My Letter to the Editor in response Elizabeth Spier’s essay “I Was Adopted. I Know the Trauma It Can Inflict” was published in Sunday’s New York Times. I’ve posted the link here; my letter is the last one on the page. I’m proud to represent a point of view shared by many in our community but often unheard.
My letter to the editor of the NY Times Read More »
Nativity sets are their own art form in Guatemala and over the years, we’ve collected a few (!!) :-).
Here are two of my favorites. The first we bought in December 2002 at the gift shop in the Guatemala City Marriott, now Barcelo. Before Olivia’s adoption was final, Tim and I visited over Christmas and stayed with Olivia a few blocks away at the Camino Real. Strolling to the Marriott was one of our activities.
The second Nativity I bought in 2014 at the Artisan Market in Antigua. The painter has a stall in the first building, turn left and then right, about four doors in. Or at least he did. During our most recent visit this summer, his place was locked up tight and no one could remember seeing him for a while. I love the paint on these carved figures–so vibrant and detailed, the objects feel almost psychedelic.
Three years ago this week, I celebrated completing my capstone project with the Antioch Los Angeles MFA class of 2018, “Emerald” cohort. This project formed the core of the manuscript which became my debut novel, Mother Mother.
Getting an MFA in creative writing had been my dream since graduating college a million years ago. My fabulous teachers and the creative, dedicated Emeralds made it come true. I miss our invigorating exchange of ideas and mostly I miss the friendships. 
A friend sent me this opinion piece from the Korea Times, “The second generation: A story of Korean adoptees’ child,” written by Bastiaan Flikweert (Shin Seo-vin). Flikweert was born in the Netherlands, the biological son of two Korean adoptees who grew up in the Netherlands, married, and later moved with Bastiaan and the rest of their family to South Korea to reconnect with their roots.
In the essay, Bastiaan Flikweert discusses the ripple effect of adoption—particularly how his Korean parents’ adoption by Dutch parents affected him. He describes his Dutch childhood:
“I looked different and was bullied… I had a hard time explaining to my peers on the playground that my parents were adopted and that I, therefore, was Dutch. Why did I have to explain myself in the first place? Were my parents not ordinary Dutch people? It took me a while to realize that most people did not see it that way: To them, I was a second-generation immigrant…. My parents did not choose to come here in the first place! Why are they not seen as just Dutch people? They were adopted! Well, it turned out that adoption was the problem.”
Flikweert also writes:
“[My] parents’ quest for ‘belonging’ was a burden that I was going to carry with me my whole life… The reason why we as a family moved to Korea in the first place was that my parents wanted to grant us, their children, a childhood in Korea ― an experience they thought they had been robbed of. For a long time, I resented my parents…. Was I Korean or not? Did Korea ever fully accept me? I wasn’t adopted, so why did I have to struggle with these questions?”
Some of his observations are specific to the experience of adoption from Korea, but many are universal to adoptees everywhere. Flikweert concludes his essay by calling for a deeper examination of the multi-generational ramifications of international adoption, which he notes have been overlooked in the “increasing critical adoption scholarship”:
“As a child of two transnational adoptees, I am aware that the so-called ‘second generation’ is even more diverse than the first. While my siblings and I were lucky enough to experience life in Korea… most children do not have this opportunity. They grow up as ‘half-bloods’, unable to fully explain their heritage. This is a distinctly different experience from that of the “kyopo” (Korean diaspora) or “honhyeol” (mixed blood) because neither of the parents has a meaningful connection to Korean culture and language.”
I appreciate the candor of Flikweert’s essay and always learn something when people touched by adoption in any way share their perspective. Read the essay here.
Photo credit from The Korea Times:
In this 2011 file photo, Bastiaan Flikweert poses with his family during the Ministry of Justice’s event celebrating reinstatement of nationality for Koreans who were adopted overseas as babies. Courtesy of Bastiaan Flikweert
Opinion piece by second generation Korean adoptee Read More »
My son Mateo recently discovered my old Mamalita blog and told me he loved reading about himself when he was a little boy. So I decided to cut and paste entries into a file and put together a little book for him and Olivia–the baby book I never kept except for my years of blog posts.
Here’s an entry from Spring 2013, written during a trip Mateo and I took to Antigua, Guatemala, just the two of us. Lovely to remember.
Mateo’s New Suit
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably figured out I’m Catholic and my husband and I are raising our kids Catholic. What does that mean, exactly? A lot of things, which I won’t go into here because I believe every religion is valid and to be respected, as is the choice of no religion at all, by the way, and I’m not telling this story as a platform to discuss my faith.
No, my reason for bringing up Catholicism is to share the experience of buying for my son Mateo his very own First Holy Communion suit, from the charming purveyor of First Holy Communion suits in the photo above, who practices his fashion genius somewhere in the depths of the municipal mercado in Antigua, Guatemala.
The year before, Mateo and I had bought a suit from the same distinguished gent, intending to save it for the Sacrament this April. What we hadn’t counted on was Mateo’s growth spurt, which steered the original suit pants and jacket toward clown costume territory.
But try finding the same tailor in the maze of the mercado! My remembered directions sounded like this: “Walk down the right side aisle, through the section with the pirated DVDs, past the candles and flowers and soccer balls, turn left at the section with the raw meat hanging, through the wrapping paper and baskets and candy, past the shoes and wallets and leather belts, beyond the place with the sacks of rice and beans and the guy who sells machetes. Somewhere around that.”
Fortunately, the lady in the First Communion dress section knew exactly where the tailor who sold First Communion suits was headquartered and she kindly escorted us to the proper stall. Success!
Not shown here are the suit’s handsome complementary items: the white ruffled shirt, the black bow tie. For that, we’ll have to wait for Mateo’s First Holy Communion “big reveal.”
xoxox
