226 Harrison Mooney
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/226
Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests is to be construed as psychological, medical or legal advice.
You are listening to adoptees on the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today we are so honored to introduce you to Harrison Mooney, author of the incredible new memoir, Invisible Boy, where he exposes the trauma of transracial adoption. Harrison shares with us why family preservation is so important to him and how he was able to reconnect with his biological mother after a lengthy time of silence between them.
We talk about the complexities of being in a situation where it didn't feel safe to say the whole truth about adoption and about how good it feels when you're finally able to speak freely. We wrap up with some recommended resources and, as always, links to everything we will be talking about today are on the website adopteeson.com.
Before we get started with my conversation with Harrison, I want to invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community over on adopteeson.com/community. Which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. Okay, friend, I'm so excited to share this episode with you. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Harrison Mooney. Welcome, Harrison.
Harrison Mooney: Hi. Thanks for having me.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. My pleasure. I'd love it if you would start the way we always do here, if you would share some of your story with us.
Harrison Mooney: Yeah, so I was adopted as a baby. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and adopted at 11 days old.
As I understand it, there's a waiting period where some forms in Canada have to be filed or something. But my biological mom had me for five days and then they took me away. You know, she didn't really want to give me up. So she tried to hold onto me and she said every day the nurses would come in and kind of wrestle me away from her.
Because they didn't want her to get too attached to this baby that grew inside of her body already. Anyhow, I was adopted by a White, very Christian family. And we lived in Abbotsford, which is a little suburb just outside of Vancouver. Very religious, small town vibes.
It's getting a little bigger now, but it still just feels like the smallest, jerkiest town and we were radical Christians. So, I grew up understanding that God had built this family, that he'd taken me from, you know, a vessel and given me to this other family because, you know, they were Christian and they were God-fearing and they prayed and asked him to do that.
And so I really leaned into my faith and to Christianity. And as my family got more and more radical, we went to more and more charismatic churches. You know, I did my best to fit in and to ignore the white supremacy at the heart of these institutions and mine, in particular.
And at the same time, I wasn't really being taken care of. I wasn't given any guidance for how to be Black in these spaces. And it wasn't until I was about 19 and I got a call from the adoption agency. At that time they were called the Hope Adoption Agency.
I was told, now that you're 19, you're an adult, so you're allowed to know some things about your biological parents, and they want you to know that they love you. And I didn't know what to do with that information, but that kind of thing just rattles your foundation, you know?
It’s really like, okay, well, so somebody else is my mom, somebody else is my dad, you know? I mean, I guess I had always known that, but you don't have to engage with it until it's right on top of you. And, you know, that started a journey of, I guess, self-discovery.
I eventually went down to the adoption agency. I learned my parents' names. I was so much more comfortable in White spaces than Black spaces at that point that I reached out to my dad first. Or at least I met him first and that didn't go very well for me. But a little while later, I reached out to my mom and I met her.
And that was incredible. I mean, the moment that I met her, you know, my life was completely changed. And I don't know that I knew that at the time. At the time you're just trying to process it and, you know, get through it, try not to cry or throw up or just run. But it was actually seven years between meetings.
I met my mom that first time and we made plans to have dinner a week later. And then we both just didn't do that. And, yeah, seven years later I called her and we tried again. And you know, in that time it took, we had a few really good years of building a relationship and recovering what was lost.
I wrote this book Invisible Boy to really explain to her what my life had been like after she gave me up. And she read the first draft and we cried together and we commiserated and we shared stories that were just so similar. And then a month after that, she woke up one day and there was blood in her eye.
She went to the doctor. It turned out that she had leukemia and she died in May. So, now I'm post a lot of things. I'm post this book that I wanted to write my whole life. You know, I wanted to meet my mom and have a relationship with her and I wanted the 30 years with her that I got with my adoptive mom.
Yeah. Now, I'm reeling a little bit, you know. I've done this big thing and I've suffered this great loss, and I'm not quite sure where to go from here, but I'm really glad that I started this journey and I'm really glad that I met her and that I had an opportunity to know her before she died.
Yeah, it's an ongoing journey, but that's mine.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I'm so sorry for the loss of your mother, and I've heard you say a couple of times, “I'm proud of my sorrow.” I wonder, would you be comfortable sharing a little bit about what you did to summon up the courage to get back into a real relationship with her?
I'm hesitating because so many of us have had the luxury and privilege of meeting a biological parent. If we're so fortunate. And maybe having a brief reunion and then one or both just cut off contact because of numerous reasons.
But the reconnection following that, what led you there? What did you do? How were you both ready or not? I mean, that's really interesting.
Harrison Mooney: Yeah, it was so difficult because she meant so much to me and I meant so much to her, but you could tell, you know, like when I looked at her, I felt all this love that I wasn't used to feeling.
And I felt this attraction, you know, like an attraction to my mom. Like it was platonic or whatever. But it also felt weird. It felt stronger than my fondness for my friends, or it was an attraction that I didn't really know how to handle.
And I know that she had that too, and that just freaked us out. It was weird, you know, how do you deal with emotions this strong? And after everything that we'd both been through, we had all of our walls up and I think we were both quite withholding. Every time that we saw one another, it just made us want to drop all those walls and just like hug, and in my book I said I wanted to climb into her lap and ask her to tell me the story of how I was born.
That was just a real tangible feeling and it was intense. So, yeah, after avoiding each other for those seven years, I invited her over to the house and we made dinner for her. I listened to the episode with Tony Corsentino, and he talked as well about having his family over and making dinner for them.
It's part of the people pleasing thing. It's part of, Hey, I turned out really well and really responsible and I mean, look, I can even cook for myself. So, we did that and I remember after dinner we went outside and we smoked a joint together and I thought it would put us at ease and instead it made us so anxious and we couldn't look at one another.
And so we actually went back inside and we stood on either side of my wife and we talked to one another while looking at her because we couldn't do that. But I said, while staring at my wife, to my mom I said, I know that this is just so intense and awkward right now. But yeah, it won't feel that way in 30 years. This is the work, and it's the work we have to do to recover what was lost and to get where we want with one another. And every time I see you it's going to be less awkward.
And it was, we got to a point where we could chat and she came over and we could look one another in the eyes and the first day that she left, she said, I love you. And I said, thanks. And I've done that a few times in my life, but as our relationship went on, it just became clear that this is safe. You know, you can say, I love you, too. And I did.
At that time I was even struggling with my terms, you know, I had my adoptive mom who I was calling my mom, and I thought of as my mom. And then I had my birth mother, you know, this kind of formal distancing term that we have to just put some space between us and the woman who gave birth to us. But I didn't like it. I felt like I love her. She's my mom. I wanna call her my mom. And it took a long time.
I mean, it took the whole process of writing this book and it took therapy and just a lot of thinking and feeling sad. But, you know, one day I woke up and I thought of my mom and I thought of my biological mom, and it felt like a lightning bolt and I didn't know how to explain to other people. Like, no, you don't understand.
Like, I woke up today and when I thought “my mom,” I pictured a different woman than I've pictured every other time for my whole entire life. You know, I did it, and it was just so rewarding. And so, yeah, when I say I'm proud of my sorrow, it's because I just put in so much work. I went against all of my instincts for self-preservation and avoiding conflict and discomfort.
I just leaned right into it because I want her back. I want her in my life, you know? And I'm not going to let what happened to us keep us apart after we found one another. So, she's gone now, but I knew her. I loved her. And when I think of my mom, I think of her. And I can't tell you how proud I am to mourn my mom. When the first time I met her I couldn't think of her as anything else than a birth mother. I couldn't tell that I loved.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. The work, it goes unseen usually, and so to actually spell it out for folks who are likely along that path somewhere, I think is so valuable. And you alluded to or you mentioned these feelings of self-preservation and, you know, we often talk about the traditional adoption narrative and trying to blow that up here in this adoptee-only space, we've been working for a few years on it already, followed by multiple decades of other adoptees who've done the work before us. And I am curious how that's shifted for you now having your work out in the world.
There's a scene in your memoir where you're sort of hijacked to come into this meeting with a bunch of White adoptive mothers and this intense pressure to be like, Oh yeah, adoption was great. Like, I'm so glad a White family adopted me and answering those questions in the way they hope and expect is out of this place of self-preservation.
Can you talk a little bit about that moment and then what would you say now versus coming from a place of strength and not that fear of having to pull it together?
Harrison Mooney: Yeah. That moment in the book comes when I go down to the adoption agency and I'm there to learn my parents' names, but I get there and there's a support group happening for the White moms who adopted all these other versions of me.
And you know, they're all sitting around and when I get in there, they kind of jump up and they're really excited to talk to me. And it turns out that they knew I was coming. And so in their minds I was kind of their special guest and I realized then, I think, often as adoptees, we have this sense that we're really alone.
You know, we have our own language for what's going on but we learn that in our house, and it's so hard to connect with other adoptees and it's often hard to think of ourselves as part of a larger structure, this whole system that's scooped up so many of us and displaced so many of us and just left us confused and with this weird sense of loss that's like invisible and mostly unexplainable, but we feel it and it just handicaps us at every moment.
It's so bizarre. So that was the moment where I started to realize that there were just so many other people caught up in this, and my experience of being raised by these White parents who just had no idea what they were doing, that was quite universal. I think a lot of people had gone through that, but it made me mad.
Well, why are you all doing this? Like, why wouldn't you just even treat your adopted kids as people and be like, Hey, I actually don't know how to handle your Blackness. Do you know how to handle your Blackness? And then when I say, No, I don't, because you never taught me, we go looking together for a way for me to claim my identity.
I just feel that work could be done, but it's not. And I got so mad and I wanted to tell everybody, Look, you know you guys aren't equipped to raise Black children, like every one of you is disqualified. But yeah, I mean, these were 12 versions of my mom who I was terrified of.
So instead I said what you're supposed to say, which is, you know, “I'm grateful” and “I had a great life.” And “Wow, like I moved up a couple classes with this adoption. So look at me now.” And actually, you know, growing up around White people gave me a White voice, and that makes me really good on the phone, and that makes me very hireable in Vancouver.
I could say all kinds of things that people want to hear, but now I'm mad and now I've written a book and now I've done work that I know a lot of people haven't done, and I have some experience now in attempting to restore a relationship and in going back through your trauma and working on what to say to people and, you know, when I wrote the book, I said, this is my big powerful statement: Adoption is not necessarily good.
That's what I said. But, you know, as time has gone on and after writing this, I lost my mom. I mean, now I say it's not good. It's not a good system. And when people push back, and they do, because of course there are success stories or folks who are still in the sunken place and haven't realized how bad this is for them yet, or, you know, whatever else.
I get that those stories are out there. But, you know, because of that, there's always going to be a pushback. And that pushback is: Well, what would you do differently?
And my answer is: Adopt families, not children. My mom was 16 years old when she put me up for adoption. She was in the foster system, she was adoptable. And what makes me so upset is that instead of helping her and taking her in, she needed a home. She could have used all the resources that I got.
Instead of doing any of that, they just ripped me out of her arms and left her to die. I feel it's just so unconscionable. It makes me so upset and that I have to explain to people why that's a stupid system for helping me makes me mad. So, that's what I say now.
Haley Radke: Well, we are all about family preservation here, so yes, yes, yes, yes.
I don't know why, I've heard the word “adoption agency” like five million times. But at some point when I was reading and thinking about your memoir, I just kept thinking of the word “agency”. And the irony that adoption agencies are called agencies when we have no agency and they stole it from us. It's kind of funny to me.
Harrison Mooney: I know. That's fun. Can I just say that I intentionally included agency in their name because of that. And Hope Adoption or I think sometimes they were Hope Adoption Services, but I wanted to make it very clear that, no, they're out here peddling agency and I'm just delighted that somebody noticed that.
Haley Radke: Wasn't it something even worse? Before they were called Hope Adoption Agency?
Harrison Mooney: They were called Burden Bearers International.
Haley Radke: Well, we are a burden. Okay. I am going to go back to this idea of agency and I don't know if you're comfortable talking about this.
Harrison Mooney: I probably am.
Haley Radke: You probably are. Okay. So your biological father almost succeeded in quashing this book. And so as an adopted person who's had so much agency removed at the beginning of your life, what was it like to have him try and usurp your voice as an adult?
Harrison Mooney: Oh, it was so difficult. It was frustrating because I knew him. I knew from our first meeting, which is in the book, it's chapter 9, what I was in for if I decided to step back into his life or to reconcile with him. He is a man who didn't listen to me and he didn't really seem to care that I'd lived a whole life.
He wanted me to pick up where he left off. He called me by a different name. He said weird things about Blackness, about his kids. When I was writing the book, I called him and I told him, Hey, I'm gonna write this chapter and it's gonna have this first meeting in it, and it doesn't necessarily make you look the best, but I'm hoping that you'll understand that this is part of a larger thing that I'm trying to do.
It has a lot to do with how White parents engage with Black children. And, you know, he didn't take that well and I didn't send him a copy of the book before I submitted it to the publisher. But when my mom was on her deathbed, he came to visit her and got ahold of it and he read just his part and got outraged.
And he sent, he says, a cease and desist, but it was just a nasty email to HarperCollins customer service. And he called me a liar and he said that I defamed him in the most corrupt ways. And he came to my mom's house while I was there and he yelled at me and I fled the house.
And this is one of these things that I'll probably wind up writing about, but as I was running down the stairs to get away from him, he stood at the top of the stairs and said, You know, you're not even really Black. You only wanted to hang out with your mom because she makes you feel Black, but you're half White too.
And I said, Oh, you're blowing it. And he said, Get the hell outta here before I do something I'm gonna regret. And then I fled the house and I knew that somebody was going to do that. This book is not shy. I didn't hold anything back. I knew that some people were going to get upset.
I just didn't think it would be him. I didn't think that he'd get that upset. But, yeah, that's kind of where we left it. The last time I saw him was at my mom's funeral and he stood a ways off with his arms crossed and we didn't speak. And I'm sure he'll come around again.
I think that honestly he has more need of me than I do of him at this point, so I don't think I've heard the last of him. But, man, let me tell you, having your dad yell at you like that? I mean, it sucks when it's your dad who raised you, but when it's like your biological father and he's…oh, yeah.
I don't know. I haven't told that story before, so it's not polished. But it was a tough one. It was one of the worst days of my life.
Haley Radke: I'm really sorry you had to experience that.
I don't know what to say. You know, the silencing just doesn't end. Sorry to tell you this, but I've interviewed a lot of adopted people who've written memoirs and it's cost them so much, which is not a surprise to you.
One of the things is, when you've got this platform, which is amazing and it comes from all the work you've done over the years as a journalist and sharing other work that you've done.
And I'll tell you this, I don't know if you know this. I went to your book launch Zoom and one of the first events I think you did for the book when it was out in the world. And I had to turn it off immediately because the first question you were asked was “What do your adoptive parents think about this?”
Harrison Mooney: Oh, yeah. Right away.
Haley Radke: And I almost vomited. I was like, it's not even safe. You said everything you need to, this person obviously didn't read your book because they maybe would know, and that was the first question they landed on. And I just thought, God, it just doesn't end. So I'm not asking you what your adoptive parents think.
I'm asking you, how does that feel for you to still be like, wow, did I not put it all out there for you yet?
Harrison Mooney: Yeah. That's a fun question because, you know, as much as I've done this and I feel very brave and I feel I pushed through all these fears. I'm still really afraid of my parents, my adoptive parents, and when people ask, what do your parents think about this?
It makes me tighten up. I try not to think about what they may or may not think about this because there's so much else at play, right? They almost never looked at my other art, like I was in a band. We released an album. I gave them a copy, shrink wrapped.
And a year later I came over and it was still shrink wrapped. And I've written some short stories for journals and I'd say, Oh, I have a short story in this journal. And they didn't read that. I was in a play. They didn't come to that. So I feel like there's a really good chance that they never read this book, and that's heartening and somehow more hurtful.
I would love it if they didn't read the book because then they won't get mad at me. But at the same time, I mean, these are my parents. They're supposed to care about my biggest achievements. This is the best thing I've ever done. And I've been working on this in some way or another for like 20 years.
So, you know, the book's been out for two weeks and it really is devastating that I haven't heard from them at all, even to yell at me. But I don't like getting yelled at. I had to decide when I was writing this book that I don't care in the end what they think about my story because this is my story.
One of the major themes of this book is just the reclaiming of narrative. You're told that you're a bit player in somebody else's story. We prayed and God gave you to us. And I held onto that for so long, but then you want to be your own person. You want to be the star of your own show.
As I got older I realized the scope of my show, and the reality of where it began and where I am now and realized that my adoption was really more of an abduction. It's just that when you're in charge of the narrative, you can call it an adoption.
I realized I had to tell that story and come what may, so it was really terrifying. And there were times that I would write something that I knew was truly transgressive. Like, you're not supposed to say that about your family. You're not supposed to share those stories about your family.
And the fear that I would feel in those moments was so visceral that it felt like there was a scary man standing behind me. And there was one time where I decided to write something and I could swear that I felt him back there and I jumped and I screamed, and then it turned out that I was sitting outside on a sunny day.
I felt like I was in a dark dungeon and it was terrifying. But I mean, that's what you have to do in order to tell your story sometimes. You've just got to push through all of that abuse and all of that gaslighting and all of the ways that people say, Hey, you can't tell this.
You're not supposed to just say that. Well, screw you. I'm gonna tell it. I don't care. If I can't tell my story, I don't exist. And I do. I exist. So yeah, I've written it and I'm sure that my parents would have big thoughts about it and I don't give a (beep).
Haley Radke: Love it. What a great answer. Okay. I've heard you talk about a worry that you had that people from your past, the history that you're sharing about in your memoir, which really is like childhood to young adulthood as a main scope of time, that folks might dispute what you've shared.
And that you felt. Again, as a journalist, you felt the need to collect evidence and corroborate your story. And on the show here, we've talked a lot about so many of us are estranged from our adoptive parents or they've died and sometimes we're mourning the fact that they have been what we see as the history keepers, you know?
They still have the photos, they still have the family movies, you know? Home movies when that was a thing.
Harrison Mooney: What are those?
Haley Radke: I know I'm just a couple years older than you, so I related to the timeframe that you really shared about. Can you talk about how you got folks to corroborate your memories and how that felt?
And you just mentioned the gaslighting after being told so many of those things didn't happen. And in your memoir you recount multiple times where you would bring up an incident of racism that you experienced. And anyone you shared it with, they'd be like, Oh, no, no, that's not racist. That's, no, no, no.
Harrison Mooney: You're seeing things.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Could you comment a little bit about that? On looking for corroboration, but also how we can gain back our memories or have corroboration from somewhere else if we don't have a connection with our adoptive families.
Harrison Mooney: Yeah. I think the first thing is your memories are true. Right?
They're your memories. And even if you misremember something, the way that you misremember it, that impacts who you are, that impacts how you walk and you talk, and what you're recovering from. So writing this book, I was very confident that what I remember happened, but also that my memories are factual.
I'm not making anything up. I'm telling you what I recall, and if it turns out that there's something that has been narrativized or something where I've misremembered it in some way, that's also part of how memory works. So, you know, these things get twisted, but we need to be able to stand up for what we remember.
That said, if you write a book that insinuates that real living White people are racist, you're probably going to get sued. And I knew that. And so I looked for every single person that I wrote about. I'd call them, I'd email them, you know, I'd tell them what I was doing. And, I had a little bit of a trick because they never understood my experience.
And so even as I explained it, I knew that it was just washing over them so I could tell them exactly what I was doing and they'd be like, Oh, oh yeah, you know, that sounds good. But then I would ask them, what do you remember about this moment? What do you remember about this moment? And there were times that, you know, our recollections aligned and then there were times that they remembered it completely differently.
And that was interesting too, I think. Well, you know, how come I don't remember saying that thing? And I think often with memory, our memories are also trying to protect us and this kind of fragile version of us that exists. And so, you know, there are times that we'll omit something from our memory because it makes us feel bad about ourselves.
I did a workshop last night where we were working on memoir writing and storytelling and I asked one of the students to tell a story and she told the story about a time that a neighbor girl drank some wine from her mom's liquor cabinet. And then what we did is we asked her a bunch of questions about it.
Because any time that somebody tells a story, they've told you more about themselves than they realize, and, I mean, you can always find the pressure points. And so I asked her eventually, Did you have any wine? And she said, You know, I don't remember. I was like, Okay, well, see. Then I said, How much of a transgression would it have been for you to have wine?
She was like, Well, we were very Christian and it would've been a big sin. Again, I understand that whether she did or didn't, her memory is that she did not. That's how we work to preserve ourselves. So I love talking to other people and hearing their kind of Rashomon version of my story.
I know that they didn't engage with me as a full human being in many cases. So yeah, they don't actually remember my reaction. They don't remember saying these things to me, and they don't want to think of themselves as a racist, so they're going to omit that stuff from their own memory. But some people are really cool.
You know, you'll call them and you'll say, Oh, this is what happened, and they'll be like, Oh, I did do that. I'm really sorry. And then we'll talk all about it. I had to do that when I reached out to Ashley, my ex-girlfriend from my teenage years. I was part of gaslighting her.
I was on my family's side and they hated her. And I didn't know how to serve two masters in that case. I really think that she suffered as a result. And so when I reached out to her, the first thing that I had to do was just say, Hey, I've been doing a ton of reflection on my life. Turns out it was really messed up and I figured that out after I left Abbotsford
But now that I know, Oh my God, I'm so sorry. And it was really healing and it was just really incredible for her then to be able to corroborate our time together and those experiences and the things that I remembered and in the end, all of that research made me feel so much more confident in my story because all of the controversial parts, I have somebody who was there or somebody who can back it up or somebody that I told the next day, like, you won't believe what happened at my parents' house.
And then being able to do all of the other research to just find historical context. And political context. Yeah, it's made me very confident in the story I'm telling. And knew that I had to be able to stand on this as hard as I can because the detractors are coming. But you know, I'm really glad I did it.
Haley Radke: Well, let's go to recommended resources because I absolutely want to recommend Invisible Boy. It's, oh my gosh. Harrison. It's so good. I mean, I hope, you know, I mean, I think you know, it's good. But it's in, I don't wanna hurt anybody's feelings, it's in my top three adoptee memoirs of all time. I'm not just saying that cause you're just here, but,
Harrison Mooney: Oh, you're gonna make me cry.
Haley Radke: I'm a White woman. Same race adoption. So I'm actively unpacking racism. And of course I still carry that with me, so I don't identify with those parts of the book. But as an adopted person, I identify with so much of what you shared. And then, as a quirky coincidence that we have in common, I was raised in a very conservative Mennonite town in northern Alberta called La Crete.
Harrison Mooney: Isn't that suspicious?
Haley Radke: My parents weren’t Mennonite, but it just happened that we lived there. But some of your references to nineties kids’ evangelical culture working in a Christian bookstore, I was like, oh, I remember those songs.
And so you triggered lots of memories for me. Some in a good way. Some in a not good way. And you're so funny. I mean, God, there's so many funny moments, which is really strange when you're reading some really hard, hard things. So I unreservedly recommend your book. I hope everyone picks it up.
I love voices because I'm a podcaster. It's super important to me. I listened to a lot of it on Audible and it's so lovely that you read it. How was that like?
Harrison Mooney: I loved it. I just loved it. Yeah. It was the most fun thing I've ever done. I want to read the audiobook for every book I write. I want to be a freelance audiobook guy.
I can do other people's books. It's so fun. It took a little bit for me to get into it. I think when I started, I was nervous and you're working on your cadence and there was a lot of lip smacking and they told me to eat an apple. They were like, eat an apple and that will get rid of the lip smacking.
And it was a bad apple, obviously. It wasn't like a lip smackingly good apple, because that would've increased the lip smacking. So, I did that, but then eventually I got into it and I just had so much fun. There's a moment towards the end where I actually break down.
I'm reading my own book that I had not read. I wrote this in the middle of a mental health crisis, and then I tried not to look at large parts of it. It was like I don't want to engage with that. When I get it back from the editor, if there were no marks on certain pages, I'm not even gonna go back.
Those pages are done then. So the haircut scene, I wrote it and I did not read it again. The ending, I wrote one time, never looked at it again. But then reading the audiobook, I had to engage with this stuff, and now I was on antidepressants and kind of getting a hold of myself.
And so looking at this book and kind of seeing the dark place that I went to and how vulnerable and just kind of naked I was writing this book. Yeah, it really rattled me. And, so when I got to a part towards the end where I speak in tongues, or try to, and I just felt the tears coming on and my voice cracked.
It was like, Oh, no. But yeah, they didn't make me record it again, so I assume that you can also hear me breaking down as I read my own audiobook.
Haley Radke: It's so powerful. I love hearing your voice say your own words. I'll just show you. No one else can see, but look at all my book darts. So, it's funny when you're listening to the audiobook and I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta mark that. And I didn't even open this while we were talking today, but I was like, oh, I gotta go mark that. So I would quickly flip to where that section I thought was so I could put the book dart right there.
So there we go. You gotta get Invisible Boy, everyone. And what do you want to recommend to us, Harrison?
Harrison Mooney: I want to recommend my friend Jenny Heijun Wills' incredible memoir, Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related. And I know that you guys have probably talked about it before. It's a big award-winning book, but man, what a book. And I just met her recently and we had just an incredible conversation about our own adoptions.
And we did a panel called “Transracial Adoption: Is It Any Good?” With me, Jenny and the Vancouver writer Wade Compton. And the thing that I just loved about Jenny was she's gone ahead of me in this space. She's answered all these questions before, and so there were times that I asked her the questions that, you know, where I was starting to get, and she would just smack me back with the strongest answer.
She's so strong. I've met a lot of adoptees and I feel like most of us are people-pleasers, we're willing to contort into whatever shape and that's how you fit in in a space. But Jenny is, I mean, in her own words, a brat and just from the moment she was born, it seems like you could not tell Jenny what to do.
And you know, her book was the first adoption memoir that I read where I was like, Yeah, I want to be strong like this.
Haley Radke: Yes, I love your description of her. I've been in spaces where she's the one to just like, instantly be like, Oh, nope, no, no, we're not doing that.
She is like, oh my gosh, one of my favorite, favorite people. She's been on the show. She was on episodes 133 and 218. We did a Book Club with her. Maybe we'll get to do a book club with you?
Harrison Mooney: I'd love to.
Haley Radke: Okay, lovely. Next year, 2023.
Harrison Mooney: I'm saying yes to all book club invites until it seems like it's not fun for me anymore.
Haley Radke: Okay. Hopefully you have a good experience for all the book clubs. No, it's amazing reading. We have a Book Club for Patreon supporters of Adoptees On, and every month we read another adoptee-authored book and then we're discussing it with adoptees, which is such a powerful experience.
So I'm so thankful for your work on your memoir. I can imagine it feels like you're standing naked in a field and we're all getting to see all the hard parts. But your bravery will help others be able to share their experiences as well. So thank you. Where can we connect with you online and follow your work and see what else you have going on?
Harrison Mooney: So I don't have a website yet, because I still haven't gotten any money, but as I understand it, the money's coming. It's tough. You don't get rich writing a book.
Haley Radke: What?
Harrison Mooney: No, no, no, no, no. I'm on Twitter at Harrison Mooney. I'm fairly active on Twitter. You know, some days I tweet a lot. Other days I just lurk and retweet.
But If I do anything interesting, I'm gonna tweet about it. And I'm on Instagram at picturesofharrison. You know, I'm in the process of turning this account from an account that was just for me into one more like a professional account. So, you know, right now there are a lot of pictures of my kids and there will probably be fewer of those as we go.
But who knows? They're very cute and I just want to post pictures of them all day. Maybe I'll be allowed to, I dunno.
Haley Radke: I know once your kids are old enough, I'm always asking them like, am I allowed to post this or this? So yes, it changes over time, doesn't it?
Harrison Mooney: Yeah. I've been asking them, too, but they're four and two, and they say yes but they don't actually understand the privacy considerations. Like maybe this isn't actually ethical for me to be like, Hey, two-year-old, can I post you on the Internet?
But you know, we're all working out the ethics of the digital era at the same time on the fly.
Haley Radke: Indeed, indeed. Thank you so much, Harrison. It's just been an honor to talk with you today.
Harrison Mooney: Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was just an absolute delight.
Haley Radke: It's such an honor that I could have a conversation with Harrison and I really hope you grab his book. I really did love it and I'm sincere. Hopefully he will come back in 2023 and join us for Book Club. So we have a Book Club that is semi-monthly over on adopteeson.com. A lot of our readers felt once a month is too much.
So this month we are reading Surviving The White Gaze by Rebecca Carroll, and she is joining us if you're listening to this, when this episode has gone live. She is joining us on Monday, October 24th, for a live Zoom call with Patreon supporters of the podcast to discuss Surviving the White Gaze with my co-host Sullivan Summer.
And we're really, really excited about that conversation. And if you're listening after that conversation was recorded and the audio will be available for Patreon supporters in their Patreon podcast feed. So I invite you to join us. If you want to see more info about Book Club, it's adopteeson.com/bookclub.
And we have read so many fantastic books. So definitely check out the list on the website.
The other thing I'd recommend is ask your local public library to buy these books and have them available. It is a huge gift to other adoptees who might not have the money to buy every new book every time we talk about a new book on the show and expose other people to adoptee-authored work.
So your libraries often will have a form on their website or if you go in you can tell your librarian, Hey, this is the hot new memoir. You guys should carry it. And I know, especially libraries across Canada will be stocking Invisible Boy, so you should be able to request it from your library.
Okay. Thank you so much for listening and reading with me and thank you so much to my Patreon supporters. You make the show possible. So thank you, thank you, thank you, and let's talk again next Friday.
