286 Grace Newton, MSW
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/286
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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're listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is Grace Newton, a Chinese adoptee, author of the prolific blog, Red Thread Broken, and one of the co authors of the Adoptee Consciousness Model. We discuss the reasons for the rise and fall of international adoption from China and how the critical adoption scholarship of Chinese adoptees is on the rise, including Grace's own contributions.
Grace also gets more personal sharing about her relationship with her Chinese American fiance and how their love story and family have helped her on her racial reclamation journey. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you [00:01:00] to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources for you, and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On, Grace Newton. Welcome, Grace.
Grace Newton, MSW: Hi, thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: I'm so glad that we finally get a chance to chat. I'd love it if you would start by sharing some of your story with us.
Grace Newton, MSW: Sure. My name is Grace Newton and I am a Chinese transracial transnational adoptee.
I was adopted from Nanjing in Jiangsu province, China in 1997 when I was three years old. And I was adopted to Madison, Wisconsin. My parents are both white, and I have no siblings, [00:02:00] so I grew up as an only child, and I guess I actually grew up a little bit outside of Madison, in a suburb that's predominantly middle upper class, white, I oftentimes talk about, I think my while I always was really proud to be Chinese American, my early childhood understanding of my ethnic racial identity, I think, was honestly more of a pan Asian one.
As I saw what Asian friends of mine did at home, I would pick up little things, like leaving the shoes outside the door, eating whatever spicy foods, or just little things I would notice and I'd be like, oh, this must be an Asian thing. And I would tuck it away. And so I really was able to explore my identities, both as a Chinese American person and as an adoptee when I was in college, which I think is a pretty common experience for a lot of adoptees because we're finally [00:03:00] on our own for the first time.
And I think that for me, I really realized, that people were seeing me as this Asian woman independent of my family because they didn't know my parents or my upbringing. And so I really had to grapple with, I think, this internal way that I saw myself and the external ways I noticed the world was seeing me.
And I also, when I was in college, I took a class on transracial and transnational adoption that was taught by a Korean adoptee professor. And this class really opened my eyes to a lot of the complex history and, lesser told stories within adoption. And so that was really the catalyst for me to create my blog, which is called Red Thread Broken, where I really used that as a tool to continue processing things that I had learned from that class, [00:04:00] and I've continued writing and thinking about adoption and I'm currently in a PhD program in social work. And my area of research is adoption.
Haley Radke: What led you to pursue your master's and then go into studying adoption?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, I think for me, a lot of it really comes back to the class that I took in undergrad. And my blog during college, I took a class that was called like the psychology of, or maybe it was Asian American psychology and then this adoption class.
And I think those experiences were the first time that I really saw my identities as an Asian American woman and as an adoptee reflected in the research. And I think that. That was a really empowering experience for me. And so in undergrad, I had toyed with the idea of going into academia, but I think I wasn't really [00:05:00] sure if I really liked the idea of academia or if it was just somewhat comfortable because all I'd ever known was being a student.
And so after college, I worked at an insurance company for a little bit. I did an AmeriCorps position with United Way as I was thinking about what I wanted to do. And during this whole time, I had continued writing on my blog. And I think in the back of my mind, I'd always thought still about this idea of academia, but I think simultaneously I had avoided social work for a while because my mom was a social worker and I didn't want to be mini her.
But I realized that I think with my interests and passions and the ways that I wanted to be involved at social work really fit. A lot of those well, and I really like that the field of social work is a values based profession that's [00:06:00] rooted in social justice. And so I decided to pursue my MSW and I knew I wanted to work near in adoption in some capacity. And I'd also been told. Just pragmatically for the academic path, it's recommended to have at least two years of social work, field experience, post masters before starting a Ph. D. And so I went to Washington University in St. Louis for my MSW, and after that, I worked in public adoptions in the state of Wisconsin for a couple of years.
So I worked primarily with foster youth who were being adopted by their current foster parents, as well as some hopeful adoptive parents who were interested in adopting specifically from the public foster care system. And so a lot of [00:07:00] my just like personal engagements have been with international adoptees and a lot of the my own experience as a Chinese adoptee, of course, is an international one.
And so I think that my experience working in Wisconsin in public adoptions was in a part to also complement my other knowledge and just see where are all of these similarities and the differences and in all of these adoption stories. And so after, yeah, about two years working in public adoptions, I started my PhD program to continue looking at these questions from like the research lens.
Haley Radke: If you're comfortable sharing. How was that personally for you to work in adoption for two years. Did that take a toll because we'll get into this within a little bit you were a part of working on the adoptee consciousness [00:08:00] model and it sounds like that to me that you had already come into some consciousness about adoption and saw some of the difficult things in it. And of course, now you've gone on to study it even further. So personally, as an adoptee, with some of those formed opinions and I'll let you say what they are. How was that? I'm like, Oh my gosh, how did you do that?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, it was definitely challenging at times, and I think while I had worked informally in adoption spaces as, like a facilitator for small groups or teen support groups, in those circumstances, the adoptee themselves were, like, who I was primarily working with. But in my role, public adoption social worker. My clients were both the adoptive parents or prospective adoptive parents and the soon to be adoptee. And I think that it was really [00:09:00] challenging holding this kind of dual identity as both an adoptee and adoption professional. And there were certainly some situations that, that I felt less certain about than others.
I think I always tried to just really reflect a lot of care for the children that I was working with and answer their soon to be adoptive parents questions. With all of my background information, I did not disclose to I don't think any of the adoptive families actually that I was an adoptee based on my Anglo name. Some people may have been able to guess. And there were definitely comments made by some of the adoptive parents regarding birth family that were really difficult to deal with. And I would try to interject or again, intervene in ways that were really beneficial to the child because at the [00:10:00] end of the day even the adoptive parents who I would say, maybe didn't have a complete understanding of all of these complexities of the system they were entering.
I could genuinely see that they wanted the best for the child and their care. And I think trying to work together to create that as the outcome is the goal. And I think that, in terms of, my own knowledge too, I think at times it's been really easy to see all of the corruption and cases, particularly in international adoption, where I feel like international adoption as an intervention was completely unnecessary.
And I think, working with some of the kids that I did really learning their stories too. And I think. It did become quite apparent to me that some of these situations the children would never and should never go back to the circumstances that they were in originally. [00:11:00] And so I think it did also force me to think in a more, more holistic and more complex way to of adoptions will always exist in some capacity.
It may not be international forever, but kinship care, informal adoptions, even formal adoptions. And yeah how do we make this experience the least harmful as possible. Because I think it is unrealistic to say end adoptions altogether.
Haley Radke: I think from someone like me who comes from a family preservation standpoint, and it sounds like that's your perspective as well, it is so helpful to see there are the asterisk cases where, and I think the public sees all of them as these asterisk cases these ones really are necessary.
But truly, there may be some that are necessary. And we are looking to the whole and [00:12:00] seeing the problems in the system and trying to fix the upstream things and I know it's like it probably is always going to be around maybe not how do I say this? I think there's a lot of people that talk about the things you mentioned like kinship care informal adoptions, legal guardianship, and making sure we're not changing the child's identity and having access to their medical history and all those kinds of pieces as well.
So there's there's a huge thing to look at. And it's not just like family preservation is the only way and that that just is excluding such a grand part of the problem. I mentioned that you helped work on the Adoptee Consciousness Model. And so I love when I see adoptees working in the research, because we've talked about this before so many times on the show what's talking about us? Who's researching us? And we need to make sure we have [00:13:00] evidence for the things that we're talking about anecdotally. So can you talk a little bit about how that was to work on that? And also thank you for your work on that. And my second part of that is how have you seen it now in use in adoptees vernacular? Have you heard people say that to you?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, it's been a really exciting project for me to work on. And so I guess I've been working primarily with Dr. Susan Branco and JaeRan Kim, who approached me after I published my first peer reviewed article called The Trauma and Healing of Consciousness, which was an autoethnography that looked at, or I guess it used my experiences as an adoptee in academic settings to propose this trauma and healing of consciousness framework.
Where I and so [00:14:00] that paper came about because I had been looking at a lot of literature about trauma in my MSW program. And there's a lot on historical trauma and collective trauma, intergenerational trauma, but I was thinking about the ways in which just coming into this knowledge about the history, complexity, different child removal projects was traumatic.
And I didn't need to be intergenerationally, like connected to these other groups of adoptees by a shared lineage to all of that trauma that's embedded in this community and in these adoption practices and so yeah, Drs. Branco and Dr. JaeRan Kim reached out to me after reading that because they had already been working on the first paper or like the Adoptee Consciousness Model.
And so I was able to join in that [00:15:00] project. And I think that I really have seen an uptick in the use of just consciousness language around the adoptee community. And I feel so fortunate that this work is really resonating with people. We draw upon some other models of adoptee awareness. And then of course, the kind of ubiquitous language of coming out of the fog and our, the adoptee consciousness model, instead of just, like a pre and post state proposes these five different touch points that adoptees work through in different stages of coming into consciousness around this identity.
We view this as a kind of a in a spiral, but not necessarily a linear way that you have to go through all these steps in order, just that you can bounce around the spiral and different events, like overturning Roe v. Wade or having a child [00:16:00] or any other like large major events might send you through that spiral once again.
And that it's just, it's not really this pre and post thing, it's the never ending process. And so I'm really excited that this has been received so well by adoptees and we did a study with a number of focus groups and I felt really privileged to hear all of those stories of our participants and just to see how these different touchstones are reflected in each of their experiences of coming into consciousness around their adoptee identity.
Haley Radke: Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for your work on that. I had a whole episode on the adoptee consciousness model. So we'll link to that in the show notes if people want to hear a little bit more about it. And we'll link to the paper as well, because it's very accessible for folks to read. And I love how earlier you were like, I went to [00:17:00] this university class and that probably brought you right to one of those touch points, right?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, definitely.
Haley Radke: So I think it's neat that your autoethnography led into working with Susan and JaeRan. That's awesome. I'm curious about some of the things I saw you present about at a recent conference as well. So I got up very early one Saturday morning when you and a group of your peers were presenting.
And I don't know, maybe I was the only one on Mountain Time. You guys were on Eastern at least, but it was called Carving Out Space Chinese Adoption Studies. And one of the very first things that your group was talking about was how, because there's so many Korean adoptees, and that program started earlier, that those folks have been doing research and working in the field for longer [00:18:00] and have, dominated some of the space in terms of adoptee research and of course, as they should because they've been doing this long and there's a lot of work on it.
And so in talking about Chinese adoptees, starting in the early nineties, that's when the Chinese adoption program internationally started up as 91. Is that right?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, the Chinese adoption law was, it was signed like December 29th of 91. So functionally it started around 1992.
Haley Radke: Okay. Okay. So 92. And so one of you mentioned that it's we're all now coming of age and to having our masters and PhDs and coming into the adoptee research space. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I never thought of that. So can you share a little bit more about that? And what was it like to present with your peers at the [00:19:00] ASAC conference? Cause I was like, I wish I could be in that room. Cause it felt like really something special.
Grace Newton, MSW: Thank you for getting up early and joining us virtually since you couldn't be there. I think, yeah, it was, it's, it was really wonderful being at ASAC. It was my first time there. And I think that in several years, I just have seen a lot more leadership and involvement from Chinese adoptees, which is really exciting to me as a Chinese adoptee. I have been on the advisory council of the KAAN Conference, the Korean American Adoptee and Family Network.
So I've been on the advisory council there for about six years as a Chinese adoptee. And I remember my first time attending. I was like, oh, I don't know if this is like a space for me because like it's so Korean and I have felt so welcomed there. And I think in the last couple of years, [00:20:00] the Chinese adoptee attendance has really increased at KAAN specifically, as well as Chinese adoptees leading workshops and presenting there.
And I think that part of this, is because there aren't really big established conferences for Chinese adoptees yet. And so I, I think that this is a way for us to get involved in what is already existing, but I have seen changes too, in terms of the families with children from China, New York.
Group is the first FCC group, I think, to turn over leadership to Chinese adoptees, and it's rebranded in the last couple of years as the Chinese Adoptee Alliance, and they're hosting events. And so I think that we are going to see a big increase in Chinese adoptees in these spaces. And I know of at least a couple of, I know there's LiLi Johnson, [00:21:00] who's a Chinese adoptee professor.
She was at UW Madison for a while, and I think she's somewhere in Canada now. So there are a few Chinese adoptees who are on the older side of the, Chinese adoptee cohort who are in these academic spaces. And I think part of the rationale for the conference round table that we shared at ASAC was just, yeah, I think that because the Korean adoptees are so large in number and have been so active, that in some way, they've served as this blueprint of who Chinese adoptees might be, because we are also a huge cohort, East Asian, who've been primarily adopted to the U. S., but I think, there are really specific and unique factors involved with Chinese adoptions that will make us and our group inevitably different from the Korean adoptees.
Haley Radke: One of the things you spoke about, [00:22:00] sorry, I'm using the collective you. My notes, I don't have indicated who said what every time.
I have a couple points where I know it was you, but one of the points someone made was that as Korea was winding down, then Chinese adoptions picked up. It was like the right quote unquote right timing and so there's several hundred thousand Korean adoptees and then the Chinese adoption program.
Could you speak to this a little bit like how it has it's not fully closed but how it has wound down over the last few years because of some policy decisions and then what would your estimate be of how many chinese adoptees there are.
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, I think the current estimates are about 160, 000 Chinese adoptees globally and about 83, 000 of [00:23:00] those Chinese adoptees have been adopted to the United States.
China allowed foreigners of Chinese ethnicity to adopt and some foreigners to adopt on kind of an ad hoc basis before 1991. But really, the Chinese adoption law in 1991 was what formally opened China to international adoption. And yeah, I think that when we talk about all of these international adoption systems, we have to remember how interconnected they are and, the 1988 Olympics was really what kind of started the end or major decline of Korean adoption and the just like shame around the article that came out during that time about how Korea was like exporting undesirable children. And 90, 1991 when China really opens to international adoption is not very far away from 1988 when Korea starts winding down. [00:24:00] And I think, yeah, there's a lot of factors. So Korea, which had been a major, source of adoptable children no longer is a source.
I think we'd already seen a number of adoption and trafficking scandals in Latin America, but China at this time was considered a clean country for adoption because all of these, predominantly at the time, infant girls who had been abandoned on the streets were viewed as genuinely orphaned, and I think that the fact that so many of the girls from China were abandoned anonymously due to China's policies were also attractive to adoptive parents who, a lot of parents had some concerns or hesitations about potential birth parent involvement from that would be involved with domestic adoption, but because these girls in China [00:25:00] were abandoned anonymously on the street, there's really no possibility of birth parent involvement there. So there are a lot of factors that kind of created this really desirable group in China. And so throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Chinese adoptions were on the rise. I think the peak of Chinese adoptions is about 2004 or 2005. Around that time is also when the Hunan scandal is made public to the world where there were, it was discovered there were a number of children, girls from Hunan province all trafficked among and circulated among several orphanages in that province when one orphanage's supply ran low.
So I think that particular scandal was really what turned this view that China was this entirely like legitimate [00:26:00] adoption program from all these voluntarily relinquished girls and of course under the one child policy where families, were punished through loss of income jobs, second children, unregistered children not having access to citizenship or schooling.
It's really hard to legitimately claim that any of these relinquishments of children were voluntary. And I think another turning point for Chinese adoption is around 2009, at which point China becomes basically entirely a special needs program. And so in the 1990s, when China opened adoption, the population of adoptees was 98 percent girls.
And then, yeah, by 2009 it's pretty much entirely special needs, I think in 2010, the US [00:27:00] State Department stopped keeping track of which children adopted from China had disabilities, because it was pretty much understood that they all did. And yeah, so China, yeah, post 2005, adoption from China overall has been on the decline, but the percentage of children who are being adopted, the special needs has increased, and then I think another particularly important demographic shift in this is also the number of boys who are being adopted.
As the number of special needs adoptions from China increased, the gender skew of who was being adopted really evened out too. And so around 2016, that was the first year that actually more boys from China were adopted than girls at 51 percent of the children were adopted. And so I think because a lot of the early research on Chinese adoption really involved the girls of 1990s, there's a just In some ways, a kind of flattening of [00:28:00] Chinese adoptees of that's who Chinese adoptees are.
But after the 2000s, there really is this kind of like second wave of special needs kids. And then also that about maybe like 13, 000 boys adopted from China who I think are just erased from Chinese adoption research because there's been, probably first huge group of Chinese adoptees was nearly all girls.
Haley Radke: I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse or not so I'm gonna ask you like I don't know if this is your area of expertise I know, you know a ton about this, obviously. I'm curious about the attitude in China about adopting children and so one thing that was mentioned in the presentation is that if you were to seek for your biological family, a lot of parents [00:29:00] would not want to be found because of the shame of abandoning a child, and that would be not a good situation to come into.
But, in my estimation, it's like this, the one child policy and then the two child policy and three and now that's been abolished, but that was the impetus right for abandoning children. And so I don't know how many children are available for adoption in China now, and culturally, is that something that's accepted?
I, was just at this screening of a film about Indian adoption and there's, some talk about culturally, if Indian people want to adopt and those kinds of things. So can you speak to that at all?
Grace Newton, MSW: I think Kay Ann Johnson's book, China's Hidden Children does a really wonderful job complicating the one child policy and notions [00:30:00] of like cultural preference for sons in China.
And I think what her book really shows is that there has been a longstanding pattern of domestic adoptions within China, some of them formal and some of them informal, but the 1991 Adoption Law of the People's Republic of China. The goal of that really was, in part, to crack down on domestic adoptions and promote international adoptions. And so part of the requirements of that original law was that adoptive parents had to be over the age of 35 and also had to comply essentially with one child policy by not having any children in their home. And so culturally it would be pretty uncommon for Chinese families to be 35 years of age and not have started a family and so I think that the adoption policy [00:31:00] essentially did what it was meant to do.
And in shaping who was able to adopt and a lot of western adoptive parents who participate in international adoption, a lot of them do happen to be older and do happen to have had infertility issues, which may be delayed their, family creation strategies. And so I think. That and then we see again, and I think around a 2007 reform, which is around, I think, the time that China's beginning to realize there's going to be some population issues from the one child policy, there's like a relaxing of domestic adoption laws. And so I think that one of the common issues that we hear about in terms of Chinese adoptions is around not telling the adoptee that they are adopted, which is something that, is much more possible when it's like a same race [00:32:00] adoption versus in my case, which was like a transracial international adoption, and I think that personally, in my experiences when I've gone back to China, I've come across a lot of people who, perhaps weren't necessarily aware of the extent of international adoption.
And then also, I think an interesting response is just in line with like dominant narratives of adoption. Just oh these are my family now and my parents here in the US and that's my family. And to be grateful to them that they've raised me which I am. And that, but also, there's this family in China that exists, and so I find that kind of interesting given Chinese cultural beliefs around filial piety and importance of ancestors and paying homage to that.
But I think the kind of sense that this is my family now. And yeah, I guess I wonder, one of the things that I wonder though is, we talked about [00:33:00] how all these Chinese adoptees are coming into age now. What that also means is that the siblings, of adoptees who were kept are coming into age.
And I wonder if things that were too hard or too shameful for parents to talk about are going to be exposed in terms of the siblings who want to know who and where their siblings are. And I have seen in some Chinese adoptee, or searching groups that, yeah, there are some siblings of adoptees who are searching for this missing sister..
Haley Radke: Wow, that's so interesting. I'd never thought of that, in zooming out to like the 30, 000 foot view. And one of the comments made in the presentation was that the Chinese government was using international adoption of their children to build [00:34:00] relationships with other countries. And all the powers that be in Korea or China or any of the other countries that have been exporting their children, there's no thought of the impact it has on the child in their personal well being and, all of those things. Before we do recommended resources am I right that you're getting married very soon?
Grace Newton, MSW: I am August 31st of this year less than three months away.
Haley Radke: So when we're recording, you have just a few months to go. Congratulations. So excited for you.
Grace Newton, MSW: Thank you.
Haley Radke: You wrote about your fiance on your blog. Would you just mind sharing a little bit about your relationship and how that's maybe helped you reclaim a little bit more of your ethnicity?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, sure. The starting point of that is that I experienced a breakup [00:35:00] before I started dating him. And I think in my early twenties, I was fairly open to just, meeting new people. And I think I didn't really think about what I wanted in a family life or home life. I was just like focused on my schoolwork and, Figuring out like that process and enjoying friends and, and yeah, just exploring meeting, meeting new people.
And then I think when I had a breakup and it was a relationship that, I had talked about future oriented things with and the possibility of a marriage and family and those things what would that really look like? I think I was in my late 20s, 27, I just finished my master's program, and I had started to think about those things differently.
And I think what became apparent to me was [00:36:00] that it was important for me to have this identity, like collective identity as Asian Americans. I think I was prioritizing like Chinese American. But Asian American identity, and I think that in my relationships with white men, I had also, when envisioning a family, I realized, that the burden of passing down Chinese culture, or holidays, or language, all of that would be on me, and related to, this culture that sometimes I feel like very inadequate in and the idea of having a partner who could share that responsibility, but also the joys that come with that became more important.
And so I really did prioritize at that point, dating Asian men, which was harder in Wisconsin and I was like, oh, I'm going to have to move to New [00:37:00] York or California or somewhere if I really want to prioritize this, but I met my now fiance right in, in Wisconsin. And of course, we connected about it, like a lot of.
Just like silly things and food and interests, but I think a lot of the ways that we connected initially were cultural too, in terms of being able to talk about trips back to China and for me, how I'd say, like, when I was in China, I was like the most American and simultaneously the most Chinese I ever felt, and to have someone like look back at me and totally understand that feeling was really chill and I think for me in I yeah, you mentioned I had written about this and I think being with a Chinese American person, I think there was a lot of internalized racism that I had to undo within myself in order to really think about the why I would want to [00:38:00] prioritize that in a relationship.
And I think that also there was a lot of internalized racism that came undone just being in this relationship. I think about my eyes or moles on my face and things that were like different and that made me different. And loving my fiance who has, similar features, like loving that on him I think it's made it easier to really like wash away some of those things like about myself. No, I love this on him. Why wouldn't I love this on me too? And so that's been a really remarkable part of this. And I think also being embraced by his parents here has been really special. And so I think you know, so much of adoption, we talk about this like loss of family, loss of culture, loss, so many losses.
And I think more than just my fiance himself, gaining like a family, a Chinese [00:39:00] family that, that has been really a profound thing for me too. And I think that. I recognize given the structure of the Chinese street abandonments and the complexities of and language barriers and the time that has elapsed since I left China that it may not be possible for me to find birth family.
But having this like intimate relationship with a Chinese family that has embraced me has been a huge gain for me. And I think, yeah, it's allowed me, I think also to just see so many different ways of being Chinese and Chinese American and I think watching my fiance's interactions with them and thinking about okay maybe there are some things that I wouldn't have known about Chinese culture or whatever even if I had stayed in a Chinese family, I'm like, oh, okay. I don't need to burden myself with that worry so I think yeah [00:40:00] it's all been a healing process.
Haley Radke: That's so lovely. I'm so happy for you. Congratulations. I would love for folks to check out your blog, Red Thread Broken. Congratulations on 11 years of keeping a blog going. That is impressive, Grace. Oh my goodness.
I love seeing the progression. You write about all kinds of things, like personal things, academic things, media critiques, or things that are happening right now and social critiques, I guess I could say. And there's even a post from your mother who we didn't talk about this, but you alluded to that they're supportive and.
Grace Newton, MSW: Why I as an adoptive parent.
Haley Radke: Why I an adoptive parent yes, I'm not pro adoption. I'm from 2014, and that got picked up in several places and had a huge audience. That's really a neat one to read for folks. And in 2014, you were talking about China's one [00:41:00] child policy and writing academically as a university student. So it's really neat. You have this whole history of things there.
I was like, I'm going to read your whole blog. I couldn't cause there's so many things. So I'd love for folks to check it out if they haven't already. And is there a good spot? What do you send people to when you're like, I have this really impressive blog that thousands and thousands of people read. Do you like, where do you send them?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, I don't have a specific spot and I probably should make a, here's a good starting point. Read these 10 pieces. So maybe I'll do that this summer.
Haley Radke: Okay, perfect. I have to do that too for Adoptees On. Once you have a couple hundred posts, it's it can be overwhelming for new people.
So I know they'll come in and check that out. And we'll link to a couple of the highlight pieces in the show notes for folks. What did you want to recommend to us, Grace?
Grace Newton, MSW: A book that's just been really sitting with me this year is China's Hidden [00:42:00] Children, which I talked about a little bit earlier. And I think that It's a little bit older, I think it came out in 2016, and unfortunately, Kay Ann Johnson, the author of this book, has since passed away, but I think this book is really a remarkable piece of her legacy that she's left to the Chinese adoptee community specifically. It's a difficult, I, okay, I would say it's an easy read in terms of the book, and then the content, I would say, is very difficult, and for Chinese Adoptees, especially, who do decide to read it, I would say, take care have good people around you, but it's, I think, a remarkable book that really complicates the notion of Chinese adoptions and the one child policies role in that and this overarching, I think, myth that surrounded early adoptions from China that, there's this kind of disdain towards girls within Chinese culture or [00:43:00] and what Kay Ann Johnson really shows in this book is how wanted girls from China really were within China, and how many people sacrificed and went to great lengths to hide girls who they had given birth to, and even girls who they had adopted within China who were quote unquote, over quota children.
And I think that while it can be difficult, really the resounding message to adoptees from the book is that whatever people say on this side of things we really were wanted by people in China.
Haley Radke: Thank you, that sounds wonderful to read and illuminating. I was trying to think of the name that someone else recommended this documentary about the one child policy and we also gave trigger warnings for that because it is there's just so much hurt and trauma and [00:44:00] I think it's just good to be well informed frankly, it's easier to put our head in the sand, but we shouldn't be doing that. So.
Grace Newton, MSW: Was the documentary One Child Nation?
Haley Radke: Thank you. Yes, it was. And that is yeah, so hard to watch. Thank you so much for sharing some of your expertise with us today and your personal story and for your work on Red Thread Broken and The Adoptee Consciousness model and other things I know you have coming out soon.
I'm so excited to follow your academic career as we go on through these years. I'm sure I'll be reading lots of things you've put out. Where can folks connect with you online?
Grace Newton, MSW: Yeah, so as you mentioned, I have a blog called Red Thread Broken, so you can find that at redthreadbroken.com and then on Facebook and Instagram, you can also find me, my Handles Red Thread Broken.
And I guess on Twitter, I'm @GracePingHua. So G R A C E P [00:45:00] I N G H U A. That's where I am.
Haley Radke: Perfect. Thanks so much, Grace.
Grace Newton, MSW: Thank you.
Haley Radke: We send you our congratulations, Grace, as you get married this summer. So excited for you. And Grace is continuing on in her PhD program and I'm just cheering everyone on who is working on critical adoption scholarship. It is so important. It is so important based on some of the recent trash research that I've seen coming out from supposed organizations that purport to support adoptees, and it's no, you're actively fundraising to support more families to be separated.
So let's be listening to adoptees who are doing this work. Some of the [00:46:00] questions that people come up with who do not have lived adoption experience personally are just outrageous. Honestly, I don't even know how they pass through some of the legal hoops and things that, that academic scholarship needs for them to go through, right?
Questions are supposed to be unbiased, impartial, not leading in some way when you're doing academic surveys. So when you see things come out that are very skewed or slanted one way, make sure you put your reading glasses on and you dive in personally to make sure you understand what's happening.
So anyway. As I was saying, I'm cheering on the adoptees who are looking at these issues and are able to give a perspective that is often unheard. And speaking of unheard, thank you for those of you who are supporting the [00:47:00] show, either by just sharing the episode with one fellow adoptee, maybe, a Chinese adoptee and they want to get hooked into adoptee community.
This episode is a great way to start and following Grace's blog and the ways she's sharing to connect with fellow adoptees. Another way to support the show is to share it on social media, to comment on our Instagram or share our posts when they go out or folks that are sending donations through PayPal or supporting on Patreon.
You're keeping the show alive. So it just, thank you so much for that. Thank you for listening to adoptee voices and let's talk again very soon.
