What Does It Mean to be an Interracial Adoptee?

It means people saying they “love your Asian hair” and then men saying they “love your long Asian hair.” It means 20 years later, you dye your hair blonde, only to have every hairdresser loudly state the obvious that you have THICK, DARK, LONG Asian hair, followed by a scolding of “and next time, you should really tell the person booking that you have Asian hair.” It means you lean into internalized racism that keeps you from loving how you look, because you will never be the “pretty [white] girl” in school. It means you starve yourself at lunch to fit in with the pretty white girls and to stay “Asian-American” small. It means that one day, the pretty white girls will tell you that they “are so lucky to be white because all makeup looks good on them.”

It means strangers telling you your “English is so good!” and when customers order, they slow down their speech to be “nice.” It means learning their language and becoming an expert on how to tell their version of your story. It means embracing the racial slur and performing joy at being a “banana” due to the Asianness on the outside, white upbringing on the inside. It means one night a camper will ask you, “Why does China take credit for everything?” and all you can think of is, why would you ask me that on s’mores night? It means volleyball parents at your school don’t trust your judgment as a line judge, “it was out!” It means feeding into whiteness without even realizing it or benefitting from it. It means being told you’re not a real person of color, or a real immigrant because you never truly struggled. It means as a child you could only be Mulan, and then as a teenager, Laura Jean. It means having to face the shame when you see your relationship mirrored: Asian female, white male – it means “representing something” more.

It means learning to lie so you can be a better fit into your family. It means adding “birth,” “bio,” and “adoptive” in front of mom, dad, and family. It means thinking about your birth family and wondering if your dads would get along or if your moms would be able to look each other in the eye. It means explaining to others how you were an aunt five years before you were born, a great aunt at 12, and are the youngest of four, with two half-brothers from your dad’s first marriage and adoptive sister who isn’t biologically related.

It means doubting the reason why your parents really adopted you in the first place. It means being an angsty teen and yelling at your mom to do more because “I wasn’t an accident!” It means feeling ecstatic to celebrate your second birthday, your “gotchaday” the day you were “born” into your family. It means going to dinner with your family and the host assumes you are in separate parties. It means buying back your own genetic information through private companies who then leak your data to health conglomerates. It means a reopening a wound when another adoptee finds their genetic match.

It means creating your sense of family by piecing together mirrored selves, but hating that you never had a full image to begin with. It means your friends asking, “Do you date white people because of your dad?” It means being a 14 year old confused at your dad’s, and then at 19 years old, your brother’s, mistress. It means learning to loudly say “Father. This is my father” when out to dinner with your adoptive dad for the sake of everyone else’s comfort.

It means in your early 20s, thinking about your aging parents and what happens after they pass. It means having your ex-boyfriend’s friends get drunk one night and tell you that he obviously has a “type.” It means having your loved ones use the word “Chink” because it’s “Shakespearean.”

It means seeking out family features in shoppers you pass in H-Mart. It means finding your “Asian grandma” as she sells you your first qipao as an adult, and tells you “not to get any bigger, and cash only!” It means being called “Little Sister” on your homeland tour by your “哥哥” (gēge) and not knowing how to respond. It means feeling awkward as you get your nails done and your Asian nail tech asks you if you’re one of those “mixed-Asians.” It means the jealousy of other adoptees in reunion with their birth family. It means having to pull up another chair at the table to expand the Asian-American experience for #AdopteeVoices.

It means wishing for a different type of response to adoption than constantly staying busy. It means having your first therapist tell you, “you aren’t memorable” and your second therapist mentioning that “you are a poor orphan like Annie.” It means when you tell people you’re struggling with adoption… they’ll tell you, “well, it could have been worse, you could be picking rice in a field.” It means being a mentor to fellow adoptees who are older and younger than you. It means the more you step out of the adoptee fog, “the harder you make your life.” It means not always having the answer that everyone is waiting for you to explain. It means perfecting your answer to avoid trauma-dumping. It means you become a curator of evidence to show them the facts. It means having to accept a non-answer as a “real” answer. It means being stuck in lonely limbo of “neither, nor.”

It means havingallofthesethoughtsinsideofyourheadandyouaretoonervoustosharebecauseitfeelslikenoonecantrulyunderstand.

It means being an inspiration to others when you know you’ve never shared one word. It means seeing your family dynamic out in the world, but hesitating to say anything. It means being the bearer of bad news, and struggling to have “fun” like everyone else. It means the only “experts” in adoption are those with adoptee lived experience. It means behind every identity marker, there’s always something more, yet another hyphenated title. It means always being tired from the emotional energy used to parse through adoption.

It means second guessing which term to appropriately use, interracial, transracial, transnational, and/or intercountry? It means being one country’s property and then another. It means there is no English word or definition to fully describe your experience. It means the only way to truly understand what it means to be a transracial adoptee, is to experience it yourself. It means writing this never-ending list on a deadline.

It also means when you are finally brave enough to share your rage about the weight of it all, you are yet again reminded that “you should be grateful for being adopted.”