 has centered the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees.

(0:00:23) speaker_0: Adopted people are the true experts of our lived experience of adoption. I’m Kaomi Lee, and I was adopted from Korea.

(0:00:32) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our own adoptive families, and society that expects only a feel-good story.

(0:00:43) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. Please listen to our stories.

(0:00:48) speaker_1: My mom, like, went through, like, a whole, I don’t know, like, long, like, a day or j- a day or of crying, and then she, you know, she’s like, “Oh, you’re never gonna have grandkid,” or, “I’m never gonna have grandkids, you’re never gonna have kids.

(0:01:00) speaker_1: ” And then she had like this moment and she said, “Well, I guess you could adopt.”

(0:01:05) speaker_0: This next conversation is with Jeffrey Winder, a Black-Korean trans-racially and trans-nationally adopted person.

(0:01:13) speaker_0: He’s dedicated his life’s work to queer advocacy and co-leadership spaces. Now, here’s Jeffrey.

(0:01:31) speaker_1: Great. My name is Jeffrey Winder. Um, my middle name is Kevin, and my name on my birth certificate is Jong Kebin.

(0:01:42) speaker_1: Um, and I am, uh, I use he, him, his pronouns, and I’m on Ohlone land here in Oakland, California, and I’m 42.

(0:01:52) speaker_0: So, um, Jeffrey, where do you wanna, wanna, wanna start? Do you wanna talk a little bit about yourself and we can go from there?

(0:02:01) speaker_1: Sure. Um, well, I, I was born in Seoul, South Korea in, in 1982.

(0:02:07) speaker_1: Um, and I was, uh, I spent the first year and a half of my life in a orphanage in Seoul, and then I was adopted to the United States, um, to a white family who lived in Colorado.

(0:02:23) speaker_1: And I, uh, grew up in Davis, California.

(0:02:26) speaker_1: Um, so after I, I came to Colorado, I, uh, the family moved, uh, to California, and I spent most of my, um, well, all of my, my schooling years in California and most of my, uh, adult, uh, years.

(0:02:43) speaker_1: Um, I currently live in Oakland, California, and I’ve been here for about 16 years.

(0:02:51) speaker_1: Um, and, uh, I’ve s- most recently, um, or sort of most notably I think in my professional work, uh, served as the co-executive director of, of the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, formerly the Gay Straight Alliance Network.

(0:03:05) speaker_1: Um, and we u- we work with high school, or I used to, I guess, work with high school LGBT youth clubs.

(0:03:12) speaker_1: Um, and that’s how I got my start in activism actually, is that I started the high school GSA at Davis High School.

(0:03:20) speaker_0: Um, how gratifying has this work been?

(0:03:24) speaker_1: Um, I, I don’t know how, uh, people, you know, feel if they’ve done their calling, but I think that’s as close to, um, you know, as it, uh, close to the feeling as I can describe it, is that I feel like I did, uh, the work I was supposed to do in the sort of very bizarre circumstances that, you know, was my beginning and existence.

(0:03:50) speaker_1:

(0:03:50) speaker_0: Sure, sure. Okay. Um, when you were in high school at Davis, um, were you out? And, and what was the environment like for, for queer kids?

(0:04:02) speaker_1: Yeah. So it was, um, 1998, 1999-ish, so I guess, uh, still in the last century, um, or the previous century. And, uh, I, uh, was out.

(0:04:15) speaker_1: I came out when I was 15, uh, to like some sort of close friends, and then I came out 16, uh, publicly when I started the, the GSA club.

(0:04:27) speaker_1: Um, and when I started it, there was no other out kids at the school. Um, and I was the only out, uh, student.

(0:04:35) speaker_1: Um, uh, uh, and then, so for my whole sort of high school career, I was the only out male student.

(0:04:42) speaker_1: Um, and the club, uh, the club, uh, dealt with sort of the things that you would imagine a club dealing with in the early sort of, um, start of the LGBT rights, uh, you know, fights.

(0:04:58) speaker_1: Um, and so it was, it was l- I mean, it was homophobia and it was also a sort of very supportive school administration that, uh, I don’t know if they saw the value in the club or they just were, you know, sick and tired of me harassing them, but, um, supported a lot of the activities that the club did to bring awareness and, and education to students around LGBTQ issues.

(0:05:20) speaker_1:

(0:05:20) speaker_0: So you were really kind of a pioneer in your school.

(0:05:24) speaker_1: Uh, uh, I mean, I guess in many ways, yes. It was also, you know, a majority white school. I think there was eight Black students in my graduating class.

(0:05:34) speaker_1: Um, and yeah, so I think in many ways my existence there was an anomaly and perhaps pioneering also.

(0:05:42) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. So you were ad- you were adopted by white parents who settled in a primarily white area, right? (laughs)

(0:05:53) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:05:53) speaker_0: That-

(0:05:54) speaker_1: Although-

(0:05:54) speaker_0: That sounds very familiar. (laughs)

(0:05:54) speaker_1: … although it was California (laughs).

(0:05:56) speaker_1: Yeah, luckily it was California, and so, you know, when the students were in session at UC Davis, at least (laughs) there was a bunch of, you know, 20-something Asian people around.

(0:06:05) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:06:05) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How did you, uh…

(0:06:08) speaker_0: With your identities at that time, were you- uh, you know, it’s a time of, you know, you’re- you’re trying to try on different identities too.

(0:06:18) speaker_0: Um, but for you, like, being also biracial and, uh, coming out, you know, as- as, uh, queer, um, I wondered if one identity kind of took over at that moment?

(0:06:35) speaker_0:

(0:06:35) speaker_1: You know, I think for me, uh, well, so I- I grew up in California and I did go to a Korean school when I was younger.

(0:06:44) speaker_1: Um, and it was the adoptee version of Korean school though. It wasn’t like really hardcore Korean school.

(0:06:52) speaker_1: Um, but I did sort of have a- a general sense of a Koreanness identity when I was younger, growing up as somebody who, uh, you know, really didn’t have a group where anybody looked like me, um, and never really had any other sort of- sort of conversations about my identity with my parents, um, in substance outside of being Kor- you know, being adopted from Korea.

(0:07:17) speaker_1: Um, and I also have a sister who is also adopted from Korea, and she’s also half Korean and she’s half Latina.

(0:07:26) speaker_1: Um, but as I- so and sort of in my navigation of- of, you know, growing up, um, m- didn’t really feel like outside of my own, you know, personal sense that folks either saw me as Korean or included me when they thought about, you know, Asian people.

(0:07:43) speaker_1: Um, and so in high school when I, um…

(0:07:46) speaker_1: Well, I guess I would say that coming out and- and being queer sort of gave me a whole new way to understand sort of a hybrid identity and sort of multiplicity of existence and- and duality or I mean, not even duality, but just sort of fluidity, uh, in- in identity.

(0:08:04) speaker_1: And- and so, um, you know, being queer, uh, gave me a whole new way of thinking about myself outside of sort of the racial categories that I didn’t fit into, um, and sort of in queer spaces, sort of race wasn’t the predominant, you know, unifying thing about the space.

(0:08:24) speaker_1: And so, um, you know, found sort of, uh, ease and comfort in being a mixed race person in a queer space that wasn’t focused on…

(0:08:33) speaker_1: You know, there was a space that wasn’t sort of- uh, a social space that wasn’t based around racial identity.

(0:08:40) speaker_1: Um, and then sort of as I went to college and really sort of…

(0:08:43) speaker_1: And- and I went to college in New York at NYU and sort of going to a place where I was much more racialized as a Black person in this- in sort of spaces and, yeah, in everyday life that I sort of really began to more fully understand and- and…

(0:08:59) speaker_1: Yeah, um, I wouldn’t s- yeah, I- I- I wouldn’t say em- embrace as in I wasn’t embracing it before, but- but seeing my Blackness as a source of- of strength in my identity, like all of the other components.

(0:09:13) speaker_1: Um, and so I guess now, you know, I identify as a multiracial queer person of color, um, or as a- as a Black Korean queer person, and I feel like, yeah, have a good sense of sort of how all of those components make up myself- make myself who I am now, um, but I think that was definitely a journey over sort of my whole- whole, you know, into my a- adulthood.

(0:09:39) speaker_1:

(0:09:39) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:09:40) speaker_0: So, oh, so, so like your queer identity was kind of the first, um, place of comfort and strength that you inhabited, and then later when you were in New York and really coming into your identity as, you know, as Black and then the Korean or Asian part came later?

(0:10:03) speaker_0:

(0:10:03) speaker_1: Oh, that was sort of the beg- that was the sort of the beginning part. So-

(0:10:07) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:10:08) speaker_1: …

(0:10:08) speaker_1: um, sort of my elementary identity, um, and sort of up until I came out, you know, sort of the only other sort of identity I had was sort of related to being Korean and going to Korean school and, you know, learning, um, Korean in- in the way that they teach, uh, Korean to adoptees.

(0:10:26) speaker_1: And, um, so yeah, so that’d be- so sort of my identity was really around Koreanness, but not really because it wasn’t…

(0:10:35) speaker_1: It was like rooted in the imagination of Korea, um, and Koreanness, and then I came out as queer, and I think after that have sort of been able to interrogate and unearth sort of more sort of authentically what Koreanness means to me and being kr- you know, being a- a Black queer Korean adoptee.

(0:10:55) speaker_1: Um, yeah.

(0:10:57) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Can you talk more about that? What- what does being a Black Korean, um, mean to you?

(0:11:04) speaker_1: Um, you know, for me, I- I spent a lot of time in- in college, I think maybe like a lot of people, uh, trying to figure out what, um, what is the, yeah, what is the purpose or why or how did I come to be, uh, as I was.

(0:11:19) speaker_1: And so, you know, for me, I see it as, um, part of the story of Korea, it’s part of the story of the Cold War, it’s part of the story of, yeah, the legacy of- of the- the war on Korea and- and it being a place where the US has a large military presence to this day.

(0:11:39) speaker_1: Um, and I see my story as linked to sort of the story of- of colonized peoples everywhere that, you know, um, army and/or, uh, you know, whatever we call our- our forces in Korea, um, is stationed there and the sort of economies and/or ways in which that impacts the local population.

(0:12:04) speaker_1: Um, and so sort of in the tradition of war babies around-…

(0:12:08) speaker_1: the world throughout time, um, is sort of how I fix my own sort of, you know, coming into existence.

(0:12:15) speaker_1: And then sort of my role or my, my sort of presence as a person who, who claims, uh, you know, some, some corner or, or shred of Koreanness as part of their, um, lineage and legacy that it’s linked to this much larger sort of, and still obviously related to the sort of geopolitics of the time, um, industrialized adoption industry that Korea utilized to sort of cement its, its, you know, partnership with the United States.

(0:12:52) speaker_1: And so, sort of in my work in the world and as my, you know, as m- as a person trying to, you know, have an identity that makes sense to themselves, um, I sort of see my, my role or my i- my, my life and my identity as part of a way in which, um, as a, like, species of humans we’re moving to a more mixed raced, and I guess, you know, whatever race is a construction.

(0:13:26) speaker_1: People have been mixed throughout time. But, um, sort of a, a, a more mixed, uh, sort of geo-global citizentry, citizentry.

(0:13:36) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(0:13:36) speaker_1: Um, yeah.

(0:13:37) speaker_0: Yeah. Moving less, less kind of black and white, you know, binary in that way.

(0:13:44) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:13:45) speaker_0: Yeah. Um, what, what was it like having… I mean, I suppose the, the only parents you know, you know, but I’m sure people…

(0:13:52) speaker_0: Do people ask you what was it like having white parents and… Um…

(0:13:58) speaker_1: Yeah. And I’ve reflected a lot on that too. I mean, you know, a lot of my work has been around identity.

(0:14:04) speaker_1: You know, my work at GSA Network was around helping LGBTQ youth form their sort of positive, um, self-identities.

(0:14:13) speaker_1: And so, yeah, I mean, I think that it’s also in sort of reflection and conversation with other adoptees who’ve had other types of white parents.

(0:14:22) speaker_1: I had just really odd, odd white people for parents. Um-

(0:14:27) speaker_0: Odd? Okay.

(0:14:29) speaker_1: Yes. In terms of, uh, they were just sort of counter-culture in a very subdued way.

(0:14:36) speaker_1: Um, they weren’t like hippies or anything like that, but they weren’t Christians, you know.

(0:14:44) speaker_1: I, I got adopted by folks who, uh, raised us as atheists or as agnostics.

(0:14:50) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:14:50) speaker_1: But we really had no pressure from reli- religion to be any sort of way.

(0:14:56) speaker_1: Um, my mom was, is, uh, or was a speech and language pathologist, um, and worked with elementary students.

(0:15:03) speaker_1: And then my dad was a, uh, biochemist and environmental scientist.

(0:15:10) speaker_1: And so, um, sort of a very intellectualized upbringing, um, in terms of, yeah, just sort of the topics that we talked about, the ways in which I think they thought about race.

(0:15:23) speaker_1: Um, you know, they, they enrolled us in Korean school. My mom went to Korean school also to try to learn Korean. Um-

(0:15:31) speaker_0: Wow.

(0:15:32) speaker_1: Uh, there were things sort of around the house.

(0:15:34) speaker_1: I mean, my mom, uh, (laughs) subscribed to, to Essence and Ebony Magazine, and I think I asked her at one point, like, “Why do we even have these, you know, magazines?

(0:15:43) speaker_1: ” And she’s like, “Well, I just wanted you there to be like, you know, positive images of Black people in the house and, um, you know, things that you could read that were about Black people.

(0:15:52) speaker_1: ” And I had, you know… It was just, like, that was in my house, and I had never really thought too much about it.

(0:15:57) speaker_1: But yeah, like, think that was like a conscious effort on her part.

(0:16:01) speaker_1: Um, so yeah, I think there’s just ways in which they were, like, yeah, odd, but in a good way.

(0:16:09) speaker_1: Um, and so I think that growing up in that environment, you know, I think if, if they had had a language around race, they would have utilized it, right?

(0:16:18) speaker_1: And if, if they had, you know, had sort of the language we have now around race and whiteness, that, that would’ve been a part of our conversations.

(0:16:26) speaker_1: But it, but it wasn’t, and they were, like, using the tools that they, they had, and this is sort of pre-internet.

(0:16:32) speaker_0: Yeah. You know, people talk now. I mean, uh, when I was growing up w- you know, we didn’t have words like intersectionality.

(0:16:40) speaker_1: Right. Exactly. (laughs)

(0:16:41) speaker_0: (laughs) So would your parents talk about race, or is it just something they, they, um, wouldn’t talk about, but it was sort of like they were aware?

(0:16:52) speaker_1: So, I mean, yes. It was never like a, a question that we, you know…

(0:16:56) speaker_1: Like, we never pr- they never tried to have us pretend we were white, or we weren’t not white, or, you know, that we were not Korean.

(0:17:04) speaker_1: Um, but I think they just didn’t have the language that we have now to talk about identity and difference in a way that would make sense to, to us as kids.

(0:17:14) speaker_1: Um, and so, you know, this is like the ’80s, and so a sort of a, you know, a lot of the terms that we have now to, you know…

(0:17:23) speaker_1: Because of queer folks, because of feminists, because of feminists of color, um, have to talk about identity just weren’t available to them.

(0:17:30) speaker_1: And, you know, they were smart, but they didn’t study, like, you know, race or critical race theory as (laughs) you know, students.

(0:17:38) speaker_1: So, um, uh, you know, my mom sort of in the 2020 uprisings sort of was in the reading all of the things about whiteness and White privilege.

(0:17:46) speaker_1: And I think, um, you know, she, she had a talk with me a- and Nicole.

(0:17:51) speaker_1: We talked and, and, and sort of, yeah, had her own epiphanies around how maybe she could have done something differently or better.

(0:18:00) speaker_1: But, you know, to my mind, um, yeah, they, they never, you know, made us feel bad about any part of our identity.

(0:18:08) speaker_1: And so, yeah, to me that was (laughs) a win.

(0:18:13) speaker_0: Yeah, so they’re ver- they were, um, cognizant of their own White privilege.

(0:18:17) speaker_1: Uh, I’d- I- I- I think that they were, but they didn’t have the language around White privilege. So, um, like-

(0:18:24) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:18:24) speaker_1: … they would try to…

(0:18:26) speaker_1: Yes, but I think that they were because obviously we would be out and about and people would say things, and they would have to engage with other White people about why they had White kids, and we would be there watching them do that or, um, yeah, like, that, that, uh, you know, I would be…

(0:18:43) speaker_1: Yes, I would be experiencing some situation one way and then my mom, my Wi- White mom would show up, and then the situation would change, and then we would sort of joke about how, you know, thank goodness she’s- she was there, which was really thank goodness she was White.

(0:18:59) speaker_1:

(0:18:59) speaker_0: Did you, um… Like a lot of transracial adoptees, you know, did…

(0:19:04) speaker_0: I’m sure there’s- there was some uncomfortable or, you know, kind of awkward moments with your parents, um, when you’re out in public.

(0:19:12) speaker_1: Yes. I mean, and particularly ’cause we were both, you know… Be… My- me and my sister both multi- mixed-raced, um, uh, Korean, um, adoptees.

(0:19:23) speaker_1: So, we didn’t really fit into racial categories that people were easily able to identify, which also caused some sort of l- awkward conversations.

(0:19:33) speaker_1: Um, and, you know, I think that the… I, I mean, I… You know. So, th- so they were odd. And so the whole situation was just odd.

(0:19:42) speaker_1: Like, my dad, you know, grew up in Colorado, but he refused to wear long pants any time of the year. So like he… You know. There’d be times where…

(0:19:51) speaker_1: And this is, like, more when I was a little kid and we were still in Colorado, but, you know, he’d wear shorts in the winter.

(0:19:57) speaker_1: So it’d be like a, a White guy with shorts on with these two Brown kids in the middle of the snow, and people really thought, like, he was crazy or like he…

(0:20:07) speaker_1: you know, something was, like, totally off about this situation (laughs) of why there’s these two kids with a man in shorts in the middle of the winter.

(0:20:14) speaker_1: Um, and so I think that there’s definitely been like, uh, places where, um, the sort of dynamics of the family overall were just wacky and then that’s layered upon or, like, within the context of us being adopted.

(0:20:32) speaker_1: So, you know, sometimes it’s hard to tell, you know, what was the reason that people, like, stopped and gawked, you know?

(0:20:50) speaker_1: (instrumental music plays) You know, I think it got, you know, different as we got older.

(0:20:56) speaker_1: But there was definitely times when, you know, because I would have curly hair, people would touch my hair or be like in- in our space as like, uh, you know, like little, um, I don’t know, amusements or- or like a…

(0:21:13) speaker_1: What is, what is the, what is the word I’m looking for?

(0:21:17) speaker_1: Um, accessories, uh, that I don’t think, you know, my- my White parents knew how to navigate or- or did navigate in terms of like trying to mitigate that.

(0:21:30) speaker_1:

(0:21:30) speaker_0: How do you feel now about transracial adoption or, you know, uh, White folks adopting kids of color?

(0:21:37) speaker_1: I mean, I- I guess I- I don’t necessarily support it as, you know, the sort of number one go-to solution, um, for, uh, orphans of color, kids of color without, um, families.

(0:21:56) speaker_1: I do feel like there’s way more tools now and that there could potentially be White folks who did the kind of work that would be necessary to be able to do that.

(0:22:08) speaker_1: But I think generally as sort of White quips…

(0:22:11) speaker_1: Why White qui- White folks come equipped, um, sort of with their basic tools is not something that I would support as like a healthy thing for, yeah, trans- transracial adoptees, um.

(0:22:26) speaker_1: I mean, even sort of in, uh, international, you know, transnational aside, it’s, you know, not really something that I was- I’m supportive of.

(0:22:34) speaker_1: Um, and I do… Yeah, I do feel conflicted about that because obviously I have a life and a- and a story that would have never been possible.

(0:22:45) speaker_1: And I also, yeah, remember what it was like to be so confused and alone psy- sort of psychologically and emotionally as a child.

(0:22:55) speaker_0: You were psychologically alone. Did they… Did you feel like there was love there?

(0:23:02) speaker_1: Um, I mean, I definitely, I- I definitely do. And I… You know.

(0:23:06) speaker_1: My- my father passed away in 2010, and it wasn’t actually until he- he passed away that I realized that, like, you know, it was, uh… You know.

(0:23:14) speaker_1: I loved them and- and- and, you know, no doubt that they loved me.

(0:23:18) speaker_1: Um, but I think for- for me, the larger question was like whether or not I loved them or if the sort of, you know, whatever that feeling is that you have as a adoptee of- of so…

(0:23:31) speaker_1: you know. I don’t know if it’s actually a feeling or if it’s a implied sort of, uh, emotion of- of gratitude as the sort of substitute for love.

(0:23:41) speaker_1: But, uh, yeah, I think after- after he passed away, I felt like I- I was…

(0:23:46) speaker_1: Yeah, I was convinced that- that it was a- a loving situation and that it was a love that was more profound than sort of a feeling of- of gratitude.

(0:23:56) speaker_0: And your mother’s still alive?

(0:23:59) speaker_1: Yes. Uh, yeah, she’s still alive.

(0:24:01) speaker_0: Okay. Do you have a relationship with her?

(0:24:04) speaker_1: Um, yes. It- it changed after my father died, but, um, I do. And, you know, we talk regularly. Um, I- I think that, uh… You know.

(0:24:15) speaker_1: My sister has kids and a family, so she’s sort of more involved with- with that.

(0:24:23) speaker_1: Um-And, uh, yeah, she sort of had her own, uh, new life to build after my father died and so has been in her, her second, uh, (laughs) second or third adventure, I don’t know, uh, what, what you’d call it, but, um…

(0:24:39) speaker_1: So it’s different, but it’s definitely, uh, you know, a relationship that’s still there and that I, I care to maintain.

(0:24:48) speaker_0: You know, they adopted two, uh, multiracial children-

(0:24:55) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:24:55) speaker_0: … from Korea. I wonder was there, was that on, was that, um, uh, on purpose? I mean, had, did they set out to…

(0:25:06) speaker_1: Well, they didn’t initially with me, but then after they got me, they said, and this was like many years later that I found out, that they had tried to find another Korean and Black, um, child to adopt so that I would have a sibling that looked like me.

(0:25:21) speaker_1: Uh, um, but, you know, they, they, I don’t know, they couldn’t or it didn’t work out that way, but that was also why they adopted another multiracial Korean child.

(0:25:31) speaker_1:

(0:25:32) speaker_0: Okay. Yeah, I wonder why they were interested in specifically Korean and Black.

(0:25:37) speaker_1: Well, I don’t think they were.

(0:25:38) speaker_1: Um, I think that was the, you know, the baby that was sent over by the orphanage, you know, the picture that was sent over by the orphanage and I think they were just gonna take the first one probably.

(0:25:49) speaker_1: Um, and so, uh, initially it wasn’t. I, I think they were just looking to do a, you know, just a Korean adoption like it was being advertised at the time.

(0:25:59) speaker_1: And then after, yeah, after they got me was when they decided to have another multiracial or adopt another multiracial Korean child.

(0:26:10) speaker_0: Okay. Okay. Um, was it hard for you to come out to them?

(0:26:14) speaker_1: Well, you know, in my mind it was, but in the grand scheme of coming out, it’s, uh, fairly easy and non-existent thing.

(0:26:25) speaker_1: Um, I think the only sort of thing that still stands out to me to this day is that my mom, like, went through, like, a whole, I don’t know, like, long, like, a day or s- a day or of crying, um, and, and, you know, finally after I, like, decided to talk to her again, um, asked me what she was crying about and then sh- you know, she’s like, she’s like, “Oh, you’re never gonna have grandkid…

(0:26:48) speaker_1: ” Or, “I’m never gonna have grandkids. You’re never gonna have kids.” And then she had, like, this moment and she said, “Well, I guess you could adopt.

(0:26:55) speaker_1: ” Um, and so that was just a little bit like a, “Oh, okay” moment. But, um, yeah, I found that as a, as one of the, sort of, or the most remarkable thing.

(0:27:06) speaker_1: I think my dad was a non-reaction and not in a negative way, but in a, like, “I’ll support you doing whatever you wanna do.

(0:27:13) speaker_1: ” And that was also at the time when I was trying to get more involved in LGBT activism and, and sort of join GSA Network, the organization that I, um, was the co-executive director of, um, you know, in my, my sophomore year and spent sort of three years doing sort of hard, well, I guess it was, was hardcore, but for being a queer youth, it, it felt hardcore, um, sort of youth organizing to try to get more students to start their GSA clubs in California.

(0:27:43) speaker_1: And so I was traveling a lot and doing sort of a lot of publicly facing LGBT stuff and both of them were very, you know, encouraging and supportive of, of that, I think, just because they saw the transformation, sort of, in me from being a really very angry and depressed, um, yeah, uh, adolescent to channeling my emotions into something positive, I guess.

(0:28:08) speaker_1:

(0:28:10) speaker_0: It, in high schools in California right now, are, are there GSA clubs in, in all the high schools?

(0:28:17) speaker_1: Um, not all of them. I think it’s about 60% of them.

(0:28:20) speaker_1: And, you know, that’s, uh, you know, that’s probably close to, like, uh, now I’m gonna totally mess up my numbers, but I, you know, that’s probably around f- five, 500 or 600 individual school, high schools.

(0:28:34) speaker_1:

(0:28:35) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:28:35) speaker_1: Um, and when I started my GSA club and joined the, the network, our, our GSA was number 40, so, um-

(0:28:43) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:28:44) speaker_1: … you know, ours was real- mine, the, mine was really early on and, you know, you’re still running all this 25 years later.

(0:28:52) speaker_1: Um, and, and, and that was, like, the very beginning of this, sort of, yeah, this movement across California and of the country to, to build these clubs for, for LGBT students.

(0:29:04) speaker_1:

(0:29:04) speaker_0: Sounds like it might have been a bit lonely.

(0:29:09) speaker_1: Um, you know, I think that it could have been, but because I…

(0:29:14) speaker_1: You know, I think, well, uh, like I, I, I’m reflecting back on it and I’ve just, like, I, I would never have been that outgoing or, like, or I, you know, in my, I guess, my old age, uh, I don’t feel like I was, I’m as outgoing or risk-taking or gregarious as I was then.

(0:29:33) speaker_1: But then, um, I mean, it was like, uh, maybe like an exciting loneliness. Um, it wasn’t, I guess, a loneliness where I felt like it was gonna…

(0:29:46) speaker_1: Like, I, maybe it felt, it was the feeling was, like, I was, I was working to end the loneliness is maybe what I’m trying to describe.

(0:29:52) speaker_1: Like, it didn’t feel lonely, but if I think back on it, you know, uh, or, like, just analyze the situation, it would be a lonely situation.

(0:30:01) speaker_0: Did you… Sometimes, um, we, we adoptees talk about just, um, having this, uh, hole or this void that you can’t fill.

(0:30:16) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:30:18) speaker_0: Did you experience that?

(0:30:19) speaker_1: Um, I think not in the same, same way, because I saw my sister sort of experience it and, you know, that was very much, like, driven by her need to do her search….

(0:30:30) speaker_1: and to figure out sort of her mom’s story, and as a result, her story.

(0:30:37) speaker_1: And for me, um, y- you know, what I, I think what, what that was filled by was sort of, or s- or, or, um, sort of subsumed under was the sort of being in the closet around queerness and, you know, trying to figure out my, who I was as like a, yeah, like as a, as a non-heterosexual person.

(0:31:04) speaker_1: I mean, obviously, I didn’t have this language as a child, but, you know, I think the, the feeling of difference was so profound in so many ways that it’s hard for me to tell what that was apart from sort of the larger, um, totality of, of feeling othered and different sort of in, yeah, in my (laughs) in, in the total of my identities.

(0:31:31) speaker_1:

(0:31:31) speaker_0: Right. Okay. When you went to New York, NYU, I mean, it must have just been mind-blowing-

(0:31:38) speaker_1: Uh, i- i- i- it-

(0:31:40) speaker_0: … at that time.

(0:31:41) speaker_1: Well, (laughs).

(0:31:43) speaker_0: (laughs).

(0:31:43) speaker_1: That’s a- Well, because I’m only making that weird, uh, noise because the first day of NYU was actually 9/11, um, so-

(0:31:50) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:31:51) speaker_1: … it was, uh, yes, um, in many ways a m- life-altering experience.

(0:31:58) speaker_1: Um, and yeah, I mean, uh, uh, New York, I think, was really where I felt my, um, like different racial identities more acutely, sort of as I moved through different neighborhoods or was in different areas of the city sort of the way I was racialized, um, was different, right?

(0:32:18) speaker_1: And so it could be someone asking me if I speak English and where I’m from, you know, in one area and people like following me around to the store and telling me to take off my, you know, hood on my hoodie in another-

(0:32:33) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:32:33) speaker_1: … area.

(0:32:34) speaker_1: So that I think was one of the sort of more, yeah, unique and like revealing experiences that I had in New York around my identity, was just having it so sort of starkly different, the ways that people were interpreting how I looked or, or what they saw when they looked at me.

(0:32:52) speaker_1:

(0:32:52) speaker_0: You know, I lived in New York for, um, seven years, and, uh, one of the things that surprised me about that experience is, you know, I thought, “Okay, it’s the melting pot,” or you go and there’s this, you, you can-

(0:33:07) speaker_1: Right. (laughs)

(0:33:08) speaker_0: What I didn’t realize is, you know, or what I didn’t expect is, you know, all the racial tension.

(0:33:15) speaker_1: Right, and how segregated it is sort of within-

(0:33:18) speaker_0: Or like-

(0:33:18) speaker_1: … the micro-neighborhoods, uh.

(0:33:19) speaker_0: Right, like if you’re in Harlem and people, you know, racial slurs against me, you know, if they saw me, “Go back to China,” or, you know.

(0:33:28) speaker_0: And then I can imagine there’s probably tension towards, uh, Black folks in-

(0:33:34) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:33:34) speaker_0: … Chinatown or Asian communities.

(0:33:36) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:33:36) speaker_0: You know?

(0:33:36) speaker_1: Right, or even in an Asian market, yeah. I mean, yeah.

(0:33:40) speaker_1: So c- all of the, all of the ways in which (laughs) racialized dynamics in the cityscape played out was definitely, I think, sort of experienced sort of through my, you know, my body, my, my identity, and I think that’s, yeah, I think that’s one of the ways that actually helped me really come to understand my identity in relationship to the world and how other people experienced my identity.

(0:34:07) speaker_1: Um, and I don’t know if I would have gotten that if I hadn’t gone to a, a city like New York where it was sort of so, so uniquely different in different areas depending on where you were in the city.

(0:34:17) speaker_1:

(0:34:17) speaker_0: Yeah. How did you find your place in New York?

(0:34:20) speaker_1: Um, well, I guess, you know, I, I, I went to New York imagining that I was gonna study queer theory and sort of continue the work I had been doing in high school, which was really sort of building sort of the LGBT youth movement.

(0:34:37) speaker_1: Um, and then, uh, I had also joined like a, a, I don’t know what, we had a horrible name, like B- BAYMSA? BLAYMSA?

(0:34:48) speaker_1: It’s like the Bi and Mixed Race Student Alliance or something, um, and-

(0:34:55) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:34:55) speaker_1: …

(0:34:55) speaker_1: uh, was, you know, thinking about doing some work there, and then, uh, it was also, like I said, you know, 9/11 had happened, and so really a lot of my activism and sort of my community became the sort of anti-war activist, um, community, uh, that was, was, you know, formed out of sort of NYU students, but also much broader, obviously.

(0:35:19) speaker_1: And, um-

(0:35:22) speaker_0: Anti-militarism?

(0:35:23) speaker_1: Yep.

(0:35:23) speaker_1: Uh, sort of all of the, all of the, you know, and sort of my o- my own understanding of sort of, uh, military empire, the US hegemony, and sort of all of the things that, you know, I talked about earlier, my understanding of, of, of the Cold War and, and how Korean adoptees came to be, um, was sort of built during that time when I was building my understanding about how sort of, yes, h- you know, how did even 9/11 happen and oh, okay, now I’m looking at all of these other policies and it’s become this whole now long legacy of (laughs) of, uh, whatever you wanna call it, uh, military exploitation and conquest.

(0:36:07) speaker_1: Um, and so, you know, the, the, the community that I developed sort of there was really built around a political identity.

(0:36:15) speaker_1: And so in that space, you know, my, my racial identity and my queerness were sort of even, sort of even less relevant, um, and that like the, the sort of, sort of need to still be or still try to find a way to, um……

(0:36:35) speaker_1: yeah, validate or, or be authentic to who I, who I, who I am and my history and my, you know, my current political sort of orientations was sort of always there.

(0:36:45) speaker_1: And I don’t think I really found like a, a place place till I got to, to Oakland.

(0:36:51) speaker_1: Um, and that was sort of when it felt like I could see, you know, Black and Asian couples and I could see Black and Asian babies that it felt like, “Oh, okay, there’s like a place for my like,” the, yeah, where the presentation of my identity or my identity, um, could make sense to people who look at me as, you know, (laughs) who, who look at me.

(0:37:11) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:37:12) speaker_0: Yeah, um, that’s just really profound.

(0:37:15) speaker_0: I mean, in your own body you kind of embody the, you know, like the ideas you were talking about, the militarism, um, colonialism or, um, conquest, (laughs) imperialism.

(0:37:30) speaker_0:

(0:37:31) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:37:31) speaker_0: Um, that’s ver- just very profound, um, to, uh, become a, an activist in that space.

(0:37:40) speaker_1: Y- I, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I think that, you know, em- also to just like help me sorta understand the, the context in which sort of South Koreans live in, the whole peninsula, just the way in which, um, you know, our voice as adoptees but sort of particularly the voice of Black, Black Korean folks has its own, own place and resonance in terms of what the legacy is and sort of what Korea got the, the sort of military presence and also of the sort of cultural racism and ways in which white supremacy, you know, permeates, um, and creates a heg- you know, hegemony in places that it, it exists.

(0:38:26) speaker_1: And so the, sort of the legacy of, of US racism in Korea, um, and the ways in which, you know, now it’s become, you know, its own form of raci- So, all of the things that sort of are the questions about like, like a heterogeneous society and, and diversity and acceptance within a non-US context as well as the (laughs) the like imposition of the US context, um, it does feel very, uh, complex at times we could say.

(0:38:56) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:38:57) speaker_0: You know, um, i- if you don’t wanna talk about politics, uh, uh, the, the election w- we don’t have to, um, but I did wanna…

(0:39:06) speaker_0: I was- I, uh, you know, just I thought of is, you know, just wondering how-

(0:39:11) speaker_1: That’s the pleasure in running for pre- president.

(0:39:12) speaker_0: Yeah, with, with, with, uh, Kamala Harris, um, being, um, Black and Asian, um-

(0:39:20) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:39:20) speaker_1: I, I would have never in my wildest d- I mean, I think Barack Obama was enough wild dreams for one lifetime, but yeah, the fact that there is a potential for a Black and Asian American president is something that is, I think, um, just, uh, y- like, sort of both profoundly validating and speaks to maybe a larger, yeah, a, a larger way in which we’re going to be able to conceptualize race and racial identity and sort of the ways in which the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, militarism, um, and, uh, globalization, and you know, movements of people by choice as well as movements of people not by choice, um, could, could remake the ways in which Americans think about race in this country.

(0:40:22) speaker_1: I mean, that may be a very high hope given where we’re coming from or starting places.

(0:40:27) speaker_1: But, um, yeah, I, I would have never and, and I’m still a little bit, um, you know, i- in, in flabbergasted, in shock, shocked, I don’t know, um, that a, a Black and Asian person is (laughs) in the, the spotlight as they are and that, um, yeah, all of the conversations that could come from, from that.

(0:40:54) speaker_1:

(0:40:54) speaker_0: Do you feel like in your, um, you know, maybe not in Oakland because, um, you know, it’s so diverse, but and you see so many mixtures of folks and couples and, um, relationships.

(0:41:08) speaker_0: But I wonder do, uh, sometimes do you feel like you ha- you, you downplay one side to, uh, depending on, I don’t know, people talk about shape sh- shape shifting, code switching-

(0:41:22) speaker_1: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

(0:41:22) speaker_0: … but like you’re Black in some circles and maybe you’re Korean in others. (laughs)

(0:41:30) speaker_1: Yeah, I mean, I think that my whole, you know, my whole life since childhood has been sort of about being a, a chameleon in spaces and/or, you know, learning how to invisibilize parts of myself or my whole self in spaces.

(0:41:44) speaker_1: Um, and I think that that’s true, um, sort of a- sort of through my, my career and sort of as I, you know, uh, the main work that I did at GSN Network was sort of build, uh, organizations that can work for trans and queer people of color.

(0:42:02) speaker_1: Um, and so, you know, through that work, you know, being the person of color that was called for at the time or needed, um, was something that I, yeah, that I felt fine with doing.

(0:42:17) speaker_1: Also sort of being ambiguously, just a ambiguously the non-categorizable person of color has been something that’s worked to my advantage.

(0:42:29) speaker_1: Um, and I think that I guess I don’t shy away from or I don’t ever s- you know, deny any, any part of my identity so, um, you know, if folks……

(0:42:41) speaker_1: think I’m Black, I will definitely say that I’m, you know, I’m Black and Korean.

(0:42:45) speaker_1: And if folks, uh, well, you know, if folks, uh, don’t think I’m just Korean, um, but, uh, you know, I, I don’t s- you know, not say that I’m, I’m, I’m Black as well.

(0:42:56) speaker_1: And so I think the, you know, the, the main way that that would show up in my, my daily life is whether or not I introduce myself as a, as Black Korean or as a Korean Black person.

(0:43:07) speaker_1: Um, and so that often has to do with, yeah, with who’s, who, who I’m with, and who, who I, uh, who I’m trying to, I don’t know, be, be in the-

(0:43:23) speaker_0: Belonging.

(0:43:23) speaker_1: … quote unquote, yes, yes, align or belong to.

(0:43:27) speaker_0: Yeah, ’cause I, you know, and it’s, uh, going back to, uh, Kamala Harris, um, you know, in, I’ve, I’ve been privileged to be in some Black spaces where, you know, there’s so much excitement about the first, the potentially the first Black female president.

(0:43:45) speaker_0:

(0:43:45) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:43:45) speaker_0: And, and, and the Asian part isn’t really-

(0:43:48) speaker_1: Uh-huh.

(0:43:48) speaker_0: … acknowledged. And then in, like, Asian spaces, there’s so much excitement about the first Asian female president. (laughs) And so, uh, you know-

(0:43:59) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:43:59) speaker_0: … I just find that really interesting. Um, I suppose we, we find the, the, the point of, um, relatability-

(0:44:09) speaker_1: Oh, connection, yeah. Yeah.

(0:44:10) speaker_0: Yeah, connection, and then so that’s how we see that person.

(0:44:14) speaker_0: But, um, yeah, it just, it’s h- it’s like, you know, it’s just- it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating to me, but also kind of like-

(0:44:23) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:44:23) speaker_0: Can we acknowledge this person has many identities, but…

(0:44:28) speaker_1: I mean, I think probably like, you know, I don’t wanna generalize, but like, straight folks trying to acknowledge or understand, um, sort of gender fluidity or sexuality fluidity that like, if you’ve had the privilege of being able to have a single sort of monolithic or heterogeneous view of yourself and your group, then it’s also hard to think about or like incorporate that it would be a hybrid identity, or like a fluid identity, or a…

(0:44:59) speaker_1: Yeah, I think that I would, yeah, I am, I’m concurring with your assessment of how folks are able to talk about it, and I think that it has to do a lot with just like the inability to have the language or the, the, your brain doesn’t automatically go there, because that’s not how you’ve had to think this whole time, um…

(0:45:18) speaker_1:

(0:45:18) speaker_0: Or, or your experiences-

(0:45:20) speaker_1: Right, yeah.

(0:45:20) speaker_0: … that you can correlate to yourself. Um, have you been back to Korea, Jeffrey?

(0:45:24) speaker_1: I did go. Um, I went to Korea in 2000 and, oh, my goodness, I guess last 2004 now, which is 20 years ago, which sounds f- like a long time.

(0:45:36) speaker_1: Um, I went, uh, on in, like, uh, uh, adoptee kind of a tour kind of thing, but it was also like a time when some folks were like doing their search.

(0:45:47) speaker_1: So, my sister was doing her search at that time, um, but that was the only time.

(0:45:52) speaker_0: Oh, your sister was along too?

(0:45:53) speaker_1: Uh, what did you say?

(0:45:55) speaker_0: Your sister was along too on this tour?

(0:45:57) speaker_1: Oh, yeah, so it was me, my sister, and my mom, and then it was a bunch of other, well, I was the only, (laughs) I was the only man, but, um, and a bunch of other, uh, uh, late teens, early 20s, um, Korean adoptee women.

(0:46:11) speaker_1:

(0:46:12) speaker_0: Okay, so you went when you were a teenager?

(0:46:15) speaker_1: Um, wait, I must have been in my early-

(0:46:19) speaker_0: Er-

(0:46:19) speaker_1: … 20s, uh, ’cause, yeah.

(0:46:22) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:46:22) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:22) speaker_0: Okay. And you haven’t been back since?

(0:46:24) speaker_1: No. I have not.

(0:46:26) speaker_0: Do you, yeah, could you, if I, if I can ask, um, have you been interested in doing a search?

(0:46:35) speaker_1: Um, you know, I guess that’s a, I feel like I, I feel like I should say yes, because that feels like-

(0:46:45) speaker_0: Compulsed back.

(0:46:46) speaker_1: … what-

(0:46:46) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:46:46) speaker_1: … I don’t know, I should say.

(0:46:49) speaker_1: Um, yes, but, you know, I have not felt that like pull or compulsion, you know, like I saw my sister really could not figure out her sort of orientation in life and the world until she had done that for herself.

(0:47:03) speaker_1: Um, and so for, yeah, but for me, it’s never been, been like that, and I think, you know, obviously my like, well, let me re- not obviously, but one of the hardest days of my life, my, my year is my birthday, and I think that’s probably like the main, you know, day that I, I really dwell on, on that situation, or, you know, on being adopted and, and sort of what, and, and if my, you know, how old my mom would be and if she’s alive and if she’s doing well.

(0:47:31) speaker_1: Um, but I’ve also not sort of felt like the, um, yeah, I don’t know, that, that drive or that, that burn to, to do that.

(0:47:42) speaker_1: And I think it’s probably two things maybe.

(0:47:46) speaker_1: Um, you know, one, being queer and just sort of, yeah, just being queer and having that be something that’s like another thing to deal with again.

(0:47:57) speaker_1: Um, and then I think the other thing is really, uh, yeah, not sort of knowing the, the circumstances of my birth or whether or not it was like a, you know, uh, a joy or a trauma, or a, yeah, just, yeah, not wanting to, maybe not wanting to know, but also just not wanting to like introduce something that’s so not, (laughs) yeah, that’s so not a, a st- yeah, not a, a good memory or a situation or circumstance that, um, I feel like is like one of these sort of unknown things when you’re a mixed raced Korean.

(0:48:35) speaker_1: (instrumental music plays)

(0:48:47) speaker_0: It, it sounds like, yeah, that it, it can be quite painful.

(0:48:52) speaker_0: I mean, even the not knowing, or n- the unknowable part, um, whether you’re a product of, you know, actually a, a love relationship, but, or, and/or in a power imbalance, and/or, um, you know, the, uh, uh, you know, Am- American GI.

(0:49:13) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:49:14) speaker_1: Right. The circumstances of the eco- yeah.

(0:49:18) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:49:18) speaker_1: The circumstances of the situation. All the things that, you know, come with (laughs) with the…

(0:49:25) speaker_1: Yeah, I think that, and that’s, I think, part of my feeling of like, I don’t know, um, solidarity with sort of, uh, well, you call them war babies, but sort of the children of the, the consequences of military, um, occupations.

(0:49:44) speaker_1: Or, or, uh, you know, what, what we wanna call them. Um, but yeah, sort of the, the reports and sort of-

(0:49:52) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:49:52) speaker_1: Yeah, not, not, I mean, yes, refugees, but more like the children born of the consequences-

(0:49:58) speaker_0: Or like refugees.

(0:49:58) speaker_1: … of a military operation. So, sort of-

(0:50:01) speaker_0: Oh.

(0:50:01) speaker_1: … after, uh, uh, sort of (laughs) in the, the aftermath of Ir- Iraq, we were hearing about all of these, um, half American-

(0:50:09) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:50:09) speaker_1: …

(0:50:09) speaker_1: half Iraqi babies being born, and so just sort of in the, in that sort of, uh, yeah, community or spirit of, of, of thinking about how, how geopolitics impacts, you know, biopolitics.

(0:50:25) speaker_1: And, and you’re, like you said, that your body is the site of sort of geopolitical and, you know, very, like, yeah, personal situations of, of everybody involved that aren’t really maybe clear, or, or the fact that it’s a war or a war situation, you know, graze everything.

(0:50:49) speaker_1:

(0:50:50) speaker_0: Right. Yeah, like embodiment-

(0:50:52) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:50:52) speaker_0: … of occupation.

(0:50:54) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:50:54) speaker_0: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and you haven’t been back to Korea since.

(0:50:59) speaker_1: Not since, since 2004. So many, many, many years.

(0:51:05) speaker_0: How did you feel when you were there?

(0:51:08) speaker_1: Um, again, you know, because I don’t n- you know, Koreans definitely didn’t embrace me as a Korean.

(0:51:15) speaker_1: Um, so I didn’t see myself as a, you know, I think as many adoptees who go back feel like I’m, like, with my people.

(0:51:23) speaker_1: I’m standing and I’m looking around and I’m seeing everyone who looks like me.

(0:51:27) speaker_1: So, I guess it didn’t feel like a, “I wish I was here because this is where my people are, the people that look like me are.

(0:51:36) speaker_1: ” But I did feel, um, a strong, yeah, like, uh, connection or…

(0:51:43) speaker_0: There was something.

(0:51:44) speaker_1: Yes, yes. I didn’t feel like just a tourist.

(0:51:48) speaker_0: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is really profound when you go back and you think, “This is, this is my native land. This is the land I was born.” (laughs)

(0:51:58) speaker_1: And yeah, all the generations before.

(0:51:59) speaker_0: All the generations there.

(0:52:01) speaker_1: And-

(0:52:01) speaker_0: Your ancestors, yeah, that you might not know, so, um, ha- and, and also, I guess that goes with, uh, m- uh, questions about DNA, uh, DNA testing and, um, finding family in the States.

(0:52:16) speaker_0: That is also something that…

(0:52:20) speaker_1: Right, and I, I guess that could also, you know, I think…

(0:52:24) speaker_1: Uh, I mean, I guess my, my, to my mind, I will wait until it feels like pretty much those, you know, those two individuals might be passed away to do anything that would be like popping up as the, you know, random (laughs) member of the family, um…

(0:52:43) speaker_1:

(0:52:44) speaker_0: You don’t have the burning desire, like you talked, like, your sister about?

(0:52:47) speaker_1: Right, no, and not on- not for my, my mother or my father in terms of, um, in terms of that part.

(0:52:53) speaker_1: Like I, to me, it feels like my story was very much supposed to be a story of how do we get to a, a future sort of definition of ourselves as humans that isn’t so rooted in sort of the traditional ways of conceiving of identity.

(0:53:11) speaker_1:

(0:53:12) speaker_0: Well, and it’s interesting because, you know, um, I- I’ve lived in Korea as well, just by a year, um, uh, when I did my Fulbright, but the, the interesting, uh, an interesting takeaway is the queer folks or gay people that I met would often feel like they have to go back into the closet, even though they had been out for many years in the States.

(0:53:37) speaker_0: But in Korea, even to their biological families, they were back in the closet.

(0:53:43) speaker_1: Mm-hmm.

(0:53:43) speaker_0: And, and that’s sort of the personal sacrifice they had to make in order to, you know, um, be reunited with their families, and that has to be a, kind of a hard pill to swallow as well, to think about, I mean, in the, in your mind about Korea is, uh, you know, you may, you might not be fully accepted in all your identities, in the way you might be in Oakland.

(0:54:06) speaker_0:

(0:54:06) speaker_1: I mean, I definitely, you know, I think that there was one other Black Korean that I saw when I was back there, and he was sweeping the streets like with a broom, like a sweep- street cleaner, but like, himself, not like driving a machine.

(0:54:21) speaker_1: Um, and, you know, I think that it was very interesting to sort of feel a kind of racism like I felt in the United States.

(0:54:31) speaker_1: Um, so I think that in addition to my queerness, like there was just also a feeling of like not, yeah, maybe not being ready for who I am or not sort of being able to be sort of the full person that I wanted to be or that I already was in that space.

(0:54:50) speaker_1: And so-… yeah, I think that the, you know, I’m very supportive of all of the efforts of, of activists, uh, right now in, in Korea.

(0:55:00) speaker_1: Um, but particularly at that time when like I had sort of built my identity and it was my early 20s.

(0:55:05) speaker_1: And, you know, I remember saying something probably really rude to the pastor that ran our orphanage that we came from.

(0:55:14) speaker_1: Um, but definitely not at that time, but I have sort of felt like I could subdue any part of myself to try to make this work.

(0:55:23) speaker_1: Um, and I think that, you know, as I’ve become older, as sort of the components of my identity feel less sharp as it were in terms of like who I am, um, that, that, that I might feel differently, that I might, you know, see, yeah, see trying to be part of the group as more important in a way, um, that I would have then.

(0:55:47) speaker_1: But, you know, I have no idea. Um, I also have not been in the closet for, I don’t know, since I was 16, so I don’t know, whatever many years that is.

(0:55:55) speaker_1: Uh, it’s, um, so I don’t think that, you know, I don’t think I could fit back in a closet. I don’t think there’s a closet that could take me.

(0:56:03) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:56:03) speaker_1: Um, and then… (laughs)

(0:56:06) speaker_0: There ain’t a closet big enough for me. (laughs)

(0:56:08) speaker_1: Right. Exactly.

(0:56:09) speaker_1: Uh, so yeah, but like I said, I think that’s also been sort of in the realm of things that have made me maybe feel less inclined or like that it’s less important for me to do sort of my searches as a component of, of my identity.

(0:56:28) speaker_1: Um, I, I think probably I have a, a, a fantasy of being able to like write a, a story that has two sort of parallel s- you know, stories of a Korean family and a Black American family, um, that come together in some, you know, in my life.

(0:56:49) speaker_1: But, um, I think that’s probably just sort of a fantasy in my head.

(0:56:53) speaker_1: But that, that I think that would be h- the reason that I would want to sort of know the most, is just to know sort of what the, the two parallel tracks of the f- the stories are.

(0:57:04) speaker_1:

(0:57:04) speaker_0: And Jeffrey, what… Are you continuing with your activism now?

(0:57:09) speaker_1: I am. Um, I, well, so I, I’m working on or, you know, my, my main sort of intellectual project right now is, is working on power sharing.

(0:57:22) speaker_1: I was a co-executive director, and, um, really, uh, finding something very sort of deeply profound in being able to and the ability to sort of lead as a co-leader, as somebody who I don’t think would have ever been executive director on my own, or would have never had the sort of, sort of cultural, institutional, or, or, you know, whatever signs to say like, “Oh, you’re a leader.

(0:57:49) speaker_1: You’re somebody that should be, um, you know, leading an organization or leading a movement.

(0:57:55) speaker_1: ” And so, um, right now I support, uh, developing and, and building out, um, uh, structures to support other co-, uh, leaders and co-leadership structures, and then also sort of, uh, emergent, younger executives that are, um, leading organizations.

(0:58:13) speaker_1: And then I’m also involved in the, uh, in KQTX, which is a, um, Korean, uh, uh, queer, trans, uh, national sort of space.

(0:58:27) speaker_1: Um, and I’m also sort of working sort of at the periphery or sort of in an advisory role, um, sort of within the same movements that I was working before within the LGBT youth and education justice spaces.

(0:58:43) speaker_1: So yes, uh, continuing my activism sort of like in the tradition of, I don’t know, geese migrating or something.

(0:58:52) speaker_1: I am rotated out of the front of the V, and I am taking my (laughs) spot to draft, um, for a little bit.

(0:59:00) speaker_1: And, uh, yeah, figuring out sort of where it makes sense for me to fit in.

(0:59:06) speaker_1: But, um, I think sort of identity, and the ways in which identity and belonging and, and sort of a holistic acceptance and understanding and sort of radical love for yourself, um, will all sort of be part of my activism going forward.

(0:59:24) speaker_1:

(0:59:24) speaker_0: Well, we definitely need more, more people that can, can help us to, um, facilitate our own, um, self-love and care.

(0:59:35) speaker_0: So I was gonna ask you about the, uh, what’d you say, the KTX?

(0:59:40) speaker_1: I think K, so Korean Queer Trans Experience is what the X I think stands for, but KQTX.

(0:59:46) speaker_0: Oh. Yeah, uh, w- how, what is that, w- working with them, what has that been like?

(0:59:50) speaker_1: Um, I mean, I think that’s probably been the, the most affirmational Korean space I’ve been in, just because, um, sort of the political orientation of the group is that they are, you know, acknowledging and understanding that there’s adoptees, there’s mixed race Koreans, that there’s, um, sort of hybrid Korean identities.

(1:00:10) speaker_1: Um, and so, uh, the group has been uh, sort of active since maybe 2018. Um, they had a conference, uh, a national queer and trans Korean conference.

(1:00:24) speaker_1: Um, and sort of since then became like a national network. Uh, obviously, it really, you know, most of it developed during the pandemic.

(1:00:34) speaker_1: Um, and so it’s, uh, so it’s been a, um, you know, it’s been a growth journey. It’s been a s- sort of small community that became a large community.

(1:00:44) speaker_1: Um, and it’s, like I said, one of the places where I feel like the most components of my identity can be like accepted and understood-ish….

(1:00:54) speaker_1: um, you know, the starting point isn’t so, so far away as it might be with, you know, a random White person or, um, someone who has less understanding around sort of queerness and sort of the, all of the ways in which Korean diaspora happens.

(1:01:10) speaker_1: Um, but yeah, I found that to be a, an interesting space, um, and a place where Koreans are grappling with a lot of different questions around identity that often it doesn’t seem like, uh, is a space for them to do that.

(1:01:27) speaker_1: I’m also s- trying to figure out where sort of adoptee politics fit back into my life.

(1:01:34) speaker_1: I did sort of more around adoptee sort of activism and organizing, I guess you could say, in my like early 20s.

(1:01:43) speaker_1: Um, and then sort of, it just became sort of a part of (laughs) this larger, you know, conglomeration of identities that I was dealing with.

(1:01:55) speaker_1: Um, and so, you know, I, I haven’t had to be such a part of my sort of political identity but within KQTX sort of, sort of th- ex-

(1:02:07) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:02:08) speaker_1: … you know, in the KQTX, um, context that, you know, adoptees are and there is such a, a sort of adoptee presence, a queer adoptee presence, um-

(1:02:17) speaker_0: There is.

(1:02:18) speaker_1: … that it does… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(1:02:20) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:02:20) speaker_1: Um, that it does feel like a place where, um, you know, uh, folks are, are, are expecting me to and, and, um, hoping that I will be able to lean more into or bring more sort of analysis around or, or representation around being an adoptee, um, and yeah.

(1:02:39) speaker_1: I mean, I, I, I guess it’s not, I don’t shy away from it.

(1:02:42) speaker_1: I, I tell people I’m a Korean American adoptee or I’m a, I’m a transnational adoptee from Korea, um, and so yeah.

(1:02:50) speaker_1: So I tell people that I think mainly just to give them sort of a larger context because most people wanna imagine sort of what my life was like with a Korean mom and a Black dad in the United States and ask me all sorts of questions that, you know, don’t really relate to my experience.

(1:03:06) speaker_1: Um, and yeah. And it- it’s also not a place that I’ve spent as much intellectual energy, um, recently.

(1:03:15) speaker_0: Well, you know, I, it, that’s good to hear that, um, there is that, uh, y- you are feeling very connected there because I’ve heard, um, that Korean adoptee spaces can feel very hetero.

(1:03:31) speaker_0:

(1:03:32) speaker_1: Well, so KQTX is the queer-

(1:03:35) speaker_0: Right.

(1:03:35) speaker_1: … queer space that it feels, you know, accepting of adoptees.

(1:03:39) speaker_1: The, uh, the adoptee spaces are sort of very hetero and very, um, I don’t know, White-centric and s-

(1:03:47) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:48) speaker_1: … White supremacy-embracing kind of spaces. (laughs)

(1:03:51) speaker_0: (laughs) Yeah. Uh, uh, I mean, inherent, you know, with that transracial adoption piece, it’s-

(1:03:59) speaker_1: I mean, I, I think that the, the f- the gift that it gave me was to be able to watch White supremacy like in action as a like, I mean, beneficiary in a, a sort of sense, but really as someone who’s able to see how it operates for White people up close, um, because that’s just explains so much about l- (laughs) about so many things about sort of where we are as a country and the limitations of what White people and White sort of like my parents were the, you know, what you would’ve hoped for a, a, an adoptee could get or a, a trans-, um, racial adoptee could get in terms of just being open to knowledge and new ideas.

(1:04:48) speaker_1: And even that was so far from what, you know, what was either needed or what, what, um, yeah, what, what should’ve been that you just don’t…

(1:04:59) speaker_1: Y- yeah, it just gives you just a, I don’t know, um, when you don’t have to question anything about anything in the world, then it just gives you such a limited range of ways to express what’s happening.

(1:05:09) speaker_1:

(1:05:09) speaker_0: I mean, even, um, adoptees, you know, young adoptees today to have a, a White parent taking-

(1:05:18) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:05:18) speaker_0: … Korean, you know, um, in order to, you know, relate to her, you know, family and ch- um, uh, that, that even today feels very forward.

(1:05:29) speaker_0: (laughs) I mean, very advanced, you know? Or very conscious.

(1:05:33) speaker_1: Yeah. Uh, uh, s- uh, s- I mean, I guess it was but, you know, sh- my mom went to a class with other parents.

(1:05:38) speaker_1: She wasn’t going to like Korean school with-

(1:05:40) speaker_0: Oh, other adoptive parents?

(1:05:42) speaker_1: … Korean people, she’s going to.

(1:05:42) speaker_0: It was kind of-

(1:05:42) speaker_1: Uh-huh. So there was like enough of them to make a class.

(1:05:45) speaker_0: Oh, okay.

(1:05:45) speaker_1: So I mean, I think that, I think probably one of these books they said something about you should send your kids to Korean school and go with them so it looks like you care or something.

(1:05:54) speaker_1:

(1:05:55) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:05:55) speaker_1: Um, I mean, that’s probably a little bit funny but-

(1:05:58) speaker_0: Yeah, yeah.

(1:05:58) speaker_1: … um, yeah.

(1:05:59) speaker_1: I mean, I think it was probably some recommendation somewhere and so that was what they were doing but it wasn’t a bad recommendation, I guess.

(1:06:07) speaker_1: (laughs)

(1:06:07) speaker_0: Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of one of those things like, you know, could it be performative or could it be also like…

(1:06:14) speaker_0: But I think it’s, you know, at least taking a step towards culture.

(1:06:19) speaker_1: I mean-

(1:06:20) speaker_0: And-

(1:06:20) speaker_1: … it was also like a, a act of humility ’cause, you know, they made them sing in Korean.

(1:06:25) speaker_1: They made them do all of these things that you’re just like, “Oh my gosh. Okay.

(1:06:29) speaker_1: ” And like when I look back at it, I was, I woulda, I would have never done that. I would’ve said, “See you. I’ll drop you off.” Um. (laughs)

(1:06:39) speaker_0: It, it is kind of an, yeah.

(1:06:41) speaker_0: (laughs) It is kind of an act of, you know, okay, I’m gonna do something that makes me uncomfortable in, in a way that, you know, adopting kids from Korea and putting them in spaces that make them uncomf- that could make them uncomfortable, you know?

(1:06:55) speaker_0:

(1:06:55) speaker_1: Right…. so I guess, yes, once a week may be, uh, not a good (laughs) once a-

(1:07:01) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:07:01) speaker_1: … week compared to a lifetime. (laughs)

(1:07:02) speaker_0: Yeah. It’s not, it’s not exactly the same thing, but yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

(1:07:06) speaker_0: Well, Geoffrey, I, you know, when you’re, you’re talking about getting back into adoptee spaces or, um, getting back into some kind of activism, um, thank you so much for coming on the podcast ’cause this is definitely, you know, it- it- it- it helps other…

(1:07:23) speaker_0: It will help other adoptees. Um, p- it provides some more insight into your experiences.

(1:07:31) speaker_0: Um, and also hopefully, you know, I’m hoping that the experiences of, of, uh, queer adoptees become, you know, is more visible or that is, you know, we have more awareness and space to hear stories like, like yours.

(1:07:50) speaker_0: So I really appreciate you coming on.

(1:07:52) speaker_1: Well, thank you so much.

(1:07:53) speaker_1: And obviously part of the whole work of, you know, making ourselves known is the cultural production of, of things and building a culture that is a- is a adoptee culture.

(1:08:04) speaker_1: And so, yeah, thank you for doing the podcast. I was really excited to hear that there was such a thing.

(1:08:10) speaker_1: Um, and yeah, I really appreciate taking the time to talk and you asking me questions that I have not thought about in a long time. Um-

(1:08:19) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:08:19) speaker_1: (laughs) But it was really, um, actually a great chance to sort of reconnect with a lot of things that, um, yeah, really went into my beginning as a, as a young person trying to find a place and a, a way to explain my- myself and my existence in the world.

(1:08:34) speaker_1: So, uh, I really appreciated it. Thank you.

(1:08:37) speaker_0: And Geoffrey, is, uh, are you open to if somebody wants to connect with you or, um…

(1:08:43) speaker_1: Oh, yeah. Um, yes, for sure. Um, definitely folks who are interested in KQTX but also just other adoptees about things or mixed race Koreans about things.

(1:08:53) speaker_1: Um, I’m definitely in a place of, uh, yeah, uh, mentorship or, uh, advice or connection and support. Um…

(1:09:04) speaker_0: How can they reach you?

(1:09:06) speaker_1: Uh, well, the best way would be either on my- uh, by email at G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y @collectivestruggle.

(1:09:15) speaker_1: i- info, I-N-F-O, um, or on LinkedIn, um, with the name Geoffrey Winder, G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y W-I-N-D-E-R. (instrumental music plays)

(1:09:37) speaker_0: Thank you so much, Geoffrey. I hope that we’ll meet in person one day. Thank you to all Patreon supporters who have helped keep this podcast going.

(1:09:47) speaker_0: You know who you are. Yooken Jun is our volunteer Korean translator. You can read her translations at adaptedpodcast.com. I’m Kaya MiLee.

(1:09:57) speaker_0: See you next time. (instrumental music plays)

Mirae Kate-hers Rhee, 48, is a transnational, transcultural artist and adopted Korean who uses her socio-political artwork and performance to investigate concepts like identity and belonging.

Audio available July 20, 2024 at 6 pm CST.

Photo: Michael Hurt

Korean mixed-race adoptee Sarah Harris, 54, of Los Angeles, shares her story of visiting Korea and finding the place where she felt truly rooted.

Audio available July 5, 2024.

Korean adoptee Delight Roberts, 52, talks about marrying into a Korean-American family and the challenges and benefits that provided her. Some were surprising – like table eating etiquette – but all of Roberts’ experiences from childhood bullying to having future in-laws who didn’t approve of her because she is adopted, have strengthened Roberts’ resolve to live the life of her choice.

Audio available on Friday, June 21, 2024. Patreon supporters have early access.

Transcribed by AI

(0:00:00) speaker_0: (music) Welcome to Adopted podcast, Season 7, Episode 21 starts now. This is a podcast that centers the voices of Korean inter-country adoptees.

(0:00:19) speaker_0: Adopted people are the true experts of the lived experience of adoption. I’m Kaomi Lee and I was also adopted from Korea.

(0:00:28) speaker_0: Our voices have often been silenced by adoption agencies, governments, sometimes even our adoptive families, and a wider society that wants only a feel-good story.

(0:00:39) speaker_0: Our lives are more complicated than that. This is a safe space where we can explore all of ourselves. Please listen to our stories.

(0:00:47) speaker_1: I was not aware of a lot of the cultural issues that would be present, nor did I have an appreciation for, for the fact that being adopted would be a big issue.

(0:00:58) speaker_1:

(0:00:59) speaker_0: What is it like to marry into a Korean American family? We’ll explore that with this next guest, Korean adoptee, Delight Roberts.

(0:01:07) speaker_0: She struggled to fit in growing up in Utah and felt stigmatized for her race and her family.

(0:01:13) speaker_0: As an adult woman meeting Korean American immigrant in-laws for the first time, she felt another kind of stigma. But I’ll let Delight tell her story.

(0:01:23) speaker_0: Here’s Delight.

(0:01:31) speaker_1: Delight Roberts, I’m 52, and I live in Seattle.

(0:01:37) speaker_0: Okay, Delight, so I’m sure you’re tired of explaining this, but there’s gotta be a story about your name.

(0:01:44) speaker_1: Oh, yeah. Actually, so my parents waited a long time, um, my mom could not have children, and they waited a long time to actually have a child.

(0:01:56) speaker_1: But the other part of the story is my mom actually had a sister named Delight who had died when she was seven during a tonsillectomy.

(0:02:04) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:02:05) speaker_1: Yeah, and so those are the two reasons I have been given for my name.

(0:02:09) speaker_0: How does that feel, having the namesake of someone else?

(0:02:13) speaker_1: You know, it’s funny, I didn’t think about it for a really long time, but I was extremely close to my grandfather, so the father of the first Delight who had died during a tonsillectomy, and he and I were very, very close, and he wrote me a letter once and just basically said that it was like the greatest gift after that loss that he had mourned so many years ago to then have another Delight in his life to love like he had loved her.

(0:02:36) speaker_1: And so I never felt like it was a burden, uh, I think because it was so tragic. She basically died of an anesthesia issue.

(0:02:44) speaker_1: I think it was an anesthesia overdose-

(0:02:47) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:02:47) speaker_1: … which is very unlikely to happen today, um, but yeah, that part never… I never felt burdened by it.

(0:02:54) speaker_0: Were your grandparents Southern?

(0:02:57) speaker_1: No, no.

(0:02:57) speaker_1: So my grandparents were from California and my grandfather had come to Salt Lake, he worked for the National Weather Service, and so they ended up in Utah, total anomaly because they weren’t Mormon, and yeah.

(0:03:12) speaker_1:

(0:03:13) speaker_0: Okay, okay. And so you… Where did you grow up?

(0:03:16) speaker_1: I grew up in Salt Lake, in a suburb just outside of Salt Lake City.

(0:03:19) speaker_0: Yes.

(0:03:19) speaker_0: And so a long time ago, I went to Salt Lake, a friend of mine had moved from Minnesota after she graduated from college and she lived in Salt Lake, and I remember when I went to visit her, there was like…

(0:03:32) speaker_0: It probably doesn’t still exist, but you had to put your name on a list if you were gonna have a drink.

(0:03:37) speaker_1: Oh, yeah.

(0:03:40) speaker_0: Were you caught with it?

(0:03:41) speaker_1: Yeah, the liquor laws are very challenging, interesting, obtuse, pick one of those, ’cause it’s a dry state.

(0:03:48) speaker_1: So like, you can only buy alcohol at the designated store.

(0:03:52) speaker_1: You can’t buy it, like, in the grocery store, and there are only a limited number of manufacturers and suppliers that can supply alcohol to those stores, and they’re usually not, like, top wines.

(0:04:03) speaker_1: And so, yeah, that’s not surprising.

(0:04:04) speaker_1: I’m sure you probably were, like, at a private club or restaurants at the time used to have to get, like, a private license so they could serve alcohol.

(0:04:11) speaker_1:

(0:04:11) speaker_0: Yeah, I think it was probably more like a bar or restaurant or something like that where she had to submit my name ahead of time or just that I was a visitor and I don’t know, maybe it was because there were special licenses that establishments had to get.

(0:04:27) speaker_0:

(0:04:27) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah, I think that probably was the case.

(0:04:30) speaker_0: Which I just thought was the most bizarre thing, but… (laughs)

(0:04:34) speaker_1: Yeah. (laughs)

(0:04:35) speaker_0: It was beau- ah, it’s beautiful out there.

(0:04:36) speaker_1: Yes, and that is why a lot of people live there. Like, the natural beauty, I miss that to this day. It’s so beautiful, the mountains…

(0:04:44) speaker_1: If you’re outdoorsy, it’s fantastic, although it’s gotten a lot more crowded since I left.

(0:04:49) speaker_1: I left, uh, gosh, 30 years ago, but I still go back pretty frequently because my family is there, but it is so beautiful.

(0:04:56) speaker_0: Yeah, so not only were you Korean growing up and maybe the only Asian in your neighborhood, school?

(0:05:05) speaker_1: So in my elementary school, my brother, who’s also adopted from Korea, we were the only two Asians. It was horrible. And, and…

(0:05:14) speaker_0: (laughs) So being the only Asian and then also being not Mormon.

(0:05:17) speaker_1: Not Mormon, and there was a third strike and that was that my mother was divorced and in 19… Let’s see, that was in 1977.

(0:05:26) speaker_0: Oh, wow, okay.

(0:05:27) speaker_1: D- Divorce was hugely, hugely rare, scandalous. I mean, there were kids that would not play with us because my mother was divorced.

(0:05:37) speaker_1: It was like she had The Scarlet Letter. It’s crazy to think about that now, but we really were marginalized in a lot of ways for all those reasons.

(0:05:46) speaker_1: It was a pretty tough upbringing, I have to say.

(0:05:49) speaker_0: Um, do you think that some of your experiences that you grew up in kind of, you know, tough and probably many ways really have stayed with you?

(0:05:57) speaker_1: Oh, definitely, because I… My brother and I were both bullied pretty mercilessly too for being Asian….

(0:06:04) speaker_1: taunted, like, daily about our eyes and our face and how we looked and, you know, they’d sing those rhymes.

(0:06:09) speaker_1: And back then, you know, nobody took bullying seriously. And my mom was a school teacher. And she didn’t teach at the same school we went to, but-

(0:06:17) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:06:17) speaker_1: … you know, the answer back then to any bullying, the response was, “Oh, it’s because they like you,” or, “Ignore it.”

(0:06:25) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:06:25) speaker_1: And now, we know just how damaging that was.

(0:06:28) speaker_1: But yeah, I definitely think that shaped me and it was a pretty difficult place to be a kid, uh, I think if you’re not white and you’re not Mormon.

(0:06:37) speaker_1: Uh, more importantly, it was very lonely and the thing that saved me is that I was very close to my family, really close to my mom, and my grandpa, and my grandma before she died, and then my uncles.

(0:06:49) speaker_1: And so having them around, I- I think really helped want some of what I was experiencing during the day.

(0:06:55) speaker_1: And back then, thank God, there was no social media, so I could just go home, literally slam the door, and I knew I was safe, and it was quiet.

(0:07:03) speaker_1: And I read a lot, so I could escape into my books and my dog. And that really was a refuge for me.

(0:07:09) speaker_0: How do you respond to being bullied like that so frequently? Did you become a fighter or did you avoid people?

(0:07:17) speaker_1: No, I was a crier. I mean, I would, I would run away. I was a runner. So, and we lived just around the corner from my house, so I would just leave.

(0:07:26) speaker_1: When I couldn’t take it anymore, I would just run away from school and I’d go home. But I cried a lot. I was not a fighter.

(0:07:32) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(0:07:33) speaker_1: And part of me wishes that I had fought back, but, um, yeah, it was just-

(0:07:41) speaker_0: That sort of response, yeah.

(0:07:42) speaker_1: Yeah. So I, I would just run home when I couldn’t take it anymore, when it just became too much.

(0:07:47) speaker_1: But the other thing that was really hard is, a lot of parents didn’t want their kids to play with us or to be our friends.

(0:07:53) speaker_1: Again, I don’t know how much of that was, you know, allocated because we were Asian, because my mom was divorced, because we weren’t Mormon.

(0:08:01) speaker_1: I actually, I think the religion part played a pretty big part in that.

(0:08:04) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:08:05) speaker_1: And what people don’t realize is that with Mormons, a lot of the social activity and a lot of the community, like they do have a very strong community, so all of the kids would be doing something every night through the church.

(0:08:17) speaker_1: So if you weren’t a part of the church, you were really left out.

(0:08:21) speaker_1: And that goes for, like, school dances, just about th- the entire social life revolved around the church, so to not be part of that…

(0:08:28) speaker_1: And they were not inclusive if you were not Mormon, so it’s not like if you had a friend you could go to their, you know, Monday night craft activity for the kids and participate.

(0:08:36) speaker_1:

(0:08:36) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Why would your mother settle there?

(0:08:39) speaker_1: Oh, that is a very good question. So she, my mom was just a remarkable person.

(0:08:45) speaker_1: She went to Berkeley in the ’60s, paid for it herself, because at the time, my grandfather, who changed his views over the years, just didn’t think women needed an education, so he wouldn’t pay for it.

(0:08:57) speaker_1: So my mom worked three jobs-

(0:08:58) speaker_0: Wow.

(0:08:59) speaker_1: … to put herself through college. And then I don’t know why she came back. I’ve often asked her, I was like, “Mom, you were free.

(0:09:04) speaker_1: You should’ve just stayed there.”

(0:09:06) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:09:07) speaker_1: But she returned I think because her family was there and then just didn’t leave, you know?

(0:09:13) speaker_0: Oh, I see. So she was from Salt Lake.

(0:09:16) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah.

(0:09:17) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:09:17) speaker_1: So both of my grandparents had based their family in Salt Lake, and so my mom went away for college, but then came back ’cause that’s where everybody was.

(0:09:25) speaker_1:

(0:09:25) speaker_0: And why would they? And I’m just kind of wondering, you know, non-Mormon, it’s gotta be kind of a little bit…

(0:09:32) speaker_1: I think, you know, it’s, that’s a question I never asked, and I’m very sorry I have never asked him that directly ’cause he’s gone now too, but I don’t know, I was always just told that he’d gone for work.

(0:09:42) speaker_1: It’s interesting because men back then made all the decisions.

(0:09:47) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:09:48) speaker_1: And for a lot of men, a lot of their social needs are met through their families and through their wives.

(0:09:54) speaker_1: So, I suspect that my grandpa wasn’t nearly as bothered about not being Mormon and being in Salt Lake as maybe my grandma was in terms of making friends and, and socially.

(0:10:04) speaker_1:

(0:10:05) speaker_0: Having a social circle.

(0:10:06) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:10:07) speaker_0: So when did things get better for you?

(0:10:09) speaker_1: Um, things got better when I went to college, for sure. I had really wanted to go away for college, but my mom was a teacher, and so couldn’t afford it.

(0:10:21) speaker_1: And I got a full ride scholarship to the University of Utah.

(0:10:24) speaker_0: Hmm.

(0:10:25) speaker_1: But I was so miserable in school that I skipped my senior year of high school, and so I started college when I was 16.

(0:10:31) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:10:32) speaker_1: Just to get out of that environment. And I’m an extrovert and I have a lot of friends now, but it was really hard for me to make friends.

(0:10:37) speaker_1: Like, it was just a really hard thing.

(0:10:39) speaker_1: And by the time you’re in high school, you’re not bullied outwardly anymore as much as you’re just more kind of left out.

(0:10:46) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:10:46) speaker_1: And so I really was looking to find my people.

(0:10:49) speaker_1: But I ended up at University of Utah, which I have to say, back then was not the university I would have chosen.

(0:10:55) speaker_1: But because I had wanted to get out of high school so badly and qualified for early admissions-

(0:11:01) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:11:02) speaker_1: … that, to me, seemed like the best option.

(0:11:04) speaker_0: It makes sense, a full ride too.

(0:11:06) speaker_1: Yeah. So I stayed, and then, I’m a lawyer, so I had also gone to law school in Utah.

(0:11:11) speaker_1: And it was kind of the same thing, I had also intended to leave, but my mom didn’t really want me to leave, ’cause we were, we were quite close.

(0:11:19) speaker_1: And then I also got a really nice scholarship for law school, and I was kind of afraid to leave. Back then, I didn’t really like change.

(0:11:26) speaker_1: As much as I wanted to go, I was pretty happy to stay too.

(0:11:30) speaker_1: And in hindsight, I’m really grateful for that, ’cause my mom ended up dying unexpectedly when she turned 60 of a heart attack.

(0:11:39) speaker_1: And so I’m really grateful that I had that time with her, ’cause I saw her a lot in law school and in college.

(0:11:45) speaker_0: Yeah. Yeah.

(0:11:47) speaker_1: But as soon as I graduated from law school, I was like, “I am outta here.”

(0:11:50) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:11:50) speaker_1: “I’m going to wa- I’m going to one of the two Washingtons. I’m either going to Washington State or I’m going to Washington DC,” ’cause I love politics.

(0:11:55) speaker_1: But I- I knew that I wasn’t gonna stay.

(0:11:58) speaker_0: Now, I know they don’t give out full rides, uh, to anyone. You must’ve been quite studious and did well academically.

(0:12:07) speaker_0: Did you see academic school as freedom and ticket out of there?

(0:12:13) speaker_1: … know about that, but I just was a super nerd.

(0:12:16) speaker_1: Like, I really liked school, I loved to read, I liked to learn, and I was really achievement-focused, I really liked getting the A, and so (laughs) all those things together.

(0:12:27) speaker_1: And like I said, I didn’t have a lot of distractions ’cause I didn’t really have any friends, and so I had a lot of time to study.

(0:12:33) speaker_1: And so I don’t know if I really thought of it as an escape or as my ticket out, but it was just something that I could focus on on the day-to-day.

(0:12:41) speaker_2: And where did you meet your husband?

(0:12:45) speaker_1: Oh, that is like, a really good story.

(0:12:48) speaker_1: So I met my husband Tom in Seattle through friends, and the funny part about this is that I- I had two friends, Michelle and Peter, who both had separately had reached out to me about meeting their friend Tom.

(0:13:02) speaker_1: So Michelle and I have lunch one day and she’s telling me about him and I’m like, “You know what? Nah, he’s just, he doesn’t, he’s not my type.

(0:13:09) speaker_1: I- I don’t think so.

(0:13:10) speaker_1: ” Peter was a lot more persistent, and Peter is Tom’s best friend, and Peter and Michelle are both Korean-American, and they were both like, “Oh, we’ve, you know, you should meet my friend Tom.

(0:13:19) speaker_1: ” And I was like, “No, no, no.” And so, but Peter kept-

(0:13:23) speaker_2: What wasn’t he your type? What was, uh, what did you think?

(0:13:25) speaker_1: Yeah. Um, (laughs) Michelle was like, “Well, he’s really quiet and he’s introverted and he’s kinda shy.” And I was like, “Oh.” Like, “No.”

(0:13:35) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:13:35) speaker_1: “I don’t…” Like, I mean, I’m not like, a super extrovert, but I was like, “Oh,” you know? “That doesn’t really sound like my type.

(0:13:42) speaker_1: ” And honestly, the other thing too is she’s like, “Oh, and he’s Korean-American,” and that was not something I had ever looked for. So…

(0:13:48) speaker_2: Hm.

(0:13:49) speaker_1: It was not like I was out there trying to date different Asians or Korean men. As a matter of fact, Tom was one of only a few Asians that I had ever dated.

(0:13:56) speaker_1: But Peter kept being like, “Oh, come to this happy hour, come to this, come to that.” And I kept declining. This went on for months.

(0:14:03) speaker_1: Well, one day I was supposed to go over to Peter’s house, he and his wife Julie, to their house for dinner, and we’d had to cancel the first time and then I had been painting my house the day that I was supposed to go over there for dinner, and I thought about canceling ’cause it was like, five o’clock and I was in my painting clothes and I was like, “Oh, I don’t really feel like getting cleaned up and going over there.

(0:14:23) speaker_1: ” And I thought, “Oh, what the heck? It’s just Peter and his wife.” And so I didn’t even shower, I was just like, “All right.

(0:14:28) speaker_1: ” Didn’t even change my painting clothes. So I pulled up to their house and I parked, and immediately a car pulled up behind me and out pops Tom.

(0:14:38) speaker_1: And I was like, “Oh, man. This is that guy that they’ve been trying to set me up with. I’m gonna kill Peter.”

(0:14:44) speaker_2: (laughs) You knew it was a set-up, right?

(0:14:45) speaker_1: Well, I figured it out pretty quickly.

(0:14:47) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:14:47) speaker_1: And of course, Peter, I walk up and I’m at this point just super annoyed, and Peter said, “Oh, did we not tell you our friend was coming?”

(0:14:56) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:14:56) speaker_1: I was like, “No. No, you did not, you did not tell me that.

(0:15:00) speaker_1: ” But it’s actually a pretty fun story because we go in, and for like, the first hour Tom sits against the wall and doesn’t say a thing, and I’m thinking, “Oh man, this guy is like, such a dud.

(0:15:10) speaker_1: ” And I was thinking to myself, “What’s the minimum amount of time I have to stay and not be rude so I can go back home and finish my painting?

(0:15:17) speaker_1: ” And then we had gone out to their deck to have dinner, and Tom and I started talking.

(0:15:22) speaker_1: We both liked this film that nobody else saw called Nowhere in Africa, set during World War II, and it was like, one of our favorite movies.

(0:15:29) speaker_2: Oh, how random.

(0:15:30) speaker_1: Exactly. And then we started like, having all these things in common. He actually was born in Salt Lake, but had moved when he was a toddler.

(0:15:36) speaker_2: Oh my gosh. That’s so sweet.

(0:15:37) speaker_1: Just some really randomly weird things. It was like the movies.

(0:15:41) speaker_1: And then you couldn’t shut either one of us up, and it was like, it was like my friends disappeared, and I remember thinking-

(0:15:48) speaker_2: (laughs)

(0:15:48) speaker_1: … every once in a while that we needed to include them in the conversation ’cause we were being rude.

(0:15:52) speaker_2: (laughs) So it was that moment where everything else falls away.

(0:15:57) speaker_1: Everything else fell away. And it was kinda crazy. And I’ll tell you, I was 35 when we met.

(0:16:05) speaker_1: Tom was almost 40, so it’s not like we were just out of college and didn’t know what we were doing on the dating front.

(0:16:14) speaker_1: But this was in August, and we were engaged by Thanksgiving.

(0:16:18) speaker_2: Wow. Your friends really did know you.

(0:16:22) speaker_1: Yes, yes.

(0:16:22) speaker_2: Because it wasn’t just a, you know, like, “Our two single friends. Let’s have them meet.” Like, they must’ve really seen something.

(0:16:29) speaker_1: They did. And what I tell people now, you know, younger people, I’m like, “Oh, you know what? Forget about your type.

(0:16:34) speaker_1: How much is looking for your type, how far has that gotten you so far? Yeah, not very far. So maybe you should be a little more open-minded.

(0:16:41) speaker_1: ” It was pretty crazy, and it was so fast that even my brother and my best friend both pulled me aside.

(0:16:46) speaker_1: They were like, “Look, we really like Tom, but do you think you guys are rushing it?” I was like, “No.” And we’ll be married 17 years in July. So…

(0:16:53) speaker_2: Wow. Congratulations.

(0:16:54) speaker_1: Yeah. Thank you. So it’s kind of a crazy story.

(0:16:56) speaker_1: Sometimes I can’t even believe, like if somebody else was telling me this story, I’d be like, “No, I really don’t believe.” It was a, kind of a crazy thing.

(0:17:04) speaker_1:

(0:17:04) speaker_2: I mean, I’m single, not married, and you know, people are like, “Oh, when you know, you know,” or whatever.

(0:17:10) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:17:11) speaker_2: Did that ring true for you?

(0:17:12) speaker_1: It really did.

(0:17:13) speaker_1: I had had boyfriends, I had lived with two people, had long-term relationships with both of them, and when I met Tom, after that first meeting, he’d asked me out and I was hosting a baby shower, and I was like, “Well, you can come over and…

(0:17:27) speaker_1: ” And we had mutual friends who were coming to that baby shower, so I said, “Yeah, why don’t you come over to the shower?

(0:17:31) speaker_1: ” And then we were gonna go to the movies. We ended up talking for like, eight hours and after that, I was like, “I think that’s the guy I’m gonna marry.

(0:17:38) speaker_1: ” And what’s funny is, the next morning, he had called his oldest sister and he said, “I think I met the person I’m gonna marry.”

(0:17:44) speaker_2: Wow.

(0:17:45) speaker_1: So, so yes. To, to your point, I used to never believe that. I was like, “What do you mean you just know? Like, that is just made-up.

(0:17:53) speaker_1: ” But it really was like a sense of knowing, and part of it was, you know how when you’re single and you go on a date and then basically after the date you’re like, post-morteming it?

(0:18:02) speaker_1: You’re like, replaying the day thinking about all the things you should’ve said differently or done differently or whatever?

(0:18:07) speaker_1: Th- there was never, there was none of that with Tom. I just was super comfortable being myself.

(0:18:13) speaker_0: When you were dating and even, you know, through marriage, did you ever feel like your adoption, being adopted somehow played a role in your attachment style?

(0:18:26) speaker_0: Or if you have “attachment issues,” quote unquote?

(0:18:30) speaker_1: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Hmm, I haven’t really, um, I think spent a lot of time thinking about it in those kinds of terms.

(0:18:38) speaker_1: I mean, I will say this, thanks to a lot of therapy throughout my life, I feel like I had worked through a lot of my issues.

(0:18:46) speaker_1: Honestly, I think more of my issues came from the fact that my parents were divorced, and that my dad had left, and really wasn’t part of my life.

(0:18:56) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:18:56) speaker_1: And if there were some sort of issue around adoption, as I said, I’m 52, and so during all of my childhood, there wasn’t an awareness around adoption that there is now.

(0:19:06) speaker_1: Like you were expected to be adopted into a family, and then just be happy and grateful and feel lucky…

(0:19:12) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:19:12) speaker_1: And live happily ever after.

(0:19:14) speaker_1: And so, I mean, I credit my mother, and like I said, in my very close relationships with my grandfather and my uncles, to the fact that I didn’t feel like I had really an attachment issue per se.

(0:19:28) speaker_1: And what’s funny is, with adoption, like I just hadn’t spent a lot of time really deeply contemplating what it meant.

(0:19:34) speaker_1: And I have to admit, I am probably somebody that has been late to the, um, late to thinking very deeply about some of those issues and what they mean and the history.

(0:19:45) speaker_1: And it’s quite painful now for me to do that as an adult.

(0:19:49) speaker_1: And I think because I have a lot of perspective because I am older, now that I’m learning more and doing more, like I didn’t go to Korea until I met Tom, and really wasn’t interested in it, wasn’t interested in, like, seeking out an adoptee community.

(0:20:05) speaker_1: And interestingly, my mother was far more interested in, uh, going to Korea and finding a biological family.

(0:20:11) speaker_1: And she had always said to me that she had wanted us to go together ’cause she wanted to thank my adoptive mother. She wanted to find her and thank her.

(0:20:18) speaker_1: But for me, this is kind of something I’ve come to, I’d say, later in life, given my, given my age.

(0:20:25) speaker_1: But now that I am learning more about it, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and I have to compartmentalize it. Like I can’t…

(0:20:31) speaker_1: It’s just so overwhelming and it’s so painful sometimes, especially now that I’ve learned so much more about the Human Rights Commission and the investigations and Holt.

(0:20:40) speaker_1: Like I grew up thinking Holt was fantastic. The stories I was told, it’s just the Holts were like saints on Earth. They were amazing.

(0:20:49) speaker_1: And that was the narrative I believed my entire life until recently.

(0:20:54) speaker_1: And so that undoing a- a- and just really realizing what an industry it was, and still, I mean, it really…

(0:21:01) speaker_1: So it’s been, um, it’s been something that’s been really hard for me at times to think about for too long.

(0:21:10) speaker_0: Sort of the reeducation process.

(0:21:12) speaker_1: Yeah. Or I would just say the education process, ’cause I never got the first education. I mean, except for the, the narrative, the story.

(0:21:20) speaker_1: And so now it’s like, oh, there’s a whole other story, and there are whole other pieces of truth.

(0:21:25) speaker_0: Yeah. And growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, I mean, it was pretty… There were very dominant narratives around adoption and how we should feel.

(0:21:34) speaker_1: Yeah. And there was no way to find other narratives, right? ‘Cause this was the time before social media and the internet.

(0:21:40) speaker_0: Right.

(0:21:42) speaker_1: So you were really limited in terms of the information, even the people that you could seek to connect with.

(0:21:47) speaker_1: My mom had started the first Korean heritage camp for adopted Korean kids when I was, I think I must have been 10.

(0:21:53) speaker_1: And that was so fanta- Like I looked forward to that every summer. And kids would fly in from Colorado and Wyoming, like all the surrounding states.

(0:22:02) speaker_1: And then we would spend a week with first generation Korean American college students from Berkeley.

(0:22:08) speaker_1: There was an organization called KIM, Korean Identity Matters, and they would be our camp counselors.

(0:22:13) speaker_1: And it was just so much fun ’cause then we would have like a week of language and culture and folktales and history. And we loved it.

(0:22:22) speaker_1: And the best thing about it was it was a place to go for one week a year where I did not have to field questions about, “Who are your real parents?

(0:22:29) speaker_1: Do you know who they are?” You know, “How old were you when you were adopted?” All those questions-

(0:22:35) speaker_0: Were you given up? Yeah.

(0:22:36) speaker_1: … yes, I did not have to answer. It was so fantastic.

(0:22:40) speaker_0: You know, and you’re probably, uh, you’re a great person to ask this, ’cause I’ve always wondered, for years, you know, decades predominantly, it’s white adoptive parents who put on these culture camps.

(0:22:51) speaker_0: They’re usually the ones involved and-

(0:22:53) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:22:53) speaker_0: …

(0:22:53) speaker_0: the volunteers and for one week a year perhaps, all the adopted kids are together and they’re singing songs or l- learning about drawing and, um, you know, writing their name in Hangul or, or eating food.

(0:23:11) speaker_0: But is that just cosmetic culture? I mean, obviously, white adoptive parents, they know what they’re missing to instill cultural competency.

(0:23:21) speaker_0: But I know all of us, when we are around other Korean Americans, maybe not so much as an older person, but you know, as a younger person, that we feel really white.

(0:23:31) speaker_0: And so wondering, is there something that our white adoptive parents could have given us to help our identity growth and our cultural competency?

(0:23:39) speaker_0: Or is it just the fact that they can’t give us certain things?

(0:23:42) speaker_1: Oh, that’s a really great question. No, I mean, I, I think they definitely can. I think part of it is the time in which we were raised.

(0:23:52) speaker_1: The idea that a week is gonna be enough.

(0:23:54) speaker_1: And at these camps, they were not talking about issues of abandonment or the adoption industry or how lonely it is or the isolation of being the only in a white community, right?

(0:24:03) speaker_1: Like there’s nobody there trying to facilitate that kind of a conversation. Um, but I will tell you something interesting.

(0:24:09) speaker_1: Two of my really close friends both have adopted daughters from China…. and I’ve known one of them since the day she was adopted.

(0:24:16) speaker_1: I wrote the letter for my friends, a recommendation, and the other one I’ve known since she was four.

(0:24:22) speaker_1: It is just striking to me what a different world it is now to raise an adopted child from Asia.

(0:24:28) speaker_1: Both of my friends have done an amazing job with having those conversations early, with not being performative, but really wanting to provide their children with the right environment and the right climate to be who they are and to feel sad and to embrace their culture.

(0:24:47) speaker_1: It’s pretty impressive ’cause these girls didn’t just get a week. I mean, this is their life. They belong to an adoptee group. They get together often.

(0:24:56) speaker_1: Well, they’re both in college now, the young women are both in college, but when they were younger, they did a lot of stuff together as kids with the adoptive community.

(0:25:04) speaker_1: Like, they both had gone back to China when they were much younger, before they were teenagers.

(0:25:09) speaker_1: One of my friends, they went and they lived in China for three months, and Lucy went to a Chinese school for three months.

(0:25:17) speaker_1: Like, they have done a lot to really truly…

(0:25:21) speaker_1: T- to just make sure that they were really cognizant and welcoming and open about some of the issues that adoption brings. And they’re white.

(0:25:33) speaker_0: They’re, your friends are white?

(0:25:34) speaker_1: They, they are.

(0:25:35) speaker_0: Oh.

(0:25:35) speaker_1: For the one set of parents, they’re both white. The other set of parents, the mom is Chinese and the dad is white.

(0:25:41) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:25:42) speaker_1: But both of the girls are Chinese, and it has just been amazing to watch them, and I am just so happy ’cause I love them both a lot, and it’s just been such a joy for me to see them not as burdened as I was as a child.

(0:25:54) speaker_1: Now, here’s the interesting thing.

(0:25:55) speaker_1: Even though they are both raised in Seattle where there are a lot of Asians, it has been interesting and painful for me too to see that they still struggle with some of the things that I struggled with too.

(0:26:06) speaker_1: And so, part of me thinks no matter how educated your parents are or how much work they do, there’s some of that, really around fitting in.

(0:26:14) speaker_1: It- it’s just a struggle, around belonging.

(0:26:19) speaker_1: So it’s like you feel like you don’t fit in completely in white culture, but then you don’t fit in in Asian culture too, right? And that’s something…

(0:26:33) speaker_1: Because you were adopted, so you’re raised in a family without a lot of the traditions and the background.

(0:26:39) speaker_1: And I have run up against that a lot being married to Tom, who was raised in a traditionally Asian family, and not having been, and then marrying into that family.

(0:26:51) speaker_1: There’s just a lot that I didn’t grow up with, right? Because culturally, I’m American. I grew up American.

(0:26:57) speaker_0: Did he have similar struggles with fitting in or, and/or with you?

(0:27:01) speaker_1: Tom? No, Tom’s amazing. He is just amazing for a lot of reasons.

(0:27:05) speaker_1: But he has got to be one of the only people and probably the only Asian I know who did not, growing up, have, like, a lot of issues around self-esteem, and this is, I think, a big reason why.

(0:27:16) speaker_1: His parents did the reverse migration when Tom was 12.

(0:27:19) speaker_1: Tom’s parents had immigrated to the US before he was born, so he was born in Salt Lake, and then they had lived in some different places.

(0:27:27) speaker_1: My father-in-law was a mineral engineer, mining engineer, so the family moved around based on his jobs.

(0:27:33) speaker_1: Well, when Tom was 12, my father-in-law got a job offer from LG to come back and be a VP of something back with the business.

(0:27:41) speaker_0: So a relatively well-to-do family?

(0:27:44) speaker_1: Yeah, for… Well, at least for that period of time.

(0:27:47) speaker_1: So they moved him back to Korea, and, um, Tom basically went to high school, spent some of his formative years at Seoul Foreign.

(0:27:56) speaker_1: And so, he wasn’t like the other.

(0:27:59) speaker_1: I think being raised in Korea during those formative years, he was, you know, he was a Korean living in Korea, and that really shaped his worldview in such a positive way.

(0:28:12) speaker_1: Like, he thinks that Korean women are the most beautiful women on the face of the Earth. Like-

(0:28:17) speaker_0: We are. (laughs)

(0:28:19) speaker_1: Yes, we are. He’s certainly right there.

(0:28:21) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:28:21) speaker_1: But more importantly, he didn’t have that thing where he was like, “Oh, gosh, I wish I could change my nose or my face, or, you know, how I look to fit in.

(0:28:30) speaker_1: ” He didn’t ever have a feeling like he didn’t fit in, if that makes sense.

(0:28:33) speaker_0: Yeah, and just one little that I know about Seoul Foreign School that he also was an international Korean there.

(0:28:40) speaker_0: Most likely, other Koreans who had international experience and/or Korean families and/or other non-Korean families who were internationally living in Seoul.

(0:28:51) speaker_0:

(0:28:51) speaker_1: Exactly.

(0:28:52) speaker_0: He was probably in a very like-minded environment.

(0:28:55) speaker_1: Yeah, I, I look at the impact that I think that has had on his life.

(0:28:59) speaker_1: That was so impactful and so profound that our son is 14, about to start high school next year, and we actually asked our son, “Ethan, would you like to go to high school in Korea?

(0:29:08) speaker_1: ‘Cause we would consider moving to Korea for a period of time so that you can go to high school here,” and he doesn’t want to do that to one of his friends, but I, I think that-

(0:29:18) speaker_0: I want to do that. Will (laughs) you send me?

(0:29:20) speaker_1: Yeah, I’ll send you.

(0:29:21) speaker_0: Cool.

(0:29:21) speaker_1: I, I think the benefit of that, though, for a young person during those formative years-

(0:29:25) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:29:25) speaker_1: …

(0:29:25) speaker_1: just cannot be, just cannot be underestimated, and ’cause in my very small sort of data study, you know, my observation, that was just really such a game changer for my husband.

(0:29:35) speaker_1:

(0:29:35) speaker_0: I wonder if that experience that he had, also a lot of his formative years, he was in Utah, right? Or US?

(0:29:44) speaker_1: No, I think he moved from Utah, uh, pretty early on, so I don’t, I don’t think he was even two when he moved.

(0:29:50) speaker_1: So he was born there, but he didn’t stay there.

(0:29:53) speaker_0: But he’s not… Yeah, and he’s not Korean Korean ’cause he grew up some years, elementary years in this, uh, middle school.

(0:30:00) speaker_1: Yeah, and, and Tom was like a, a boy’s boy in that, like, he played all the sports. That’s how boys bond, right? To play sports.

(0:30:08) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:30:08) speaker_1: Yeah, he played, he played football, he played basketball. He played any sport he could find, and so-…

(0:30:15) speaker_1: he always had friends, and I think the experience for boys is different from girls, especially if you’re a boy who plays sports.

(0:30:21) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:30:22) speaker_1: And then he ended up moving back to Seoul, and that was… I mean, he had a really good time at SEUL Foreign.

(0:30:28) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:30:28) speaker_1: He’s still in touch with a lot of his friends from that time too.

(0:30:32) speaker_0: So when you started dating him, was he the first Korean American you had dated?

(0:30:37) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:30:39) speaker_0: So even I know, I’ve heard of the… I don’t know if you could say the dreaded mother-in-law. I mean, that’s kind of a trope for everyone, right?

(0:30:47) speaker_0: The dreaded mother-in-law. But I’ve always thought to myself growing up that, “Oh, I don’t think I want an Asian mother-in-law,” because they…

(0:30:55) speaker_0: you’ll be under their thumb, you know? (laughs) They will be really strict and really demanding. Um, were you afraid of that when things got serious?

(0:31:03) speaker_0: And is that just a stereotype? (laughs)

(0:31:05) speaker_1: Um, no. You know, it’s funny, I hadn’t really thought much of it, but a, a c- couple of things. My mother-in-law is passed now. She died three years ago.

(0:31:15) speaker_1: My father-in-law is still alive. He’s 92. There are few people I have more respect for than my in-laws.

(0:31:21) speaker_1: Like, if you knew what they have gone through, you know, Japanese occupation, starvation, some of the things that they did to survive.

(0:31:29) speaker_1: And both of my in-laws were from pretty wealthy families in Korea.

(0:31:33) speaker_1: And then being immigrants to this country, like, my father-in-law came over, came to Utah with literally 20 bucks in his pocket. That’s it.

(0:31:42) speaker_1: And he raised three kids, like hardest workers you’ll ever meet, and my mother-in-law was just really amazing. She… just super outgoing.

(0:31:50) speaker_1: Everybody loved her.

(0:31:51) speaker_1: So I wasn’t that afraid to meet them ’cause I think I hadn’t really thought about what that would mean, and I thought, “Oh, you know, parents like me.

(0:32:00) speaker_1: Like, this is not gonna be a problem.

(0:32:02) speaker_1: ” But I was not aware of a lot of the cultural issues that would be present, nor did I have an appreciation for, for the fact that being adopted would be a big issue.

(0:32:13) speaker_1: But when you think about it, you know, my in-laws were 70 when we met, and so they were really old school, very traditional Koreans.

(0:32:23) speaker_1: And when you think about the attitudes around adoption and what they had grown up believing in terms of the strength of the bloodline, it’s not hard to understand that because they grew up in a culture where adoption just wasn’t acceptable, they were of the perfect age.

(0:32:39) speaker_1: You know, they were 70, so that was the generation that had children and then gave them up for adoption ’cause it was just not…

(0:32:45) speaker_1: it was just so unacceptable to keep them.

(0:32:48) speaker_0: What did they think about adoptees?

(0:32:50) speaker_1: Well, I’ll tell you, my, my mother-in-law, um, was really just not very happy that I was gonna marry their only son. So Tom is the oldest son.

(0:33:01) speaker_1: I’ll say this, he’s the oldest son of the oldest son for 32 generations.

(0:33:05) speaker_0: Oh, wow. That’s a lot of pressure.

(0:33:07) speaker_1: It was a really big deal, and because he was the oldest son and he was almost 40, they really had been waiting for a long time for him to marry somebody, and it did not help that his previous girlfriend, long-term relationship, um, her mother had once been considered…

(0:33:21) speaker_1: She’s Japanese, had been considered to be as a wife for the imperial prince at the time of Japan.

(0:33:28) speaker_1: So, like, my mother-in-law was just not really very excited at all to have an orphan marrying-

(0:33:34) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:33:35) speaker_1: … their only son.

(0:33:35) speaker_0: And so even if the ex-girlfriend, her family had this, like, lineage that was, you know, very high class, but the fact that she was Japanese was okay?

(0:33:46) speaker_0:

(0:33:46) speaker_1: Yes. I, I asked about that. I was-

(0:33:48) speaker_0: Right.

(0:33:48) speaker_1: I was really shocked. Yeah, and I think because of the relationship with the royal family-

(0:33:54) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:33:54) speaker_1: … the ex-girlfriend’s family had been very close to the royal family, and so to go from that to me, I think, felt like a pretty big…

(0:34:03) speaker_1: you know, it was like, “Wow, that’s, that’s a big gap.”

(0:34:06) speaker_0: Was there kind of this fear of like, “Well, we don’t know who her-“

(0:34:09) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:34:09) speaker_0: “… Korean family is,” and-

(0:34:10) speaker_1: That’s exactly what it was, and-

(0:34:12) speaker_0: … could be disagreements or, you know?

(0:34:13) speaker_1: So it wasn’t personal ’cause they didn’t know me, but it was really like, “Oh, gosh, we don’t know who her family is. We don’t know who her…

(0:34:20) speaker_1: ” You know, who your father is and your father’s name is everything in Korea.

(0:34:24) speaker_1: A friend of mine said that even now when you apply for a job, it asks you for your father’s name.

(0:34:28) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:34:29) speaker_1: So to not have that, I think was a pretty big deal.

(0:34:35) speaker_0: That must have been kind of hurtful. I mean, when did you hear she had these kind of reservations?

(0:34:41) speaker_1: Um, I think Tom had told me early on, and so I had to do these things that I didn’t realize you had to do.

(0:34:47) speaker_1: (laughs) Like, when I first met his parents, I had to go out and buy very expensive gifts for them, and I had gotten some help.

(0:34:55) speaker_1: I have a couple of friends who are good friends of mine who are Korean American, and they are like my Korean whisperers.

(0:35:01) speaker_1: Like, they basically had told me, “Okay, here’s what you need to buy. Here’s where you need to go.

(0:35:06) speaker_1: ” The other thing is, I think that Korean culture, and this might be an overgeneralization for sure, but it seems to me that a lot of people are more brand conscious.

(0:35:14) speaker_1: You know, it’s really about appearances.

(0:35:16) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:35:17) speaker_1: Very appearance driven, and I am not like that at all, and so having to then think about that and the optics of everything was something that was new to me.

(0:35:24) speaker_1:

(0:35:24) speaker_0: Like the status and how things look-

(0:35:26) speaker_1: The status.

(0:35:26) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:35:27) speaker_1: Yeah, so like, when we got married, I had to buy handbags for all of my mother-in-law’s relatives, and there was a big thing about what brand they were.

(0:35:34) speaker_1:

(0:35:34) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:35:34) speaker_1: “Oh, that’s not a good enough brand.” I’m like, “Really?” Like, like a $500, $800 ba- like, that’s not…

(0:35:40) speaker_1: And then it was like, “Well, what’s the logo like?” It- there was more of that than I had really ever been kind of raised with or, or been around.

(0:35:49) speaker_1: And part of it was I grew up, I didn’t have any money. My mom was a single mom, and she was a schoolteacher.

(0:35:55) speaker_1: So I just was really unaware, and it was just not on my radar. Um, but Tom had said, “Well, you know…

(0:36:02) speaker_1: ” I don’t recall him coming to me and saying, “Oh, my mom, like, has a big issue with you.” But he had made comments.

(0:36:10) speaker_1: We kind of made a joke out of it because, you know, Tom’s very modern, so he’s like, “Oh, that’s an antiquated thought.” And here’s the funny thing.

(0:36:17) speaker_1: It never hit my radar that me being adopted would be an issue for e- a- any boyfriend’s parents…. even those who were Korean.

(0:36:26) speaker_1: I will say, the one thing I had going for me was I was a lawyer. And, you know, a lot of Koreans want their kids to be lawyers or doctors, and-

(0:36:34) speaker_0: Right.

(0:36:34) speaker_1: … my husband worked for a nonprofit his whole career, and then my two sisters-in-law are, like, artsy people. And so there are no lawyers or doctors.

(0:36:42) speaker_1: So part of the joke was, “Okay. Well, now your parents are gonna get the lawyer that they’d always wanted in the family.”

(0:36:48) speaker_0: So it was kind of a trade-off for them.

(0:36:49) speaker_1: (laughs)

(0:36:49) speaker_0: Adopted, but a lawyer.

(0:36:51) speaker_1: I think that helped somewhat, but it really was the fact that, for Koreans of that generation, knowing the bloodline, I think is really important.

(0:36:59) speaker_0: How did he take it?

(0:37:00) speaker_1: Oh, pretty early on, like, he’d known before.

(0:37:01) speaker_0: Oh, ’cause your name isn’t Kim or…

(0:37:01) speaker_1: Yeah. And I think both of my friends had said that to him, like, as in, “Oh, do you know Delight? She’s a Korean American adoptee.

(0:37:01) speaker_1: ” There are lot of Korean adoptees in Seattle. And Tom had actually dated an adoptee before me.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Okay.

(0:37:02) speaker_1: So it was, it was just, like, not a big deal for him beforehand. Mm-mm. No.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Did you ever… Other things, like, when you’re dating and obviously now marriage, that you feel White when you are with him?

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Or in certain scenarios where it kind of does-

(0:37:02) speaker_1: Mm.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: … come out where you feel-

(0:37:02) speaker_1: More White? Um, not really.

(0:37:02) speaker_1: I think the Whitest I have felt honestly, and this might surprise your audience, is that I actually have felt Whitest when I’m with Tom’s family (laughs) because-

(0:37:02) speaker_0: Right, yeah.

(0:37:02) speaker_1: … they’re all Asian. They all, like, were raised, you know, as, in Korea as Korean Americans.

(0:37:02) speaker_0: The- some things are spoken in Korean, right? Some things.

(0:37:03) speaker_1: Yes. Some things. But you know, okay, there are just rules you have to follow.

(0:37:03) speaker_1: Like, nobody told me the rules, and so early on, it was very difficult ’cause I broke a lot of rules.

(0:37:03) speaker_1: But as I would have to tell Tom repeatedly, I didn’t get the handbook.

(0:37:04) speaker_0: Right. Well, adoptees, right. We don’t… (laughs)

(0:37:04) speaker_1: Like, I didn’t get the handbook, so he needed to tell me these things. I’ll give you an example.

(0:37:04) speaker_1: The very first time I ate with his family, it was family style.

(0:37:04) speaker_1: Well, in my family, you know, it’s just me and my brother, but I’ve got five cousins that I’m pretty close to.

(0:37:04) speaker_1: And if we were all together and food was served, it was just a free-for-all, right? You got a plate, and you just went to town.

(0:37:07) speaker_1: Well, nobody told me that in Korean culture, you get your plate, and then you wait for the oldest male to start eating first.

(0:37:15) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:37:18) speaker_1: Like, nobody told-

(0:37:18) speaker_0: Not only did he get served first…

(0:37:26) speaker_1: Not only did he get served first, but then you’re supposed to wait to eat. But, like, nobody told me that. So the first time we eat dinner, I’m just…

(0:37:35) speaker_1: You know, I get my plate, and I’m starting to eat, and then somebody nudged me.

(0:37:36) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:37:36) speaker_1: And I’m like, and I’m, like, looking around, like, “Oh, okay.” So the joke for a long time was, like, I didn’t get the memo.

(0:37:58) speaker_1: “Tom, you need to tell me these things.”

(0:38:15) speaker_0: Right.

(0:38:15) speaker_0: And some of it is, you know, in his defense, some of it’s so ingrained he probably doesn’t even think about it that, “Oh, not everybody knows these customs.

(0:38:17) speaker_0: “

(0:38:17) speaker_1: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that, that’s a difference.

(0:38:19) speaker_1: You know, when you’re raised in a certain culture or in a family, things that are just, like, it’s like table stakes to you, right?

(0:38:26) speaker_1: You’re not even aware of it. You don’t think to mention them.

(0:38:26) speaker_1: Once he was aware of it, he did definitely w- went out of his way to say to me, “Okay, now when we do this, here’s going to be this.

(0:38:30) speaker_1: ” And it was really all about expectation. Here’s the expectation. And the thing about Thomas, he is not confrontational at all.

(0:38:35) speaker_1: I really had to listen to figure out, “Okay, this is what he’s telling me.

(0:38:41) speaker_1: ” He’s saying, “In this situation, here’s how I might be treated,” or, “Here’s, here’s what I should be prepared for.” We had a small…

(0:38:52) speaker_1: Well, we had a relatively small wedding. We got married in Vancouver, BC, and it was 75 people.

(0:38:57) speaker_1: And I wanted to elope, and he was like, “No, that’s not gonna be acceptable ’cause I’m the oldest son and my parents have waited all this time for me to marry.

(0:39:02) speaker_1: ” But they had wanted to invite, like, hundreds of people, like their friends and relatives, and I was like, “No, no, no.

(0:39:05) speaker_1: ” So the compromise was that we got married in Vancouver, had the wedding that the two of us really wanted, and then I agreed we went to Korea.

(0:39:07) speaker_1: Actually, this was my first time ever to Korea. We went to Korea and, like, 300 former people came to a reception.

(0:39:13) speaker_0: What? So your first time back was your wedding?

(0:39:15) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah.

(0:39:15) speaker_0: Wow.

(0:39:15) speaker_1: And it was, it was-

(0:39:15) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:39:15) speaker_1: … pretty amazing. And there were some really cool things to it. Like, I don’t know who, but some relative bought me a really expensive hanbok.

(0:40:52) speaker_0: Mm.

(0:40:52) speaker_1: Beautiful. It’s, like, silk and I’m looking for a time to wear that again. There’s gotta be some occasion I can pull this out ’cause it’s beautiful.

(0:40:59) speaker_1: It’s just so, so nice.

(0:41:00) speaker_1: But yeah, there are things, like, I don’t speak any Korean, so it was basically an hour of me standing there while these little old ladies came up and they’d just, like, look at me really closely, and then they would talk about me.

(0:41:11) speaker_1: They’d look at my face, and they’d talk, and then they’d, they’d go off. And, um, it was just different. It’s, like, things that wouldn’t happen…

(0:41:19) speaker_1: It just was something I had never experienced before.

(0:41:21) speaker_0: Did you feel like an outsider at your own wedding?

(0:41:24) speaker_1: Well, there I definitely was like… But, but I knew it going in. I knew that it was gonna be speeches in Korean.

(0:41:30) speaker_1: I knew that I would mostly not understand what was gonna be happening, and I, and I was fine with that.

(0:41:35) speaker_1: I mean, it was really important to Tom’s parents, and so I was like, “All right. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll go along with this.”

(0:41:40) speaker_0: It sounds like you gave a lot… You know, you made a lot of effort to sort of ingratiate yourself into the family.

(0:41:47) speaker_0: Did things turn around with your mother-in-law or when do you think… I mean, they probably had to approve of the marriage, right?

(0:41:55) speaker_1: Well, what’s interesting is, no. I mean, I…

(0:41:58) speaker_1: Tom was old enough that he actually told them, he’s like, “Look, I’m gonna marry her, and that’s just the way it is.

(0:42:06) speaker_1: ” Which now I know was a huge deal for him-

(0:42:09) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:42:09) speaker_1: … because it’s very unusual for children-

(0:42:12) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:42:12) speaker_1: … especially for the oldest son, I think in Korean culture in general, to, to buck their parents. You know, it, it did, it definitely evolved.

(0:42:21) speaker_1: There were some really challenging times, and I think having less to do with me personally…… and just the expectation.

(0:42:28) speaker_1: When my mother-in-law got married, it was pretty harsh. And my mother-in-law was amazing.

(0:42:32) speaker_1: She went on a hunger strike when she was a young woman, because she wanted to go to college. She wanted to be a teacher.

(0:42:38) speaker_1: So, she went on a hunger strike until her father relented and she was the oldest daughter.

(0:42:43) speaker_1: Finally, he relented, was able to go to school and teach, and so she was older by Korean standards, and she and my father-in-law, I think, were in an arranged marriage.

(0:42:52) speaker_1: When she married, she basically left her family home and then moved into my father-in-law’s home. He’s one of, like, I don’t know, 15 kids.

(0:42:59) speaker_1: Basically right away took over the cooking, the cleaning, and everything else.

(0:43:04) speaker_0: Y- I mean, become a property of his…

(0:43:06) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:43:07) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:43:07) speaker_1: That was how she started her married life, right?

(0:43:10) speaker_1: And so I think the expectation was, “Oh, when Tom marries, there’s gonna be a daughter-in-law who is going to, you know-“

(0:43:17) speaker_0: Cater to me. And I’m gonna want that same benefit, right?

(0:43:20) speaker_1: Yes. And the other thing that was challenging, with like, a lot of Asians, when their parents, and at the time, Tom’s parents were living in Korea.

(0:43:28) speaker_1: When they come to visit, they would come for four to six months. So-

(0:43:32) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(0:43:32) speaker_1: … we were newly married, and then here were my in-laws coming to live in my house for half the year.

(0:43:38) speaker_0: Oh, that must’ve been so nerve-wracking.

(0:43:40) speaker_1: It was really, really hard.

(0:43:41) speaker_1: But really, it was mostly hard because my mother-in-law didn’t speak super great English, so there was that issue too, in terms of just communication.

(0:43:51) speaker_1: But you know what? We did bond over food ’cause we both liked to eat, and it’s pretty funny ’cause my husband is a better cook than I am.

(0:43:58) speaker_1: And I like to cook, but she’s used to say to me, “Oh, women’s hands make better food.

(0:44:03) speaker_1: ” Like if men were cooking, the food would not be as good or it would ruin the food.

(0:44:07) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:44:08) speaker_1: So, she was an amazing cook, and luckily, she taught me to make a couple of things.

(0:44:12) speaker_1: I just, I, I regret to this day that we didn’t have her write down all of her recipes and put them in some book.

(0:44:18) speaker_0: But I think that’s the Korean way too, right? It’s just by, by hand.

(0:44:22) speaker_1: Oh, it’s by hand, and when she was first teaching me, she’d be like, “And then you put this…” I go, “Well, how much of that is there?

(0:44:28) speaker_1: ” “Well, you know, just enough.” I was like, “Well, h- like, how much is…” Like, there was no, you know, just enough.

(0:44:34) speaker_0: Just the measurements. Yeah. Right.

(0:44:36) speaker_1: So, it did definitely improve. But it, it was hard.

(0:44:39) speaker_1: I think another thing that’s hard, if you’re an adoptee and you marry into a Korean family, you look like they do.

(0:44:45) speaker_1: So it’s really hard for them to remember that you’re not…

(0:44:48) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:44:48) speaker_1: That you’re not culturally Korean. That you are human American. And I was older. And the other thing that was hard for her too was that I do have a career.

(0:44:56) speaker_1:

(0:44:56) speaker_0: You had your own money.

(0:44:57) speaker_1: I had my own money. I had a house. I had a whole le- I had friends. I had this whole life, this full life of independence before I met Tom.

(0:45:04) speaker_1: So when we married, it was really a partnership.

(0:45:07) speaker_1: And I think from my mother-in-law, there was expectation that any wife of a Korean man would be doing all the cooking, the cleaning, and the laundry.

(0:45:15) speaker_1: But my mother-in-law was truly lovely and I think she really wanted to have a close relationship with me.

(0:45:21) speaker_1: You know, she used to give me gifts, and then she once told me that she watched K-dramas to figure out how it is with daughter-in-laws, which I thought was really charming.

(0:45:29) speaker_1: So, I do, I really think that she had wanted us to be close. And then I had my son 14 years ago, and boy, that was like I hung the moon because now…

(0:45:39) speaker_1:

(0:45:39) speaker_0: You had a son, right?

(0:45:40) speaker_1: The oldest son of the oldest son now lives on for the 33rd generation. (laughs)

(0:45:43) speaker_0: (laughs)

(0:45:45) speaker_1: And she just was the most amazing grandmother. I mean, she, she really was. And, and my mother-in-law was like super generous, very giving, very thoughtful.

(0:45:53) speaker_1: Just a really, a really kind human being. You know, I just think the expectation of who her son would marry…

(0:46:00) speaker_1: And then too, I think it might’ve been easier for me if I’d been Caucasian because at least she wouldn’t look at me and think, “Oh, that’s a Korean person.

(0:46:09) speaker_1: She should know all these things.”

(0:46:11) speaker_0: You know, that’s, that’s the thing, right? I noticed when I lived in Korea, that if you’re white, you basically get a white pass, you know? You can…

(0:46:20) speaker_0:

(0:46:20) speaker_1: Yes.

(0:46:21) speaker_0: You can butcher the language. You can, you know, ignore all social laws and cultural norms and- (laughs)

(0:46:28) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:28) speaker_0: … do what you want, and you basically get a pass. Like, oh, they’re, you know.

(0:46:32) speaker_0: I know there’s a double-edged sword because then some people feel like, um, they’re never taken seriously.

(0:46:37) speaker_0: But on the other hand, you know, having a Korean face and being Korean, that there’s these expectations still, even if they know you’re adopted, that you’ll do things correctly.

(0:46:46) speaker_0: And if you don’t, there’s like wrath.

(0:46:47) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:46:48) speaker_0: Because they’ll upset the laws of, you know, gravity or something. (laughs)

(0:46:52) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah.

(0:46:53) speaker_1: And I will say too, much to my in-laws’ credit, my father had worked in the business world for a long time, so he really understood what it was like to work in different cultures.

(0:47:01) speaker_1: And he’d worked in America for a long time.

(0:47:04) speaker_1: So, he understood some of the subtleties and the differences and could really work i- in different cultures and environments just fine.

(0:47:12) speaker_1: And I will say, to my mother-in-law’s credit, I think she recognized that the world was changing and evolving, but I think for anybody who was older, I- it’s a hard thing, right?

(0:47:22) speaker_1: Like, I think about every older generation.

(0:47:25) speaker_1: Some of the changes that come are foreign and a little inexplicable to them, and I think for my mother-in-law, just like everybody else, there was some of that.

(0:47:35) speaker_1: But I do feel like she was like, “Well, this is just the way of, you know, times have changed, and this is just how it is now.

(0:47:42) speaker_1: ” I think she definitely became more accepting over time. I think too when she figured out I was gonna be sticking around for a while too.

(0:47:50) speaker_1: But, um, it helped.

(0:47:52) speaker_0: I think that alone, that alone probably showed her that times are changing when her eldest son, name bearer, carrying on the family line, is, is going to marry who he wants.

(0:48:02) speaker_0:

(0:48:02) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah, and, and you know, there’s some other funny stories too.

(0:48:05) speaker_1: Like, you know, my in-laws are very traditional, so when they found out we were having a boy, they, ’cause in traditional Korean families, the grandparents get to name the child.

(0:48:13) speaker_1: So they sent us an envelope. We get this thing in the mail one day and it’s like, “Oh, here, here’s going to be your son’s name.

(0:48:19) speaker_1: ” And we were both like, “Oh, I don’t think so.” Like… (laughs)

(0:48:23) speaker_0: Yeah.

(0:48:23) speaker_1: Like that’s not how it, how it’s going to be. And they were trying to be helpful, I think, and it’s just the way it had traditionally been done, you know?

(0:48:31) speaker_1: It’s the oldest son’s first son. That’s just something that was done. But they were great. Like they’d never challenge us. They were like, “Oh, okay.

(0:48:37) speaker_1: ” You know?

(0:48:38) speaker_0: You just… How did you let them know it, it wasn’t gonna be that way?

(0:48:42) speaker_1: Well, like I said, my husband’s not really confrontational, especially with his parents.

(0:48:45) speaker_1: It’s not like we called them up and was like, “Oh, just so you know, that’s not gonna be his name.” We got it.

(0:48:50) speaker_1: I don’t think we really said anything about it, and then I think at some point, before Ethan was born, we had said, “Yeah, you know, I don’t think we’re gonna go with that.

(0:48:58) speaker_1: We’re gonna go with something else.” But Ethan has a Korean… He has an, a American middle name, and he has a Korean middle name that we picked.

(0:49:05) speaker_1: I mean, most importantly, he’s got my husband’s last name. And to be honest with you, they were just thrilled that they were having a…

(0:49:12) speaker_1: Ethan’s their third grandchild and last grandchild, so I think they were just over the moon to be having another grandchild, and that the oldest son was gonna have a son.

(0:49:20) speaker_1:

(0:49:20) speaker_0: Do you think, you know, with your mother-in-law, do you think she accepted you?

(0:49:26) speaker_1: I do. Yeah. I, I do.

(0:49:29) speaker_0: Can you remember when that happened?

(0:49:31) speaker_1: No. I think it just came over time. I mean, first of all, we’ve been married for 14 years, so we started our family just a few years after we were married.

(0:49:37) speaker_1: Our son’s 14 now. You know, it was just the beginning that was a little bit hard.

(0:49:42) speaker_1: Um, especially after we had Ethan, I think she was like, “Okay, this is Tom’s family now.

(0:49:48) speaker_1: ” And then I became not the wife of her son but the mother of her grandson. You know what I mean? So it was a different… It was a different kind of thing.

(0:49:56) speaker_1:

(0:49:56) speaker_0: It’s always through the men, your relationship to the men.

(0:49:58) speaker_1: Yeah, my relationship to the men.

(0:49:59) speaker_0: That’s very Asian, Korean.

(0:50:01) speaker_1: Yeah. And the funny thing is, I, I think a lot of American mother-in-laws, like, it’s…

(0:50:05) speaker_1: I don’t think racial culture has anything to do with it, but, you know, she’s very spoiling of all the grandchildren.

(0:50:12) speaker_1: And, um, I laugh because my son’s first experience with a Haagen-Dazs bar, he wasn’t even two.

(0:50:17) speaker_1: We came back from somewhere, and my kid’s, like, chowing down on one of those big full-sized Haagen-Dazs bars. (laughs) And he… I was like, “Oh, my gosh.

(0:50:25) speaker_1: That’s a lot of ice cream and sugar for a little kid.” And my mother-in-law was just like, “Oh,” you know, “I’m the grandma.”

(0:50:30) speaker_0: Maybe that’s universal.

(0:50:32) speaker_1: It’s totally universal. I’ve heard that story time and time again.

(0:50:36) speaker_1: So yeah, I’m really very quite sad that she’s gone, and, um, and the hard thing was she died right after…

(0:50:42) speaker_1: just as things were opening up for COVID, and we were gonna go visit the next month. So we hadn’t seen them in… What was that? A travel ban. Two years?

(0:50:51) speaker_1: Three years? I can’t remember now. But I do miss her. She was super outgoing, and, and she always just wanted to make things better for people.

(0:50:59) speaker_1: This is the thing, too.

(0:51:00) speaker_1: My mother-in-law, e- every piece of advice she gave me or things that she had thought I should be doing, they were truly sincerely to make my life better and her son’s life better.

(0:51:11) speaker_1: That was the motivation.

(0:51:13) speaker_0: Was that maybe how she showed love or affections is by being kind of strict or having… setting these expectations?

(0:51:21) speaker_1: I think that for her, showing love… You know, for a lot of older Korean people that generation, they weren’t saying, “I love you.

(0:51:27) speaker_1: ” They were doing things for you, right? So they were trying to help you. And I think part of it was cultural, but part of it was a generational issue.

(0:51:36) speaker_1: It’s like, you know, when you’re 35, almost 40, like, you don’t really need help.

(0:51:40) speaker_1: You’ve got a lot of your life sort of figured out in terms of how to just subsist from a day-to-day.

(0:51:45) speaker_1: But, you know, the thing she really showed her love through cooking, and I was always so touched ’cause my in-laws ended up moving to California, uh, I don’t know how soon after we were married, but they’d lived in California for a while.

(0:51:58) speaker_1: And sometimes Tom would go and visit without me, and my mother-in-law, without fail, would send home a huge thing of kimbap or my favorite things.

(0:52:08) speaker_1: And when she would come to visit, if I had a early meeting or I had to leave early, she would get up early to make whatever my favorite dish was and then pack it up for me to take to work.

(0:52:17) speaker_1:

(0:52:18) speaker_0: Hmm.

(0:52:19) speaker_1: So I think food was love for her.

(0:52:22) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:52:22) speaker_1: And, and I luckily was mature enough and old enough to understand that.

(0:52:26) speaker_0: (instrumental music) Did you ever think of her as, like, a proxy for your Korean mom?

(0:52:38) speaker_1: No, not really. Um, I didn’t. And you know what part of it is?

(0:52:42) speaker_1: Is part of it is I didn’t really think about my Korean mom or think about finding a Korean mom for a really long time.

(0:52:49) speaker_1: And I’ll tell you the first time that it really sort of hit me and hit me, like, over the head, was after I had Ethan. And I…

(0:52:56) speaker_1: After he was born, I was still in the hospital, and I remember just thinking, “Oh, my God.

(0:53:01) speaker_1: If I ever had to give him up, like, I would at least want to know he was okay.” So at that-

(0:53:08) speaker_0: Or even that… I’ve heard people say, like, they can’t… When they’re holding their child at the age that they were given up, that they can’t imagine.

(0:53:17) speaker_0:

(0:53:17) speaker_1: Oh, I can’t… No, and that’s the other thing I thought, too. I thought, “There’s no way I would be strong enough to let this baby go.

(0:53:23) speaker_1: ” Like, you know, I don’t know if you remember, but during Sarajevo, there were some really moving pictures of women holding their toddlers and their babies out for soldiers to t- There was, like, one last bus out, and you saw women just trying to catapult their children onto the bus.

(0:53:39) speaker_1:

(0:53:40) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(0:53:41) speaker_1: Try- trying to find people to take, take their kids.

(0:53:43) speaker_0: Take their kids.

(0:53:43) speaker_1: And I just thought to myself, “Oh my God. If I were in that situation, would I have the courage and the faith and the selflessness to do that?

(0:53:53) speaker_1: ” ‘Cause I do think, I, I… and I truly think this, that for somebody to have given up a child, it is an act of desperation and selflessness, you know?

(0:54:02) speaker_1: And, and I should say, too, my career experiences have also shaped my, my feelings about this because early in my career, I did child abuse and neglect prosecution, and so my cases involved kids who had been severely abused and neglected, and then I would go in and terminate the rights for the most severe cases.

(0:54:21) speaker_1: And so what I saw were a lot of children who were in situations where it would’ve been a mercy to have had them adopted out, you know, if those parents had given those children up for adoption.

(0:54:34) speaker_1: So when I had Ethan, yes, I, I thought, “Oh, I can’t imagine how desperate…” and, “I’m not sure I could… what I would do in that moment.

(0:54:41) speaker_1: ” But I also thought, “Gosh, maybe I should try to find my biological mother just so I can let her know I’m okay.”

(0:54:51) speaker_0: That’s really…

(0:54:52) speaker_0: I, I, I’m just really struck by the fact that in, in your line of work, that you actually saw, and this is maybe before you were, um, hearing about or learning about counter-narratives, but you actually saw where adoption was in the best interest of a child, or it was a safer environment for the child, or, uh, w- what have you, better environment.

(0:55:16) speaker_0:

(0:55:16) speaker_1: Yeah. You know, it’s really interesting, ’cause I didn’t really think about this until we’re talking now, but I went to law school to be a child advocate.

(0:55:22) speaker_1: M- my mom was a teacher for a school in a really poor part of town, and she was more than a teacher.

(0:55:27) speaker_1: She was like a teacher, a social worker, a mentor, a mom. She held all those roles.

(0:55:32) speaker_1: And when I went to law school, I was like, “Oh, wow, I really want to do something on behalf of kids. I want to basically work on behalf of children.

(0:55:40) speaker_1: ” And so even starting in law school, I had worked for, um, the attorney general’s office then in Utah doing some of the same work that I then went on to do in Washington.

(0:55:50) speaker_1: After I graduated from law school, I clerked for a family court judge, and so my interest in children and children’s welfare and trying to make things better, the one thing that really drove me for that was, like, I wanna be a voice for those that have no voice.

(0:56:05) speaker_1: I knew I wanted to be an advocate for… And there’s nobody more vulnerable than a child, and I say this now. It’s true.

(0:56:12) speaker_1: It’s like, we as a society, we care about kids if we know them, and we love them, but we as a society don’t care about, quote, “kids,” quote, that aren’t ours.

(0:56:21) speaker_1: You know, if you look at the child poverty rate in this country, if you look at the violence, if you, if you look at the hunger, like, th- we c- we cannot say that we are a society that cares about kids.

(0:56:33) speaker_1: And so I had wanted to go and do something to try to make that better.

(0:56:36) speaker_0: Oh, okay. Okay. When did you start…

(0:56:39) speaker_0: I mean, I’ve seen you now at a few adoption fly-ins and (laughs) around the country that happen, conferences and what have you.

(0:56:48) speaker_0: When did you start becoming interested in, you said about five years ago? In, in your adoptee self?

(0:56:56) speaker_1: Yeah. I mean, a- and part of it has been a function of just time and energy.

(0:57:01) speaker_1: I’m a working mom, and there’s just not been a lot of mental space with having a toddler or small child to really think about anything except the day before you.

(0:57:10) speaker_1: But a weird thing happened, and that is the, um, the gathering in Seoul last summer. Was that only last summer? Yes. Last summer.

(0:57:19) speaker_0: Summer, yeah.

(0:57:20) speaker_1: I started hearing about that.

(0:57:22) speaker_0: That’s where I met you, right?

(0:57:24) speaker_1: That’s where we met, yeah.

(0:57:25) speaker_0: Oh.

(0:57:25) speaker_1: And I really wanted to go. Like, I had never been to a gathering.

(0:57:28) speaker_1: My, my brother, so my brother is 18 months younger, and he’s been far more involved in the adoptive community than I’ve ever been.

(0:57:35) speaker_1: Like, whenever he’s moved, he’s found the adoptive, Korean adoptees and th- like, those have become his people.

(0:57:40) speaker_1: So he’d been to, like, two or three of these, and I just was never interested, and then I had a really strong desire.

(0:57:48) speaker_1: I think it was maybe I’d found out about, like, I don’t know, seven or eight months before it happened, and I told my husband, I said, “Oh.

(0:57:54) speaker_1: ” I said, “You know what?” I said, “I really wanna go to this conference.” I go, “I don’t know why.”

(0:57:59) speaker_0: Was he kinda surprised? Like, why?

(0:58:00) speaker_1: I, I think he was.

(0:58:01) speaker_1: I mean, but he’s a super chill, go-with-the-flow kind of a person, and he’s always been super supportive of any place that my adoption has taken me.

(0:58:09) speaker_1: When I went to Korea the very first time, when I got married there, the reception, we went to Holt.

(0:58:15) speaker_1: That was my first visit to Holt, and he, and he came with me.

(0:58:18) speaker_0: A- at your wedding?

(0:58:20) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah. So we’d gone for the wedding. Then we stayed for, I can’t remember, another week or two.

(0:58:24) speaker_1: And I had really wanted to go to Holt, so I made an appointment, had gone to Holt to look at my file.

(0:58:28) speaker_1: And so Thomas just been like, “Okay, you know, whatever you wanna do, I’m happy to support you.

(0:58:33) speaker_1: ” And here’s the, here’s another big advantage (laughs) if you’re gonna marry a Korean American. They love going to Korea. So-

(0:58:39) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(0:58:40) speaker_1: … anytime I’m like, “Let’s go to Korea. Let’s put our vacation budget and our time going to Korea,” it’s never a debate. It’s like, “All right.

(0:58:47) speaker_1: That sounds great. Let’s go. When should we go?” And so when I had said to him, “Oh, I really wanna go to this conference,” he was like, “Okay.

(0:58:55) speaker_1: ” But for me it was weird, ’cause I just for the very first time had had this really strong desire, like, “Oh, I really wanna go.

(0:59:01) speaker_1: ” And it was so great for me, ’cause I learned a lot that I just had no…

(0:59:05) speaker_1: It wasn’t even on my radar, and it was really important for me to know, ’cause it was the truth or closer to the truth than, than a lot of what I had learned.

(0:59:13) speaker_1: But, you know, going to those, it’s funny, ’cause I don’t really feel like I fit in.

(0:59:17) speaker_1: So it’s a little bit of a hard thing for me, and I think maybe it’s ’cause it was clear to me, oh, like, a lot of these people have known each other for a long time.

(0:59:23) speaker_1: They’ve been friends for a long time. Like, they got together-

(0:59:25) speaker_0: That’s true. That’s true.

(0:59:26) speaker_1: … they got together years ago. So I do feel like a little bit of a, a newcomer.

(0:59:31) speaker_1: The other thing that I found really hard, um, especially with the conference in Chicago. I have found that I just physically cannot take, like…

(0:59:41) speaker_1: It’s just almost too much for me to process. O- o- once I’ve had enou- like, I’m like, “Oh, my God. I just cannot. I, I, I can’t talk about this anymore.

(0:59:49) speaker_1: I can’t just be in this environment anymore.”

(0:59:51) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(0:59:51) speaker_1: It’s really hard for me.

(0:59:52) speaker_0: They really pack in, sometimes, the, the da- and especially that conference was very, um, you know, very scholarly.

(0:59:59) speaker_1: Yeah.

(0:59:59) speaker_0: And so you got some people who were presenting research and books and, and so it can be really academic too, and it’s…

(1:00:08) speaker_1: Yeah. That might have been what it was. It’s like, “Oh, my God. This is just too… This is just too much for me.

(1:00:14) speaker_1: ” Uh, you know, whereas at least with the gathering, it’s like, there were fun things and art. I was really impressed at how much art and how creative…

(1:00:23) speaker_1: Like, I don’t have any statistics, but I would bet the adoptee community, I bet the percentage of artists is far higher than that of the general population.

(1:00:31) speaker_1: It seems to be a way a lot of people are working through, have worked through a lot of their feelings and some of their issues around adoption.

(1:00:37) speaker_0: It’s really interesting to hear your perspective, and I think it’s probably right on.

(1:00:41) speaker_0: You know, when you’re coming into the community later in life, I mean, I was in my mid-40s, so I mean, I’m right there with you too, that people have known each other for many years and have those relationships, and, and a lot of times when there’s these fly-in events, you know, I don’t really……

(1:01:00) speaker_0: blame folks for wanting to…

(1:01:01) speaker_0: They have a limited amount of time, they haven’t seen these people in many years or, you know, in a long time, and so they wanna hang out together kind of alone, and it’s, sometimes it’s very hard to make time for new people.

(1:01:13) speaker_0:

(1:01:13) speaker_1: Yes, exactly. That is exactly the feeling that I got. I was like, “Oh, people all already have their friends.

(1:01:20) speaker_1: ” And so, yes, yes, I certainly felt like that.

(1:01:24) speaker_0: And so did you go alone? When you went to IKAA, were you alone or did Tom go with you?

(1:01:29) speaker_1: Tom and Ethan came with me.

(1:01:31) speaker_0: Okay.

(1:01:31) speaker_1: But they didn’t come to any-

(1:01:33) speaker_0: Right.

(1:01:33) speaker_1: … of the events.

(1:01:34) speaker_1: And, um, oh, they, they did come, because I had given a presentation, um, around privacy and DNA testing, and so both of them came to that just for support, which I thought was very sweet.

(1:01:48) speaker_1: But they’re great.

(1:01:49) speaker_1: I think they would come if, if they thought it was important to me, but in some ways, I just feel like that journey is one you have to take on your own.

(1:01:59) speaker_1:

(1:02:00) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:02:01) speaker_1: You know? And so it’s not like I was like, “Oh, Tom, I need you to come with me.”

(1:02:05) speaker_0: Did it feel like it was two worlds? You went into one world and then back into your other world? (laughs)

(1:02:12) speaker_1: A little bit. Yeah, there was some of that. I mean, it still is mind-boggling to me, right?

(1:02:16) speaker_1: You go to that conference, and it’s like, “Oh my God, there are all these people,” especially when they did the breakout of people who were the same age, I was just struck by how similar our experiences were, even though we had been raised in completely different countries and cultures.

(1:02:30) speaker_1: I was like, “Oh my God, this is truly a universal experience.

(1:02:34) speaker_1: ” So for me, it was kind of mind-blowing to be literally in a room, or multiple rooms of people, who had very similar experiences, and then to walk 10 minutes to my hotel and it’s like, “Wow, now I’m in a totally different world.

(1:02:48) speaker_1: ” But I think for adoptees, we are really adept at maneuvering and stepping between all those worlds, stepping in and out.

(1:02:57) speaker_0: Yeah, for sure. I, I kinda wonder if maybe the next iterations, you know, as we’re all, we’re getting older, is if-

(1:03:06) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:03:06) speaker_0: … the fly-ins are 45 plus (laughs) adoptee meetups. You know, it’s by age group, because I don’t know-

(1:03:14) speaker_1: I don’t know.

(1:03:14) speaker_0: … I feel like I would enjoy… I mean, people by far really love the breakout sessions, because-

(1:03:21) speaker_1: That’s a really good idea, yeah.

(1:03:22) speaker_0: It’s the same peer group and age, and people are, you know, grew up in the same generations, and so are dealing with, you know, have had similar experiences, and, you know, just maybe spending more time with people (laughs) that are…

(1:03:37) speaker_0:

(1:03:37) speaker_1: Of the same age.

(1:03:38) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:38) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:03:39) speaker_1: Oh, you know, that’s really interesting, ’cause obviously with the generation gap, like, adoptees in their 30s had a totally different experience than we did.

(1:03:47) speaker_1:

(1:03:47) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:48) speaker_1: You know?

(1:03:48) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:03:49) speaker_1: And, and adoptees in their 20s, oh my God, like they hit the jackpot.

(1:03:53) speaker_0: When we talk about the scarcity, we’re the only ones, or the only, you know-

(1:03:56) speaker_1: (laughs)

(1:03:57) speaker_0: … and that we didn’t see Asian people on TV, or in-

(1:04:01) speaker_1: No.

(1:04:01) speaker_0: … Target ads or anything.

(1:04:02) speaker_1: No.

(1:04:02) speaker_0: You know, it’s like we didn’t see ourselves anywhere. That’s a concept where younger people today maybe just-

(1:04:08) speaker_1: No, they don’t… They don’t under-

(1:04:10) speaker_0: They don’t get it. They can hear it. Oh, yeah. Okay. It was-

(1:04:12) speaker_1: Yeah. I mean-

(1:04:13) speaker_0: It really was a different time.

(1:04:16) speaker_1: I remember the first time I went to Korea, I was standing in the line, and we took Korean Airlines, and I had to call my friend Michelle, and she laughs to this day.

(1:04:24) speaker_1: I called her, I was like, “Oh my God, Michelle, I’m in this line and everybody’s Korean. I’ve never seen this in my entire life.” And-

(1:04:32) speaker_0: How did that make you feel?

(1:04:33) speaker_1: And it was crazy. I mean, I was really, I just was kind of in disbelief.

(1:04:37) speaker_1: And then, and then we get to Korea, and my mother-in-law takes me to get my hair cut.

(1:04:41) speaker_1: And I’m waiting for my turn, and I pick up the magazine, and I’ll tell you what, it was mind-blowing, because there were ads of people who looked just like me that were, like, buying refrigerators, they were buying, like, laundry soap.

(1:04:55) speaker_1: So, to your point, like, just seeing Koreans or Asians doing normal things-

(1:05:00) speaker_0: Right.

(1:05:01) speaker_1: … was completely… I just could not believe it, you know? I, I mean, it was one of the most shocking… I was like, “Holy cow, it’s, like, so fantastic.

(1:05:11) speaker_1: ” These are just, like, you can just, like, normal people having just, living life.

(1:05:14) speaker_0: I think for me, it kind of hit home too when, this must have been, yeah, when I was living in Korea, I suppose, that, you know, you go to a jjimjilbang, one of the Korean bathhouses, and there you see naked women of all ages, and you see their body shapes, and you see, like, grandmother, older women, you know, women in their 80s that have a body like yours, but you could imagine, you know, it’s a little more saggy, it’s, you know, older body.

(1:05:44) speaker_0: And I just marveled at it, because as an adoptee and growing up in a white household and around white people mostly, like, I never saw, you know?

(1:05:56) speaker_1: You never saw that.

(1:05:58) speaker_0: Right, other older, you know, Asian, much l- less Korean-

(1:06:03) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:06:03) speaker_0: … bodies, people.

(1:06:05) speaker_1: I, I, yes, I, you know, I, I was in Vancouver, BC, it must have been maybe three years ago, and I take a picture…

(1:06:12) speaker_1: I was blown away because I was in a bookstore, and all the major magazine covers had an Asian model on it. How… And I-

(1:06:21) speaker_0: Oh, wow.

(1:06:21) speaker_1: I immediately took a picture, and I texted the mothers of my two adoptee friends, and I was like, “Oh my God, I would have killed to have seen this when I was growing up as a kid.

(1:06:29) speaker_1: ” You know? Because not only were you not considered attractive, you were just, like, you just, you know, you weren’t anywhere.

(1:06:39) speaker_1: Like, you were in M*A*S*H, like, everything I knew about Korea was from M*A*S*H. Remember that TV show?

(1:06:44) speaker_0: Mm, mm-hmm.

(1:06:45) speaker_1: And… ‘Cause there just was no, there was just no representation.

(1:06:49) speaker_1: And so I just love that, like, now, there are all these movies, and there are models-

(1:06:54) speaker_0: Well, it’s a, it’s a show based in Korea centered on white people, so-

(1:06:57) speaker_1: Ex- exactly, and, and the Koreans are like-

(1:07:00) speaker_0: … that’s

(1:07:00) speaker_3: Adopted in a nutshell.

(1:07:01) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah, e- exactly. The other thing I’ll say is the, the whole question around, like-… getting involved in the Korean community and adoption.

(1:07:10) speaker_1: I will say, an unexpected benefit for me of having married a Korean American is, like, I wonder if…

(1:07:19) speaker_1: I mean, because Thomas is so proud to be Korean, and like, culturally, uh, I just wonder if I had married…

(1:07:26) speaker_1: So I think being married to him has made it easier for me to be curious, has actually just made me more curious about my own background, about wanting to learn more about my culture.

(1:07:36) speaker_1: I, sometimes I think, “Gosh, if I’d married somebody who was Caucasian, would I be as invested or would I be as curious?

(1:07:43) speaker_1: ” Especially, if I then had a child who was half white, who looked more white than Asian, ’cause I- I know people who have that scenario, and they just sort of, their Asianness just sort of isn’t really…

(1:07:54) speaker_1: It’s just not something that’s kind of at the forefront of their lives.

(1:07:58) speaker_0: Not something that’s maybe, uh, forefront or maybe not that proud of, or it’s not that important?

(1:08:06) speaker_1: Well, I think, here’s the thing.

(1:08:08) speaker_1: I think that if you are a Korean or an Asian, an Asian woman, and you marry somebody who’s white and then you have a child, and if that child, especially if they have a lot more sort of Caucasian-looking features, I think that the fact of your Asianness becomes more buried.

(1:08:27) speaker_1:

(1:08:28) speaker_0: Mm. Mm-hmm.

(1:08:28) speaker_1: And if you’re in a family of three or four, you’re gonna be the minority person out as the only Asian and as the adoptee.

(1:08:35) speaker_0: Right. And I- I also wonder if like… Do you know Youngmi Mayor? She’s a podcaster, mixed race.

(1:08:41) speaker_1: No.

(1:08:42) speaker_0: I think her dad was white. And- and so you do see kids of mixed race who look more white, um-

(1:08:51) speaker_1: Yes.

(1:08:51) speaker_0: … or who can pass for white, that sometimes they’re a little bit more militant in their Asian identity.

(1:08:59) speaker_1: Oh, really? That’s pretty interesting. Militant like, “Oh, I really am Asian even though I might not look it”?

(1:09:07) speaker_0: Yes.

(1:09:07) speaker_1: Oh.

(1:09:07) speaker_0: Like, because people don’t identify them as Asian, but they identify as Asian and they have to work harder at it.

(1:09:15) speaker_1: That’s… That is very interesting, ’cause I can see it going both ways, right?

(1:09:19) speaker_1: Either you’re like, “Oh, I’m super proud of it,” or like, “That’s just too much. I’m just gonna, you know, be- be white.” Oh, that’s really interesting.

(1:09:28) speaker_1:

(1:09:29) speaker_0: Do you… I would check her out.

(1:09:31) speaker_1: Yeah.

(1:09:31) speaker_0: Do you, um… So Ethan’s a teenager, right?

(1:09:34) speaker_1: Yes, he’s 14.

(1:09:36) speaker_0: Has he talked about or shown any interest in having you search or wanting to know his… You know, finding Korean relatives as being…

(1:09:46) speaker_0: You know, I don’t know if he thinks of himself as someone impacted by adoption.

(1:09:52) speaker_1: I don’t think he really does. I mean, part of it is, you know, he’s a teenager.

(1:09:57) speaker_0: Right.

(1:09:57) speaker_1: And look, the teenagers are just all about themselves.

(1:10:00) speaker_0: Right. We were in our 40s before we… (laughs)

(1:10:03) speaker_1: Yeah. Yeah. But I- I am very open with him, and I’ll talk about things that make me sad or things that I wonder about.

(1:10:09) speaker_1: And I’ve told him, I’m like, “Oh, you know, if I had to give you up, that would be the worst thing, and it’d be devastating in itself for my mom, you know, my biological mother, to do that.

(1:10:20) speaker_1: ” So we talk about it a lot. And I went back to Holt four or five years ago, so I’ve been twice, and I took him with me.

(1:10:27) speaker_1: So I took him and Tom both with me. And I- and I had wanted to… It was very important for me for Ethan to go with me to Holt.

(1:10:33) speaker_0: Oh, wow. Okay.

(1:10:34) speaker_1: Just because it is part of my story, you know? And I just want him to know.

(1:10:38) speaker_1: The other really great thing about living in Seattle and in this time, it’s like his best friend is adopted. She’s Caucasian. She’s got two, two moms.

(1:10:47) speaker_1: But adoption is just totally normalized for him. So he knows that your family, families are made by who you love, not necessarily by a bloodline.

(1:10:57) speaker_1: And that’s really important to me too.

(1:11:00) speaker_1: Like, I never want him to think that, you know, the rest of our family, like my cousins and my uncle, who I’m very close to, are like not my, quote, “real family.

(1:11:10) speaker_1: “

(1:11:10) speaker_0: And is he close to your brother, who’s Korean?

(1:11:14) speaker_1: Yes. Yeah. He’s- he’s very close to my brother. So… And, you know, it’s fantastic. Ethan has a… He’s pretty proud of being Korean.

(1:11:23) speaker_1: He’s got like a little Korean flag that he had hung up in his room for a while. He loves going to Korea. It’s his favorite thing.

(1:11:31) speaker_1: And so, um, uh, it’s just, just something. He loves Korean food. It’s his favorite food.

(1:11:37) speaker_1: So like, all of the things that I was embarrassed about when I was a kid or, you know, didn’t have any knowledge of, it just makes me really happy that he does not, has not seemed to internalize.

(1:11:50) speaker_1: He just has, has been raised in a different way and has a much healthier outlook.

(1:11:54) speaker_0: His Koreanness is just in the air he breathes too, you know?

(1:11:58) speaker_0: Not like where something like we, as adoptees, I feel like we have to either teach ourselves or have it be taught to us or…

(1:12:07) speaker_1: Yes, he doesn’t have to go seek it out as much ’cause it’s just who we are. And Tom and I have a lot of friends who are Korean American, so he…

(1:12:15) speaker_1: It’s just part of our community. So he sees people, you know, and Korean food.

(1:12:19) speaker_1: It’s like if- if you go to somebody, one of our friends’ houses for dinner, there’s a pretty good chance we’re gonna have Korean food.

(1:12:26) speaker_1: Or like if our friends want to go out, it’s a pretty good chance they’re gonna wanna go eat Korean food.

(1:12:31) speaker_1: So it’s not like we have to go out of our way to be like, “Oh, this is a special Korean, you know, Korean thing, and let’s do that.

(1:12:38) speaker_1: ” I mean, the nice thing is like at Chuseok and some of the holidays, the Korean holidays, like, we don’t really celebrate them, but we do make it a point and have always made it a point to call my in-laws and wish them a happy whatever the holiday is.

(1:12:51) speaker_1: So Ethan, you know, Ethan is aware of that. It’s just a different time. And living in Seattle where there are so many Asians is just fantastic.

(1:12:59) speaker_1: And actually, when I left Utah, I knew I wanted to go to one of the two Washingtons, and I wanted to do that because I wanted to go someplace where there were going to be more Asians.

(1:13:08) speaker_1:

(1:13:08) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:13:08) speaker_1: … I didn’t ever want to be, like-

(1:13:10) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:13:11) speaker_1: And I didn’t like California, but I was like, “Oh, I want to go someplace where I’m not gonna be stared at anymore.” You know?

(1:13:18) speaker_0: Well, it sounds like Seattle’s been great for that.

(1:13:21) speaker_1: Oh, Seattle, yeah. I’ve lived here now for almost 30 years and it’s, it’s a pretty… Yeah, it’s great.

(1:13:27) speaker_1: Although, it does pain me that as progressive as Seattle is, and as many Asians as there are, there’s still a fair amount of…

(1:13:34) speaker_1: We do still have incidents around Asian hate and stuff still ha- Like, my son was actually bullied for being Korean at one of the schools, for being Asian.

(1:13:42) speaker_1: So, I just think that some of that just is inescapable.

(1:13:47) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Well, Delight, I think we’re gonna have to wrap up, but I would love to hang out with you more.

(1:13:54) speaker_0: So let’s definitely plan something, sometime in the next… You know, to definitely, like, spend more time, in… Instead of, like, a quick, you know?

(1:14:01) speaker_0: (laughs) Quick meal on the-

(1:14:03) speaker_1: Yes.

(1:14:04) speaker_0: … But, you know, I definitely would like to-

(1:14:06) speaker_1: Uh, yeah.

(1:14:07) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:14:07) speaker_1: I would love that too. And you know what? I love your idea about something for adoptees of a certain age.

(1:14:13) speaker_1: You know, there was some person, she had done some tour to Korea for adoptees who were, like, over 50. Did, did you hear about that?

(1:14:21) speaker_0: No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if… Yeah.

(1:14:25) speaker_1: And I don’t remember who did that. I mean, to be honest with you, like, that’s not really my, my thing. Uh, traveling with people I don’t know.

(1:14:32) speaker_1: I think, especially in a trip like that, I think can be a lot of stress and pretty emotional, so I would not…

(1:14:38) speaker_1: I wouldn’t ch- And it was, like, a two-week tour. That’s awesome they’re putting that together, but I would not-

(1:14:44) speaker_0: Not for you, yeah.

(1:14:45) speaker_1: Would not wanna do that. But, you know, I love the idea of, like, a weekend some place.

(1:14:50) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:14:50) speaker_1: Like a retreat or something. Let me think about that.

(1:14:52) speaker_0: Yeah.

(1:14:52) speaker_1: I wonder how we could do that.

(1:14:53) speaker_0: Yeah, we could, definitely.

(1:14:56) speaker_1: With a few other… ‘Cause I did, I did really enjoy… I-I thought that breakout session was the best part of the gathering.

(1:15:03) speaker_0: Yeah. I mean, ’cause it, it’s sort of, like, you find your tribe or one where you feel like you belong, somewhat.

(1:15:10) speaker_0: And then within that, there’s even a tribe within a tribe, so… (laughs)

(1:15:14) speaker_1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, Kiyomi, thank you so much for the invitation.

(1:15:18) speaker_1: This was really a fun conversation and you gave me some things to think about that I hadn’t ever thought about.

(1:15:25) speaker_0: What do you want people to know about… As a Korean-adoptee marrying into a Korean-American family?

(1:15:31) speaker_1: Oh, I think, I think that they should just be aware that there are some challenges. And I think…

(1:15:38) speaker_1: Like, to your point, I think if people have a fantasy about what it might be like, like if they think, “Oh, I’m gonna be marrying…

(1:15:45) speaker_1: You know, I’m gonna be getting the family that I didn’t, didn’t have,” or, you know, th- this is gonna be a replacement for that.

(1:15:51) speaker_0: Mm-hmm.

(1:15:51) speaker_1: I don’t think it’s… Obviously not that simple, it’s quite complex. But I also think there are some really wonderful things that it brought me.

(1:15:59) speaker_1: And I think the biggest thing for me is, I just feel like being married to Tom has really, I think…

(1:16:05) speaker_1: I don’t know if this makes sense, but, like, brought out more of the Korean-ness in me, in terms of curiosity and the support for searching.

(1:16:18) speaker_1: And I just really am not sure that that would have been present with, with anybody else.

(1:16:23) speaker_1: ‘Cause certainly when I had dated, you know, most of my boyfriends had been Caucasian. And I didn’t really talk about adoption nearly as much as…

(1:16:31) speaker_1: It just wasn’t sort of at the forefront.

(1:16:33) speaker_0: Mm-hmm. Well, it’s good you married Tom.

(1:16:37) speaker_1: Yeah. (laughs)

(1:16:37) speaker_0: (laughs)

(1:16:37) speaker_1: Well, for so many reasons. But I… Yes, that’s a really, a really wonderful and unexpected thing for me.

(1:16:42) speaker_1: ‘Cause it’s not like I went looking for that and thought, “Oh, I’m gonna find somebody that’s gonna help me figure out this part of my, my history or my life.

(1:16:50) speaker_1: “

(1:16:50) speaker_0: And then, Delight, if people… Do you want people to be able to contact you at all, or find you on social media? Or, you know, if they…

(1:16:57) speaker_0: Your story resonated and they…

(1:17:00) speaker_1: Yeah. If, if people have something that I can help them with, I’m happy to be of service.

(1:17:06) speaker_0: Okay, and how can they find you?

(1:17:08) speaker_1: Um, I’m on Facebook, and they can just DM me through, through Facebook.

(1:17:13) speaker_0: Okay. Thank you so much, Delight. Can’t wait to connect with you in person again soon. Shout out to new Patreon supporter, Seong Ju.

(1:17:37) speaker_0: If you’re new to finding this podcast, welcome. We are wrapping up Season 7 and have a few more episodes to go.

(1:17:46) speaker_0: If you’d like to help support the podcast in its final episodes, we have a Patreon page, patreon.com/adaptedpodcast.

(1:17:55) speaker_0: You can cancel at any time, or after the season ends. On June 27th, there will be a special Zoom call for Patreon supporters.

(1:18:04) speaker_0: Korean-American adoptee, therapist, and author, Camley Small has confirmed and will be helping to facilitate. Jenna Lee Park provided audio production.

(1:18:15) speaker_0: YuGung Jun is our volunteer Korean translator. I’m Kiyomi Lee, see you next time.

Wyatt Tuell, 45, is an adopted Korean who has learned that family does not have to be biological to be special. The Omaha, NE resident was adopted as a newborn to a Korean adoptive mother and white American military father. However, he was adopted a second time by another man whom he considers his father. And later, when he sought to become a father himself, health complications meant that path would also rely on alternative methods to create a family.

Audio available Friday, June 7, 2024.

Kit Myers, 42, is a transracial Hong Kong adoptee and assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. In this interview, we talk about Myers’ search for his birth mother and feelings he’s had of having a ‘ghostly’ or ambiguous kinship with someone he doesn’t know. We also talk about his upcoming imprint, ” Violence of Love, Race, Adoption and Family in the United States.”

Audio available on May 24, 2024.

Instagram: abolish_and_build

Twitter: @MyersKit

I continue my conversation with Nik Nadeau, a Korean adoptee who reunited with his Korean birth mother years ago, and who is still learning more about her and himself in the process.

Audio available May 10, 2024.