MSU APA Studies Adoptee Mentoring Program

With the election of Barack Obama as president, many Americans have prematurely celebrated the end of racism, heralding a post-racial America. However, it is clear that though the terms may be shifting, race and racism still play important roles in the United States. For Asian Americans in particular, it has been difficult to identify the continued role that racism and cultural differentiation play because of the persuasiveness of assimilationist models that characterize Asian Americans as “becoming white.”

During the 2011-12 academic year, the APA Studies program, in partnership with the Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions (OCAT) organized the first annual MSU Asian Pacific American Adoptee Mentoring Program. With generous funding from the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, co-organizers Andrea Louie, Director of Asian Pacific American Studies, and Meaghan Kozar, OCAT coordinator, worked to recruit both mentors and mentees for the program. The primary goal of the program was to provide mentorship to Asian American adoptees and their families. Studies have shown that transracial adoptees sometimes face serious identity issues as they attempt to fit in with the majority white society that surrounds them, which often includes their friends and family. Many have internalized the dominant society’s images of beauty and the negative stereotypes about Asians.

While it is difficult to remedy these issues, even for Asian Americans raised in Asian American families, providing role models for transnational adoptees and their families is key to illustrating for them the variety of challenges faced by people of color, and the various ways that they go about building communities of support and other forms of cultural and political expression that speak to these issues and provide a sense of empowerment. The Asian Pacific American Studies program has been involved in providing resources for local adoptive families for the past few years, organizing an adoptee symposium in 2005 in conjunction with the MSU Asian Studies center, and a series of film screenings and adoptee panels in 2010 and 2011 focusing on issues of transracial adoption and issues of racial identity.

A recruiting session for mentors was held in December of 2011, during which interested MSU students asked questions about the program and its goals, and about transnational adoption more generally. Andrea Louie shared information based on over ten years of research with Chinese adoption, and Meaghan Kozar discussed issues from her perspective as a Korean adoptee. Meetings were also held with the local Families with Children from China and Korean adoptee organizations, who then sought families interested in participating in the program. Both potential mentors and mentees filled out applications, and mentors were matched with mentees based on common interests. Mentees ranged in age from 6 to 12 years old, and were adopted from China or Korea. Both boys and girls participated. Mentors were from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Some were international students from China, while others were immigrants or children of immigrants.Mentors and mentees were purposefully not matched by ethnicity (i.e. Chinese to Chinese) because of the program’s emphasis on learning about Asian American experiences more broadly.

Mentors and mentees had their first opportunity to meet in person in January 2012 at a Families with Children from China New Year’s gathering. Together they enjoyed a potluck meal, a mini-lion dance featuring the children, and faux fireworks (a.k.a. an industrial sized roll of bubble wrap placed on the floor and stomped on by the children). Prior to that event, mentors attended a training session run by Andrea and Meaghan that was designed to increase their awareness of issues of racial and cultural identity related to transracial adoption. The next group event brought mentors and mentees (and their families) together for pizza and games, before attending the Lunar New Year show put on by members of the Asian Pacific American Student Organization (APASO). Adoptive parents found the event to be a positive experience for themselves and their children. In particular, seeing Asian American students proudly performing traditional songs, dances, or instruments while also performing modern songs and dances was eyeopening for many parents, as it illustrated their pride in being both Asian and American, and gave them a sense of what an “Asian American culture” was like. The big event for the year was a public lecture and a workshop by Jennifer Jue-Steuck, a Ph.D. candidate at U.C. Berkeley in the Ethnic Studies Program and founder of Chinese Adoptee Links, and global organization for Chinese adoptees worldwide. A Chinese adoptee herself, Jennifer presented a lecture, titled, “Motherline Narratives: Destined Daughters, Social Capital, and the Cosmology of Adoption” during which she discussed the concept of “motherloss” that she experienced on a personal level after losing her adoptive mother to cancer and going into a period of double mourning for the loss of both her birth mother and her adoptive mother. She also discussed this theme as it appears in children’s literature, comparing these representations in the U.S, England, and Spain. Jennifer also conducted two workshops while at MSU, one for children in the adoptee mentoring program, and one for their parents.

The final event for the year was a picnic gathering. In contrast to the first events when children and mentors were just getting to know one another, it was clear that most had now become quite comfortable with one another, as children comfortably played with their mentors. Some parents remarked about how their child had initially been hesitant to participate in the program or warm up to their mentor, in part because they wanted to fit in with their peers and not engage in activities that were specifically Asian, and how positive it was for their children to get to know a college-aged Asian American mentor who could serve as a role model for them.

By seeing the variety of ways that Asian American college students expressed their identities as Asian Americans, it was hoped that adoptees would have exposure to role models who may not practice traditional or “authentic” forms of Asian culture, and hopefully open up new possibilities for the expression of their own identities. This context will prove essential as adoptees grow older and find themselves faced with a complex set of stereotypes that will shape not only the perceptions of others, but their own perceptions of who they are.