Becoming and Being Adoptee: Chinese Adoptee's Narratives
Malafronti, Christopher James
In this thesis the author sets out to highlight the voices of Chinese adoptees, a perspective that is largely left out of the literature on adoption. Studying Chinese adoptees is important as the first generation, those adopted in the early to mid 1990s, come of age and begin to reflect on their adolescence and upbringing. By looking at three orienting narratives: traveling to China, receiving the child, and finding the child, the author interrogates how these stories-- intentionally or unintentionally-- work in tandem with dominant discourses of abandonment present in the Chinese adoptive community. Looking at ‘disruptions’ in the adoptee’s nuclear family reveals the loss in adoption. Critically looking at the adoptee’s experiences of Othering, the author finds that Chinese adoptees are made to feel their difference in both public spaces and the private space of the family. A consequence of discourses of White saviorship and abandonment in the Chinese adoptee community is a sense of commodification of the adoptee. Finally, the author looks at how Chinese adoptees relate to Chinese “culture,” and an emergent Adoptee culture. Analyzing the transracial adoptees’ racial identification and lived experiences disrupts and exposes the fictions of normative notions of race and family.
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