top of page
Adoptee Health Network
Resources List
Adoption Competence National Directory
Center for Adoption Support and Education
Date:
Jul 21, 2019
Type:
Database/Organization
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Mental Health
Abstract/Summary
We are pleased to share the Adoption Competence National Directory, which offers access to hundreds of mental health therapists nationwide with formal training in adoption competence. The therapists listed in this Directory have completed training in either or both of the C.A.S.E. training programs described below. Explore our national database to find therapists in your area trained in adoption competence.
Inclusive Family Medical History-Taking Flowchart
Jade H. Wexler, Elizabeth Toll
Date:
May 8, 2025
Type:
Diagram
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
This flowchart demonstrates recommendations for a more inclusive, nonjudgmental approach to family medical history-taking.
A Qualitative Study of Primary Care Physicians’ Approaches to Caring for Adult Adopted Patients
Jade H. Wexler, Elizabeth Toll and Roberta E. Goldman
Date:
Jan 27, 2025
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Primary Care, Genetic Testing, Mental Health, Microaggressions, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
PURPOSE Adoption has lifelong health implications for 7.8 million adopted people and their families in the United States. The majority of adoptees have limited family medical history (LFMH). Primary care physicians (PCPs) rarely receive training about adoptees including their mental health needs and increased suicide risk. The growing availability and popularity of direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits amplifies the need for PCPs to be prepared to address genetic testing for adoptees with LFMH. This study explores PCP training and approaches to adult adopted patients with LFMH.
METHODS We used critical adoption studies as a theoretical framework for this study to understand how adoptive identity might shape clinical experiences. We recruited PCPs from Minnesota and Rhode Island via purposive, criteria-based, reputational sampling. We conducted hour-long semistructured qualitative interviews incorporating hypothetical clinical vignettes. Transcripts were coded via template organizing method and analyzed via Immersion-Crystallization.
RESULTS We interviewed 23 PCPs. They reported receiving little training or resources on adult adoptees with LFMH and showed substantial knowledge gaps regarding mental health and genetic testing for this population. Many failed to adjust history-taking and primary care approaches, which they recognized as potentially resulting in inaccuracies, inappropriate clinical care, and microaggressions while inadvertently triggering anxiety, shame, and distrust among patients. A mismatch between adopted patients’ and physicians’ understandings of family medical history could strain the therapeutic relationship. Nearly all interviewees viewed additional training to care for adult adoptees with LFMH as beneficial.
CONCLUSION Future research should expand education and training for PCPs on adult adoptees with LFMH.
Episode 4: A Qualitative Study of Primary Care Physicians' Approaches to Caring for Adult Adopted Patients
Annals of Family Medicine Podcast
Date:
Jan 28, 2025
Type:
Podcast
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Primary Care, Genetic Testing, Mental Health, Microaggressions, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
In this episode, lead author Jade Wexler, a fourth-year medical student at Brown University, and co-author Dr. Elizabeth Toll, a professor of pediatrics and medicine and clinician educator at Brown University, discuss their study, A Qualitative Study of Primary Care Physicians' Approaches to Caring for Adult Adopted Patients. Adopted individuals often have limited access to their family medical history, which complicates their health care. This study explored the knowledge, training, and approaches of primary care physicians when caring for adult adopted patients with limited family medical history. They share insights into their findings and the implications for primary care practice.
An Unfinished Puzzle
Christina Romo
Date:
Jan 1, 2018
Type:
Patient Narrative
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Microaggressions, Primary Care, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
I have battled a number of health issues throughout my life—all of which I am asked to share whenever I see a new physician or specialist—but there is one section on every form that always gives me pause. In theory, it is the easiest section for me to complete, but emotionally, it serves as a reminder of the losses I have experienced. When I am asked to complete the same forms for my sons, that section becomes a source of guilt for me. Guilt over not knowing what I have passed on genetically to my sons. Guilt over not being able to protect or shield them from the losses I have experienced in life.
When I meet with a physician or specialist for the first time, and upon reviewing my health history and lack of family medical history, the response is often the same.
A Need to Know: Enhancing Adoption Competence among Mental Health Professionals
David Brodinsky, The Donaldson Adoption Institute
Date:
Jan 1, 2013
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Primary Care, Genetic Testing, Mental Health, Microaggressions, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
This Donaldson Adoption Institute report summarizes the landscape of adoption competency amongst mental health professionals.
Family History “Unknown”: Understanding Adopted Individuals’ Needs in the Healthcare Environment
Julia Small, MS MD M S I I I , Ramya Gruneisen, MS, Elaine Schulte, MD, MPH
Date:
Aug 1, 2022
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
Adoption Advocate No. 167 - For adoptees to be empowered to advocate for their healthcare needs, medical providers must know how to interact in an adoption identity affirming manner and create an environment where patients feel safe discussing their biological history. To accomplish this, adoption professionals and parents should partner with both adoptees and medical providers to find ways to thoughtfully navigate adopted patients’ healthcare needs. This issue of the Adoption Advocate explains how to begin that process.
Reinforcing Loss and Rendering Invisible: Adoptee Experience and the Structural Failings of Biomedicine
Jennifer James
Date:
Jan 1, 2018
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Primary Care, Genetic Testing, Mental Health, Microaggressions, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
This commentary discusses the challenge of health care interactions for people who are adopted. These narratives describing how adoptees approach and are approached by biomedicine make it clear that their needs are not being met and that many feel ostracized in clinical encounters. I argue that adoptee identity should be included along with categories such as race, class and gender when we consider intersectional approaches to health and healthcare. We cannot consider a one-size fits all approach to health care for adoptees, as these stories make clear that a lack of known family history should neither preclude adoptees from accessing tests and services, nor serve as an automatic indication for heightened screening. There is a need for structural changes to biomedicine that would allow for alternatives to family history in considering the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease.
I Finally Figured Out What It Means to Feel Safe”: A Qualitative Study of Adult Adoptees and Psychotherapy
Amy Geller
Date:
Jan 5, 2025
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Mental Health
Abstract/Summary
This qualitative study explored 15 adult adoptees’ experiences with psychotherapy and other adoption-specific resources.Thematic analysis was employed to identify four themes: 1)relationships as a motive for pursuing psychotherapy, 2) the importance of the therapeutic relationship, 3) the role commu-nity plays in psychotherapy for adoptees, and 4) the adoptee’s evolving relationship with self. The findings demonstrate that relationships played a central role, both in adult adoptees’ deci-sion to pursue psychotherapy and satisfaction with the process.Practice implications include knowledge of middle age as apotentially critical time for adult adoptee awareness and the inclusion of adjunctive adoptee resources for satisfactory ther-apeutic experiences.
Genetic Testing for Adoptees: Key Considerations and Benefits
Catherine Kunz
Date:
Jul 29, 2024
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Genetic Testing
Abstract/Summary
Adoption Advocate No. 180 - Genetic testing has become increasingly common in the United States, raising important considerations for those who complete such testing and for their genetic relatives. For many adoptees, the decision to complete genetic testing often carries additional considerations, including implications for connections to one’s birth family, and for the possibility of accessing new health information. This article highlights key considerations— both pros and cons—for adoptees interested in understanding genetic testing, so they can decide what is best for them.
Risk of suicide attempt in adopted and nonadopted offspring
Keyes, Margaret A.
Malone, Stephen M.
Sharma, Anu
Iacono, William G.
McGue, Matt
Date:
Oct 1, 2013
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Mental Health
Abstract/Summary
OBJECTIVE: We asked whether adoption status represented a risk of suicide attempt for adopted and nonadopted offspring living in the United States. We also examined whether factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior would mediate the relationship between adoption status and suicide attempt. METHODS: Participants were drawn from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study, which included 692 adopted and 540 nonadopted offspring and was conducted at the University of Minnesota from 1998 to 2008. Adoptees were systematically ascertained from records of 3 large Minnesota adoption agencies; nonadoptees were ascertained from Minnesota birth records. Outcome measures were attempted suicide, reported by parent or offspring, and factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior including psychiatric disorder symptoms, personality traits, family environment, and academic disengagement. RESULTS: The odds of a reported suicide attempt were ~4 times greater in adoptees compared with nonadoptees (odds ratio: 4.23). After adjustment for factors associated with suicidal behavior, the odds of reporting a suicide attempt were reduced but remained significantly elevated (odds ratio: 3.70). CONCLUSIONS: The odds for reported suicide attempt are elevated in individuals who are adopted relative to those who are not adopted. The relationship between adoption status and suicide attempt is partially mediated by factors known to be associated with suicidal behavior. Continued study of the risk of suicide attempt in adopted offspring may inform the larger investigation of suicidality in all adolescents and young adults.
“Do You Know Your Real Parents?” and Other Adoption Microaggressions
Amanda L. Baden
Date:
Feb 3, 2016
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Microaggressions
Abstract/Summary
Myths, fairy tales, films, books, and everyday communication contain images and stories of orphans and adoptees that convey societal discomfort and judgment about adoption (i.e., adoption stigma). In this article, I apply the microaggression model to adoption-related experiences using the literature and theory on adoption stigma. Definitions for adoption-related microaggressions (microassaults, microinvalidations, and microinsults) and a fourth type of microaggression called microfictions (i.e., shared and hidden narratives that contribute to and define the secrecy in adoption) are introduced. Thirteen themes for adoption microaggressions and examples for each are proposed.
Adult adoptees and their use of direct‐to‐consumer genetic testing: Searching for family, searching for health
Lee, Heewon
Vogel, Rachel I.
LeRoy, Bonnie
Zierhut, Heather A.
Date:
May 13, 2020
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Genetic Testing
Abstract/Summary
Use of direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT) is rapidly growing in the United States. Yet little is known about how specific populations like domestic and intercountry adoptees use DTC-GT. Adoptees often have little to no biological family history, which may affect how they use DTC-GT. This study aimed to examine adult adoptees' motivations to pursue DTC-GT, experiences completing a test, and reasons for not completing one. An online survey consisting of 41 closed-ended questions was distributed to domestic and intercountry adult adoptees in a snowball convenience method addressing seven areas: (a) demographics and adoption experience, (b) family health history, (c) familiarity with DTC-GT, (d) actual DTC-GT experience, (e) hypothetical DTC-GT experience, (f) health results, and (g) satisfaction with DTC-GT. Descriptive statistics were performed on participant demographics and adoption characteristics, and chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests compared demographics and adoption characteristics by familiarity with DTC-GT and completion of DTC-GT. A total of 117 adoptees met criteria and completed the survey. Adoptees were motivated to use DTC-GT to search for biological family (83.0%), verify race and ethnicity (72.3%), and find out where ancestors came from (66.0%). Most participants completed DTC-GT (80.3%); completion was significantly associated with searching for biological relatives (p
ICAV: Our Thoughts for Doctors
ICAV: Intercountry Adoptee Voices
Date:
Aug 2, 2021
Type:
Video
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Mental Health, Primary Care, Family Medical History, Microaggressions
Abstract/Summary
Intercountry adoptees share what they want doctors to understand about intercountry adoption.
National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI)
Center for Adoption Support and Education
Date:
Jul 20, 2025
Type:
Training
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Mental Health
Abstract/Summary
The free, web-based training enables you to better address the mental health & developmental needs of children in foster, adoptive, or kinship families. The NTI training can change your practice with the goal of improving well-being and permanency outcomes for youth in foster, adoptive, and guardianship families.
Also find one-pagers and other resources for mental health clinicians.
Adoption Competent Clinical Practice: Defining Its Meaning and Development
A. J. Atkinson, P. A. Gonet, M. Freundlich and D. B. Riley
Date:
Jan 1, 2011
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Primary Care, Genetic Testing, Mental Health, Microaggressions, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
The need for adoption competent mental health services has been well documented. However, the term "adoption-competent" has lacked a standardized, broadly accepted definition. This article reports findings from two related studies. The first examines how adoption competencies are demonstrated in practice by clinicians participating in an evidence-informed adoption competency training program. The second is an online survey designed to determine whether members of adoption kinship networks agree with a definition of an adoption competent mental health professional developed by experts. Both studies contribute to our understanding of what constitutes "adoption competent" clinical practice.
Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Editors: Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, Sun Yung Shin
Contributors: Heidi Lynn Adelsman; Ellen M. Barry; Laura Briggs, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Catherine Ceniza Choy, U of California, Berkeley; Gregory Paul Choy, U of California, Berkeley; Rachel Quy Collier; J. A. Dare; Kim Diehl; Kimberly R. Fardy; Laura Gannarelli; Shannon Gibney; Mark Hagland; Perlita Harris; Tobias Hübinette, Stockholm U; Jae Ran Kim; Anh Đào Kolbe; Mihee-Nathalie Lemoine; Beth Kyong Lo; Ron M.; Patrick McDermott, Salem State College, Massachusetts; Tracey Moffatt; Ami Inja Nafzger (aka Jin Inja); Kim Park Nelson; John Raible; Dorothy Roberts, Northwestern U; Raquel Evita Saraswati; Kirsten Hoo-Mi Sloth; Soo Na; Shandra Spears; Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark; Kekek Jason Todd Stark; Sunny Jo; Sandra White Hawk; Indigo Williams Willing; Bryan Thao Worra; Jeni C. Wright.
Date:
Jan 1, 2001
Type:
Adoptee Narrative
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
Many adoptees are required to become people that they were never meant to be. While transracial adoption tends to be considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and economic toll on those who directly experience it. Outsiders Within is a landmark publication that carefully explores this most intimate aspect of globalization through essays, fiction, poetry, and art. Moving beyond personal narrative, transracially adopted writers from around the world tackle difficult questions about how to survive the racist and ethnocentric worlds they inhabit, what connects the countries relinquishing their children to the countries importing them, why poor families of color have their children removed rather than supported--about who, ultimately, they are. In their inquiry, the contributors unseat conventional understandings of adoption politics, reframing the controversy as a debate that encompasses human rights, peace, and reproductive justice.
“You Should Be Grateful:” Stories of Race, Identity and Transracial Adoption
Angela Tucker
Date:
Type:
Adoptee Narrative, Book
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you. You should be grateful!” Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily. Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees through sharing deeply personal stories, well-researched history and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption giving way to a fuller story that includes the impacts of racism, classism, family, love and belonging.
Understanding Adoption as a Reproductive Justice Issue
Wexler JH, Cai J, McKee KD, Blankenau A, Lee H, Kim OM, Kim AY, Lee RM
Date:
Apr 19, 2023
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Reproductive Justice, Mental Health
Abstract/Summary
Adoption is frequently invoked as a universal social good, an uncomplicated win for adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents alike, that obviates the need for abortion. As antiabortionists weaponize adoption to attack reproductive rights, psychologists must recognize adoption as a key reproductive justice issue with significant, lifelong physical and psychological impacts, especially on adopted people and birth parents. Recognizing critical adoption studies as an application of a reproductive justice framework, we argue that psychologists must understand how adoption is both sustained by and reinforces structural inequality and global reproductive injustice. In a post-Roe reality, clinicians and researchers must critically examine adoption histories and myths in order to address the needs of the adoption triad. As an interdisciplinary team of researchers and clinicians in psychology; medicine; genetic counseling; and women's, gender, sexuality, and Asian American studies, we examine adoption's ties to settler colonialism, racism, classism, and imperialism and interrogate harmful dominant narratives about adoption. We then summarize clinical considerations for working with members of the adoption triad, future directions for research on adoption, and recommendations for both clinicians and researchers to advance adoption competence in the face of current attacks on reproductive rights in the United States.
Training for Adoption Competency: Building a Community of Adoption-Competent Clinicians
A. J. Atkinson and D. B. Riley
Date:
Jan 1, 2017
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Primary Care, Genetic Testing, Mental Health, Microaggressions, Family Medical History
Abstract/Summary
Training for Adoption Competency (TAC), an advanced, adoption-competency, clinical training program for licensed mental health professionals, was developed in response to the largely unmet needs of adoptive families for high-quality adoption-competent, mental health services. A rigorous ongoing evaluation assessing training delivery, effectiveness, and outcomes has produced strong evidence that TAC is a sound and effective training model that produces changes in clinical assessment and intervention practices that enable clinicians to apply trauma-informed, attachment-based skills to address core adoption issues such as loss, grief, control, and identity. Implications for clinical practice with families touched by adoption and other forms of permanency, research, and training to create an adoption-competent clinical professional community are presented.
Pediatrician Guidance in Supporting Families of Children Who Are Adopted, Fostered, or in Kinship Care
Veronnie F. Jones, MD, MSPH, Elaine E. Schulte, MD, MPH, FAAP; Douglas Waite, MD, FAAP; COUNCIL ON FOSTER CARE, ADOPTION, AND KINSHIP CARE; Sarah Springer, MD, FAAP; Moira Ann Szilagyi, MD, PhD, FAAP; Heather Forkey, MD, FAAP; Kristine Fortin, MD, FAAP; Mary V. Greiner, MD, MS, FAAP; David Harmon, MD, FAAP; Anu N. Partap; MD MPH, FAAP; Linda Davidson Sagor, MD, MPH, FAAP; Mary Allen Staat, MD, MPH, FAAP; Jonathan D. Thackery, MD, FAAP; Lisa W. Zetley, MD, FAAP
Date:
Dec 6, 2020
Type:
Journal Article
Tags:
Adoptee Health, Pediatrics
Abstract/Summary
The child welfare system strives to provide children and adolescents in foster care with a safe, nurturing environment through kinship and nonkinship foster care placement with the goal of either reunification with birth parents or adoption. Pediatricians can support families who care for children and adolescents who are fostered and adopted while attending to children's medical needs and helping each child attain their developmental potential. Although this report primarily focuses on children in the US child welfare system, private and internationally adopted children often have similar needs.
When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology
Shannon Gibney, Nicole Chung, Mariama Lockington, Meredith Ireland, Mark Oshiro, Stefany Valentine Ramirez, Eric Smith, Kelley Baker, MeMe Collier, Susan Devan Harness, Lisa Nopachai, Matthew Salesses, Sun Yung Shin, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, Jenny Heijun Wills
Date:
Jan 1, 2022
Type:
Adoptee Narrative
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
Two teens take the stage and find their voice. . .
A girl learns about her heritage and begins to find her community. . .
A sister is haunted by the ghosts of loved ones lost. . .
There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres.
These tales from fourteen bestselling, acclaimed, and emerging adoptee authors genuinely and authentically reflect the complexity, breadth, and depth of adoptee experiences.
This groundbreaking collection centers what it’s like growing up as an adoptee. These are stories by adoptees, for adoptees, reclaiming their own narratives.
KAAN: Korean American Adoptive Family Network Conference
Date:
Type:
Gathering/Conference
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
Click to learn more.
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
Nicole Chung
Date:
Oct 15, 2019
Type:
Adoptee Narrative
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
What does it means to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them?
Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth.
With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.
The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade
Ann Fessler
Date:
May 4, 2006
Type:
Adoptee Narrative, Book
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
In this deeply moving work, Ann Fessler brings to light the lives of hundreds of thousands of young single American women forced to give up their newborn children in the years following World War II and before Roe v. Wade. The Girls Who Went Away tells a story not of wild and carefree sexual liberation, but rather of a devastating double standard that has had punishing long-term effects on these women and on the children they gave up for adoption. Based on Fessler’s groundbreaking interviews, it brings to brilliant life these women’s voices and the spirit of the time, allowing each to share her own experience in gripping and intimate detail. Today, when the future of the Roe decision and women’s reproductive rights stand squarely at the front of a divisive national debate, Fessler brings to the fore a long-overlooked history of single women in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies.
In 2002, Fessler, an adoptee herself, traveled the country interviewing women willing to speak publicly about why they relinquished their children. Researching archival records and the political and social climate of the time, she uncovered a story of three decades of women who, under enormous social and family pressure, were coerced or outright forced to give their babies up for adoption. Fessler deftly describes the impossible position in which these women found themselves: as a sexual revolution heated up in the postwar years, birth control was tightly restricted, and abortion proved prohibitively expensive or life endangering. At the same time, a postwar economic boom brought millions of American families into the middle class, exerting its own pressures to conform to a model of family perfection. Caught in the middle, single pregnant women were shunned by family and friends, evicted from schools, sent away to maternity homes to have their children alone, and often treated with cold contempt by doctors, nurses, and clergy.
The majority of the women Fessler interviewed have never spoken of their experiences, and most have been haunted by grief and shame their entire adult lives. A searing and important look into a long-overlooked social history, The Girls Who Went Away is their story.
CONTEXT: Chinese Adoptee Conference
Date:
Type:
Gathering/Conference
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
Chinese Adoptee Collective presents “CONTEXT,” the first closed conference for people adopted from China.
Closure
Angela Tucker
Date:
Jan 1, 2013
Type:
Documentary, Adoptee Narrative
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
A documentary about a transracial adoptee who finds her birth mother, and meets the rest of a family who did not know she existed, including her birth father.
First Person Plural
Deann Borshay Liem
Date:
Type:
Adoptee Narrative, Documentary
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
First Person Plural follows the story of an 8-year old girl who is adopted by an American family, only to discover years later that she has a birth family in Korea. The film explores themes of race, identity, assimilation, and birth family reunion.
In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee
Deann Borshay Liem
Date:
Sep 14, 2010
Type:
Adoptee Narrative, Documentary
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the US in 1966. Told to keep her true identity a secret from her new American family, this eight-year-old girl quickly forgot she was ever anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? IN THE MATTER OF CHA JUNG HEE is the search to find the answers. It follows acclaimed filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem as she returns to her native Korea to find her “double,” the mysterious girl whose place she took in America. Traversing the landscapes of memory, amnesia and identity, while also uncovering layers of deception in her adoption, this moving and provocative film probes the ethics of international adoptions and reveals the cost of living a lie. Part mystery, part personal odyssey, it raises fundamental questions about who we are…and who we could be but for the hands of fate
Geographies of Kinship
Deann Borshay Liem
Date:
May 19, 2019
Type:
Documentary, Adoptee Narrative
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and recover the personal histories that were erased when they were adopted. Raised in foreign families, each sets out on a journey to reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew. Along the way there are discoveries and dead ends, as well as mysteries that will never be unraveled.
IKAA: International Korean Adoptee Associations Korea Gathering
Date:
Type:
Gathering/Conference
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
Since the Korean War, over 200,000 international adoptions have taken place from Korea, a practice that still continues today. As early generations of Korean adoptees grew up, many lacked exposure to Korean culture and community. In the late 1980s, older adoptees began organizing locally, forming volunteer-led groups to connect with one another and build a sense of belonging. In 2004, the International Korean Adoptee Associations (IKAA) was established to connect these regional organizations, foster collaboration, and create a structured network capable of producing large-scale events and programs.
More than 20 years after its formation, the IKAA network continues to expand, fostering community connections across North America, Europe, and Australia.
Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family
Erika Hayasaki
Date:
Oct 11, 2022
Type:
Book
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
An incredible, deeply reported story of identical twins Isabella and Hà, born in Viêt Nam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other's existence until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds.
"Stirring and unforgettable--a breathtaking adoption saga like no other." --Robert Kolker
It was 1998 in Nha Trang, Việt Nam, and Liên struggled to care for her newborn twin girls. Hà was taken in by Liên's sister, and she grew up in a rural village with her aunt, going to school and playing outside with the neighbors. They had sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons. Hà's twin sister, Loan, was adopted by a wealthy, white American family who renamed her Isabella. Isabella grew up in the suburbs of Chicago with a nonbiological sister, Olivia, also adopted from Việt Nam. Isabella and Olivia attended a predominantly white Catholic school, played soccer, and prepared for college.
But when Isabella's adoptive mother learned of her biological twin back in Việt Nam, all of their lives changed forever. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members. She brings the girls' experiences to life on the page, told from their own perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life. Hayasaki contextualizes the sisters' experiences with the fascinating and often sinister history of twin studies, intercountry and transracial adoption, and the nature-versus-nurture debate, as well as the latest scholarship and conversation surrounding adoption today, especially among adoptees.
Adoptee LiteraryFest
Date:
Type:
Gathering/Conference
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
The Adoptee Literary Festival celebrates writers who were adopted, fostered, or otherwise displaced.
The Adoptee Film Fest
Date:
Dec 31, 2023
Type:
Gathering/Conference
Tags:
Adoptee Narratives & Community
Abstract/Summary
The media and entertainment industry has historically left out adoptee voices during the creation process of adoption narratives, unfortunately leading to one dimensional depictions of our experiences that perpetuate harmful and limiting stereotypes.
The Adoptee Film Fest aims to further establish the need for adoptee centered adoption narratives by adoptees in film, media and entertainment.
bottom of page