New LGBTQ TRA parent group

One of the 50 zillion projects i have is working part time at Pact, an adoption alliance in Oakland, CA. I’m working as the Adoption Education Specialist, developing new and revising old adoption training and educational courses for professionals and pre & post adoptive parents. Its a complicated thing working at an adoption agency, particularly one that does any transracial adoptions, even if about 70% of the adoptions we do are same-race adoptions for children of color. Even with this statistic, most of the life-long educational support work we do is for white adoptive parents.

We’ve recently partnered with OFC (Our Family Coalition) in San Francisco and IPride/Fusion to develop a new training/ support group for queer adoptive parents focusing on transracial adoptions called Colors of our Families.

I just wanted to let you all know, its starting soon, pass this info on to folks in your community!!

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Colors of Our Families

A six-session peer support group for parents to talk about issues and strategies relevant to race, ethnicity, culture, adoption and parenting.

* Free Childcare will be provided by KidSpace of the SF LGBT Center.
* The Spring 2008 group is for parents of children between the ages of 0 to 5. For families with older children please let us know of your interest as we hope to offer future groups for other age ranges.

Dates
Saturdays 2-4 pm - May 3rd, 17th, 31st, June 14th, 28th and July 12th

Where
San Francisco LGBT Community Center
1800 Market Street, San Francisco 94102

Cost
The cost for 6 sessions is a suggested sliding scale of $90-$120 ($15-$20 per session).
No one turned away for lack of funds.

Questions or Interest in Future Groups
Please contact Martha Rynberg, group facilitator for questions specific to the group.

Cloak / Dagger

(i dont know why the freakin formatting on this isnt working!!)

proof of my christianity

comes snapped in two weathered polaroids

draped in my new crisp robe

waist immersed in lake water waves

a black as sin before shot a washed as white as snow

after shock

==

a gold stamped certificate of baptism

calligraphy signed by the pastor

etched with Christ’s outstretched arms

calling “come unto me”

to all the little children of the world

red and yellow black and white

they are precious in his sight

and as long as I memorize my bible verses

recite on Sunday after services

I can claim both for my pass at the holy gates

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shamefaced at my rushed memorization

a virgin mary with hot cheeks

and furious forehead wrinkles

I stare past the teachers sanctified grimace

beg god to let me remember so my squirming will stop

and simultaneously curse him

for having 2^nd John write so many words down

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I will never make it past the pearly door

unless I have my papers cause

hidden in the folds of my black girl memory

are consecrated christian children who refuse

to touch me during playtime devout in their service of god

they rebuke satan’s hold over my black skin

converge on me with whiteness, with righteous love

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so St Peter at the entry to heaven

might catch fire burning out my eyes

may hear whispers of celestial vengeance unspoken

might note forgiveness nowhere in my heart

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but I got proof

I got papers

and we all know the documentation counts

and the spook at the door*

just needs an in

to start wreckin shop.

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* ”The Spook That Sat by the Door” is a 1973 film based on the book by Sam Greenlee about a Black CIA agent named Dan Freeman who after training in guerrilla warfare, clandestine operations and unarmed combat, uses what the CIA has taught him to train a street gang to utilize the tactics in an upcoming fictitious race war.

Chadian Children Reunited

An update on the Chadian children from last October in that Zoe’s Ark debaucle.

  “Kidnapped Chadian kids reunited with their families”

ADRE, Chad (CNN) — Nearly 100 children at the center of an international scandal that left them stranded at an orphanage in remote eastern Chad returned home after nearly five months Friday, and were being reunited with their families.

Some of the children who were nearly abducted by a French charity, pictured in Abeche in November 2007.

 It was a six-hour bus ride from Abeche, in eastern Chad, to Adre, on the border with Sudan, where mothers and fathers gathered at the post office waiting for their children.

 During the ride, the bus broke down when its radiator burst.

 Those accompanying the children were concerned about rebels causing trouble along the way, but that concern turned out to be unfounded.

 The 97 children were taken from their homes in October by a then-obscure French charity, L’Arche de Zoe (Zoe’s Ark), which claimed they were orphans from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region.

Read the Rest here. 

(in my best beavis n butthead voice…”CNN said kidnapped.. heheheheh”)

Kenyan Mother and Son

Check this brief article in the SF Chronicle examining the confusion between adoption and abduction.

 

How child traffickers are exploiting the poor and unsuspecting

Adoption reforms too late to reunite Kenyan mom, son

Katharine Houreld, Associated Press

(03-02) 04:00 PST Mombasa, Kenya –

The offer of a foreign education for her beloved youngest son seemed like a dream come true for Elizabeth Rioba. But the Kenyan mother says a family member tricked her into signing adoption papers, and now it’s been five years since she’s seen her boy.

The Polish couple that adopted 4-year-old Abednego and renamed him Mikolaj says the procedure was fully legal, took six months and involved Polish diplomats who spoke with the birth parents. Rioba acknowledges she signed papers, but says she did not understand them.

Child protection experts say such tragic misunderstandings are common in a part of the world where adoption is a foreign concept. Criminals can exploit the gap between wealthy Westerners who genuinely want to help and poor Africans who want to do the best they can for their children. 

Read the rest here. 

Hey! Im in the paper!

AFAAD got some prop’s in the SF Chronicle this week! yay!  Reyhan Harmanci writes an alternative reading of the film Juno in her article, “Some not smiling over Juno’s sarcasm on China”.

San Rafael real estate agent Lo Mei Seh was shocked when she saw a theatrical trailer for the hit movie “Juno” in December. In one scene, the title character sarcastically tells the rich suburban couple hoping to adopt her unborn child, “You shoulda gone to China. You know, ’cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those T-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events.”

[Hear readers' opinions on the "iPod scene."]

Seh, the mother of two adopted Chinese girls, noticed a young Asian girl sitting behind her getting noticeably upset and muttering, “That’s so mean and unfair.”

“I calmed myself down, saying these things are just going to happen, and as a parent I have to teach my children to be strong,” she says. But after that particular scene was shown on televised award shows like the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, she became angry all over again.

Read the full article here.

Child Trafficking

 Quick update on the French “aid workers” who were caught last October trafficking children back to France and London to “host families” for 3K each. According to the Associated Press, 6 of the offenders were sentenced to 8 years in prison. Im glad about it - even if i argue they should have gotten life sentences, because thats the sentences the children would have had dammit - or at least 35 years - heh!   Read the full story here.

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and in other child trafficking news…  

MAPUTO (AFP) — The United Nations expressed concern about child trafficking in Mozambique on Thursday after police intercepted a lorry carrying 39 children near the border with Zimbabwe.

Police in Mozambique stopped the lorry carrying the children on Monday as they were about to be smuggled across the border, the interior ministry announced Wednesday.

“This incident calls attention to the serious problem of child trafficking and the urgent need for the adoption of legal instruments to enforce the protection of children against abuse and exploitation,” said the UN resident coordinator in Mozambique, Ndolamb Ngokwey, in a statement.   Not much detail, but the rest here. 

and in other news:

I changed my dissertation topic to transracial / international adoption and child trafficking. WOOO-SAH!

New Year Check In

I’m still here readers! Ive just been caught up in ‘catching up’. I had a wonderful holiday. Visited the fam up in WA state, did some research on the birth father search, watch a lot of movies I hadnt seen and read a few books I’d been wanting to read. I’m currently finishing the cleaning up of my office after the end of the semester grading frenzy, trying to get it together before teaching begins again.

2008 is gonna be so full of work, fun and of course, more TRA love! I’m excited about all of the projects I’ve got goin - the planning of the first AFAAD mini-gathering, the research and writing on my first academic publication on adoption and human trafficking, more poetry publications, applications for artist residencies, trying to finish my play and of course -  most importantly finishing my dissertation.

I’ve been so thankful to have done this work in adoption for the past years. But my success at it has come at the expense of finishing my PhD. Ive got to get done.

soooooooooo . . .I promise I’ll be around and that ABP is going nowhere. I’m just in hiding for a bit, re-prioritizing and reshaping my writing time to put my diss first.

I promise I wanna talk about Juno!

AFAAD Bay Area Drinks and Dinner Dec 7th

Adopted and Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora - AFAAD dinner.

Its time for another AFAAD Bay Area dinner! If you are an adult adoptee or foster alum from the Diaspora, we hope you will join us!  We had such a great time last time, this time we plan to chill a bit, then eat dinner and make a night of it! So, even if its just about getting together and being in one another’s space, I hope you roll through. For many of us - it will be the FIRST time we’ve been in a room with this many other black adoptees. Wow.

Please bring other adoptees and foster alum that you know!!

DINNER and Drink Details –

Friday December 7th
Drinks 7-8pm
Dinner and Chillin 8 - on
Oakland, CA (Restaurant Details to be announced over our email list)

PLEASE RSVP!!

To join AFAAD email list:
groups.yahoo.com/group/afaad

Butterfly Kiss

for my dad

On girl scout good night

my nose, brown and small

rubs warm against my fathers

crooked and strong.

this nose kiss between us

smells like army green sleeping bags

patient redwood fires and

burnt marshmallow chocolate

breath steaming the air visible.

we ignore the other fathers and daughters

lean in, share eyelashes

catch and tangle them together.

he completes our ritual

brushes my cheek with his silken lash

feels like a misguided spider

rushing across my arm

delicious tickle.

I am safe

as we drift to sleep

under these meteor showers.

Racist M/Paternalism at its Best

Ahhh the NYTimes. So much for responsible journalism. I had so much hope when I read sis Sume’s beautiful piece Reclaiming Ownership of My History.

Then - BAM! There’s just so much irresponsible journalism to choose from nowadays its actually becoming too easy to spot the well meaning white liberal who continues to think they know better than those irritating people of color who are actually experts in the field. As many of you know, this month the NYT’s has a series going on adoption called Relative Choices. Ignoring the easy blast at the cheesy title, I have to take aim (along with other AD’s) at this week’s columnist, Tama Janowitz. Here is one choice excerpt:

A girlfriend who is now on the waiting list for a child from Ethiopia says that the talk of her adoption group is a recently published book in which many Midwestern Asian adoptees now entering their 30s and 40s complain bitterly about being treated as if they did not come from a different cultural background. They feel that this treatment was an attempt to blot out their differences, and because of this, they resent their adoptive parents.

So in a way it is kind of nice to know as a parent of a child, biological or otherwise – whatever you do is going to be wrong. Like I say to Willow: “Well, you know, if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!”

And she says — as has been said by children since time immemorial — “So what, I don’t care. I would rather do that than be here anyway.”

Ummm. Say what? Did this mother of a Chinese girl seriously just use the “you would just be oppressed in your own country and since I know for sure that your life is better because you are with me because I am your mother” argument? Seriously? Did she really in such a joking manner make a mockery of those folks who are working under the conditions of economic slavery imposed by the U.S. that actually admits that the black, brown and yellow folks they utilize as a labor force don’t deserve basic human rights? And does she forget that ‘those folks’ are her daughters people? Does she really expect us to take the step of comparing refusing to get your child a dog at their demanding whim to a white parent refusing to acknowledge how race plays a major factor in the healthy identity of a TRA child? Oh Hell NO.

Ok, wait.. wait.. I thought most folks understood how m/paternalism plays a huge factor in discourses of colonialism and white privilege, but clearly folks need me to spell this shit out. Does anyone remember how manifest destiny or just general white supremacist rhetoric historically has a place in the circumstances of transracial/international adoption or is it just me? Paternalism: refers usually to an attitude or a policy stemming from the hierarchic pattern of a family based on patriarchy, that is, there is a figurehead (the father, pater in Latin) that makes decisions on behalf of others (the “children”) for their own good, even if this is contrary to their wishes. So just in case we’ve forgotten boys and girls, paternalism is also responsible for slavery, for colonialism, for going into those ’savage’ countries and ’saving’ those ignorant natives from themselves, because clearly they don’t understand that I know whats best for them. I’m their mother after all! Motherhood is the most important thing and since I am the mother, what I say goes! So what if I have to beat, rape and shame your Indian-ness out of you! As long as you understand that you are safer and will have more opportunities in my world than you would have ever had in your world. Your own religion? Pshaw! Your savage people worship a pantheon of gods and goddesses - we know there’s only one true God! Your ancestral connection? Oh that old thing? Wait.. did you know they left you in an orphanage? I mean, you would be over there just languishing away if I hadn’t found it in the goodness of my heart to answer the call to become your mother. You are SO much better off here. I mean, at least I let you have a Game Boy because you don’t need those pesky birth relatives hanging around like domestic adoptees.

Let me note here that as an Adoption Educator, I completely understand her point about wrestling with the crazy dynamics of an adolescent screaming at you, “you’re not my real mother!” in the context of parenting. AP’s have to deal with the guilt that comes along with punishing a child at this moment - and the very painful implications for how your child views you at the moment of vocal impact. Yes, you still have to be a responsible parent and handle your business and not get sidetracked by a demanding child. But what comes along with this responsibility? Is there a responsibility to not be racist in my responses to my adopted child of color?

TRA Jeopardy question: The ability to put my needs and wants over that of my child’s without regard for the racist implications.

Answer: What is - the ultimate white privilege, Alex.

Tama. Tama. Tama. You should know better. (Shouldnt you?) Your complete dismissal of adult adoptees who are working to share knowledge with other adoptees and with parents to hopefully change these relationships for the better is inexcusable.

But oh.. I forget.. your child is different. Because you say so. Because you know that for your child - race wont really matter. Love is enough. . . and I’m just an angry, bitter TRA in my 30’s and 40’s.

Careful Tama, you’re startin to sound like the ‘charity workers’ in Chad.

Additional Note: Please also be sure to read Harlow’s Monkey’s critique of this NYT’s article, and note that responses from adoptees and parents alike have been denied/ censored posting in the comments section!!!!

Update: 8:59pm. A group of Adoptees are looking for other folks (adoptees, adoptive parent allies) who have attempted to post on the NYT’s article and have also been censored. Please send me a note or post here. We’re working on a collective response to this censorship.

Update: Nov 14 12:17pm Its become more and more clear that the NYT’s has indeed censored the responses to this article. I just want to provide some links to voices who have also responded. I’m posting some more adoptive parent ally responses too. It aint just us who are upset!
Twice The Rice

readingwritingliving

resist racism

According to Addie

Heart, Mind and Seoul

Racialicious

Sun Yung Shin

Outside In…And Back Again