Today I was directed to an awesome essay on transracial adoption, written by an amazing eighth grader, who was adopted from Korea by a white family.

The essay can be found on the blog, the Transracial Korean Adoptee Nexus, and the direct link is here.

It is highly impressive that this essay was written by an eighth grade girl. It is well thought out, well researched, well expressed and well written. She also does a great job of being objective, and giving thought and credit to many different points of view. She did a better job on this than most adults would.

For transracial adoptive parents, there is much to learn from this essay. The author gives information on the history of transracial adoption. She also discusses the dual identity that most transracial adoptees seem to feel, in which they don't feel that they truly belong to their birth culture or to the culture they were raised in. These are legitimate feelings that have been expressed by many adopt adoptees, and ones that many of our children certainly may feel at some point in their lives.

The author expresses her feelings and thoughts on this topic of "dual identity" so beautifully with this little story:

I imagine myself as a pear sprout. I started to grow near the spout of a rain gutter on the shady side of the farmhouse. Seeing the difficult conditions I would be growing in, a gardener decided to clip me from my roots and transplant me onto an apple tree in an orchard. Despite being a pear, I grew up as an apple. Today, everything about me is apple except my looks, for which I am constantly reminded by the stares of passersby that inaudibly but obviously ask, “Why is there a pear in the apple tree?”

For every anthropomorphized pear in an apple tree, there will inevitably be questions. “What were my roots like that made me look this way?” “How would it feel if I were an apple?” “What would it have been like to grow up with all pears, even if there was no sun and the ground was soggy?”

The author also discusses how some transracial adoptees grow up to be very content in life, some grow up to be concerned about transracial adoption (seeing the good and the bad) and some grow up to be very angry and bitter about transracial adoption.

Probably the most valuable aspects of this essay to transracial adoptive parents, is the advice that is given in regards to helping your child prepare for and deal with racism, and the "pitfalls" in adoptive parenting that are discussed. The author goes into detail about several pitfalls that well-meaning adoptive parents often fall into that can hurt their children, and gives advice on how to avoid them.

Getting advice from transracial adoptees is an invaluable resource for transracial adoptive parents, and getting to read this beautifully written essay, which was written by an eighth grade adoptee, was just wonderful.

Give it a read and let me know what you think!