295 Lee Herrick
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/295
AO E295 Lee Herrick
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. We are starting off the year with such a delight. Lee Herrick, the California Poet Laureate, is joining us again today. Lee recently released his latest poetry collection, In Praise of Late Wonder, which is focused fully on the topic of adoption.
Today, we talk about what it means to feel significant as an adoptee, why writing prose felt a little more comfortable than a whole memoir, and we word nerd out a little on crosswords and wordplay. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today [00:01:00] 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. 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 back to Adoptees On, Lee Herrick. Hi Lee!
Lee Herrick: Hi, Haley. Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. I'm so glad we get to talk again. So you were a guest on the show all the way back in 2022. Can't believe it's been so long. And you shared a bit of your story with us then. So I'm going to encourage folks to go back and listen to it.
But for anyone who is new to you, would you mind sharing just a little bit of your story with us so we can get to know you?
Lee Herrick: A quick version would be that I was born in South Korea. Daejeon, about late 1970, and I was adopted into a white [00:02:00] family who were living in the Bay Area in California when I was about 10 months old, and raised in the Bay Area and then later the Central Valley, have done a birth family search, have not been reunited.
And I've been back to Korea a couple of times and yeah, doing well now I'm a professor and a poet and I live in Fresno, California.
Haley Radke: So I recently saw that you were the Poet Laureate of Fresno before now you are finishing up your two year term as the 10th Poet Laureate of California.
Lee Herrick: Yes. Yes. It's been a really incredible journey and honor. I served for Fresno 2015 to 2017 and then in late 2022 after about an eight month period of waiting and not thinking it would happen because [00:03:00] California is a massive state with some great poets, but in late, 2022, I was notified, so appointed by the governor to a two year term that'll conclude in spring 2025, and it's been incredible.
A lot of travel, speaking to all different kinds of groups. Organizations that I never thought would have a connection to poetry and the arts, but they see the value in it. So everything from political or civic or environmental organizations to state prisons and adoptee organizations and schools. So it's been great. It's been a lot of fun.
Haley Radke: How does it feel to be a professional poet? I just think when, you think of writers and the grind it is to make it, whatever that means and poetry, it's so unusual to [00:04:00] become such a well known poet you've been very successful in your writing and I think that's of course due to your skill and expertise and you've done a lot of education and all of those things and you teach as well but there's something so vulnerable about your work that people just are really able to connect with it. That's what I see anyway.
Lee Herrick: I really appreciate that Haley, I, what comes to mind that I'm not just saying this to, to placate, but, I'm thinking about your podcast and the reach it has. And how it impacts audiences from all different walks of life related to adoption. And if I were to ask you, and maybe I could, what is that or how does one create such a thing?
I think about success and poetry in similar ways that, that any other endeavor and what it [00:05:00] requires, and at the root of it is some, not just a strong desire or passion or life or love for the work, but a necessity to do it, that for me has nothing to do with accolades or acclaim or praise. It has to do with some kind of partly internal.
But also, maybe ancestral, or familial, or ephemeral sort of thing that merges together that creates a kind of work and love for what we do. That's one way to answer it. Another way to say it is just, quite frankly, some longevity. I'm, I've been writing for a while, I've been teaching for a while, and it's been joyful as much work.
And of course there are setbacks with any kind of relationship, be it with work or other people, but it's been [00:06:00] deeply joyful. I, I've been asked that recently at a high school, somebody asked me about being successful and it felt pithy to say, doing what you love and then being able to do it with and for other people who are doing that work is really joyful to me.
Poetry is not the most lucrative genre nor is teaching, at least in terms of monetary things. But just, incredibly expansive. I feel very joyful. The last way I could answer that is just to say that it's much more visible. And that's taken me a while to get used to. It's a much more social position.
California is the largest state in the country by over 10 million people. We're almost 40 million. And there's a lot of visibility and events that come with it and I'm an introvert. So that's been [00:07:00] an area of growth for me and how I've done it or how I've tried to approach it is to be present and really enjoy the visits and the people as much as I can.
Haley Radke: I love that now I promise the whole interview, I'm not going to keep saying these things to you that may make you feel uncomfortable because I don't think you like to be, praised in this way. But I heard this, my last question on this line, just so you know I heard you talking on a different interview and you were, referring to a couple of other poets and you said something like, called them something like poets of significance.
And I thought, oh, wow. And so now I would say that you've reached that as well. And as an adoptee, many of us have these beginnings where we're relinquished there may be a deep woundedness there, [00:08:00] like not good enough to keep or discarded or, those kinds of things that kind of settle into our identity for better or worse.
And when I say that knowing that your name is equated with a poet of significance, you'll have this on your bio forever, Poet Laureate of California, the first Asian American as well to hold the position. What does it mean to you to be an adopted person and take on a title like that?
Lee Herrick: I said to a group once, and I found myself saying it and thinking it quite frequently, and it was a group of adoptees, and what I said was that what I hope for us is, first and foremost, to be okay. And by that I meant to have whatever we need to make it through, in terms of, [00:09:00] shelter, some kind of stability or support for any kind of mental health or physical health or anxieties or depression or things like that.
To be frank, I had, especially in my youth, especially in high school, which was quite difficult for me in terms of mental health and anxiety specifically. I think once we can make it through some of those rocky patches, the turbulence stabilizes, if you will. The, I call it sometimes the rattle. If that can stabilize for us, I think from there really good things can happen.
So, I've also, I think I've been fortunate to have a couple of very dear friends, some family members and authors and teachers who support, and I think that can be very helpful too. [00:10:00] It's humbling, and I don't take it for granted, if, and it's a good feeling, being the first Asian American California Poet Laureate, or to be seen as an adoptee author, or an adopted author.
I hesitate to say, Haley, and I used to bristle when I would hear people say, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And I don't want to say that today either because I don't know what other people are going through. And also, I don't think of myself as person of the week, I don't know that I've done anything extraordinary.
I've done what I've loved. I've tried to do my best. And it's not always been so great, but I think maybe this goes along with the adoption question and flaws and things like that is Another thing that was very helpful for me, and this probably happened maybe in or after college, maybe in my [00:11:00] mid twenties was not only did I let go of this perfectionism idea and a fear of failure but I realized that I was quite imperfect and that failure was not only necessary, but good in terms of that stabilization for me.
It's a fragile, frail impossibility in my mind to progress if we think we have to be perfect. And that might be put on us, right? I'm not victim blaming here or shaming anybody, but for me, once I realized that I was flawed and am and will be, and also it allowed me to see the humanity in others, that they didn't have to be perfect.
I think that was good for me. And, um, I know I'm slightly off your question about being seen as a significant poet. If that's the case, I'm very grateful. I hope I [00:12:00] answered that.
Haley Radke: I promise I won't keep going on that track. I know it's uncomfortable.
Lee Herrick: No, I appreciate it.
Haley Radke: I wonder what you think about the, I'll call it the theology of place. You wrote, I think it was published in 2012, the My California poem. That there's some videos of you and other folks reading your work and talking about My California. And I'm wondering about that also of course, everything's tied back to adoption on this show, right? I know it's not for everybody, but.
Writing that poem, your role in California now. And then also as a person, we talked about this last time you were on the show, discovering that the city that you thought you were born your whole life actually wasn't. And so thinking about this idea of place and how meaningful place is to you. And now you've said you've lived in Fresno for many years now as an [00:13:00] adult. How many years have you been there?
Lee Herrick: About 28 years.
Haley Radke: Yeah. So over a quarter century, like that's significant to, to love somewhere enough to stay and have roots grow deeply in a place, especially. Do you have thoughts about that, about place and those things?
Lee Herrick: Yeah, that's. When I think about the word place or the idea of place, another word that I think of in the same breath is displacement.
And in terms of the adoptee's circumstance, it could be considered displacement, but certainly place takes on a different idea for us. A home, an orphanage, a courtroom, a different city. different families and things like that. So with place, I think many people first go to the environment [00:14:00] or the landscape.
So I've always felt very home in California, whenever I'm on the coast and I might be on a beach. It's always on my mind that I'm as close in terms of land that I could be to South Korea. And I don't know, I wonder if other adoptees think about that, if they were, let's say they were born in, I don't know, Wyoming, and they live in Ohio, and they go back to Wyoming, do they feel some kind of visceral reaction?
I don't know. I also think about, of course, family. And that kind of thing. I think about place in terms of home, and how we can feel at home, and what makes us feel at home. Of course, adoptees have, I think for a thousand adoptees, you'd probably have a thousand different takes, or opinions, or experiences with home.[00:15:00]
What it feels like to be at home or completely alienated and outcast. So, part of me wants to chalk it up to some kind of larger purpose, but it also could just be complete chance. For example, in the Korean adoption community, I think about adoptees born in Korea that were raised and live in Australia or France or Sweden and is just it seems or feels somewhat random, but I connect with that a lot.
Whenever I see a Scandinavian, Scandinavian adoptee speaking, let's say fluent Danish or something. I really feel a kinship with that person, even though I don't know him or her or them. Whenever I see a homeless or unhoused person, I feel some kind of familiarity. And maybe this goes back to [00:16:00] poetry and adoption, but I think poetry is a space where there's a lot of room for questions.
And, nuance, which the adoptee circumstance definitely gives us.
Haley Radke: In your latest collection, In Praise of Late Wonder, you have this piece called Stars. Could you read that for us?
Lee Herrick: Sure, I'd be happy to. Stars. I am one of approximately 200, 000 Korean adoptees, or adopted Koreans, in the entire world. A small subset, the 83 million Koreans.
Other small populations like ours include the Ambonese from Indonesia, Blaan of Philippines, Damara from Namibia, and Sioux Lakota from the United States, and Otomi from Mexico. We're rare, like shooting stars, [00:17:00] double rainbows, scratched diamonds.
Haley Radke: Thank you. I remember reading that, and my first go to was like, where? Lee, I talk to so many Korean adoptees all the time. In our community, there's so many. And I love this reframing of it, like in the grand scheme of things and thinking about these different population groups. And when you wind up with the scratched diamonds, I was like, oh, I don't know. You got me. I love that line.
Lee Herrick: Oh, good. Thank you, Haley. Yeah, I think at a certain point, we start looking and hoping for each other. Because we aren't around one another. And as a result, you host a wonderful podcast, so like you say, you're [00:18:00] talking with adoptees regularly, or many of them. It might even be, a good portion of your world, your thinking, your life.
Yeah. And I started to think about it because I know at least with Asian adoptees, I think Koreans are still the majority, but I know there are a lot of Chinese adoptees as well and things like that, even though that just formally ended, but I started looking up other populations around the world that were about the same number as Korean adoptees.
And except for the Sioux Lakota, I have not heard of them. I had never heard of the Ambonese, for example. So it was fascinating to, yeah, like you say, to reframe it and just how few of us there really are. And I know that there are other numbers such as one in six families in the United States has some relation to an adopted person and things like that.
But [00:19:00] I think because of the small numbers, shows like this, books, films, it's really meaningful work anytime people have the opportunity to learn more about adopted folks.
Haley Radke: Absolutely agree. I live in a bubble, adoptee bubble, and I take it for granted. And I'm always encouraging community building and finding fellow adoptees to connect with and you and I have been blessed with that for a number of years.
You longer than I. I'm curious in relation to that, as you go and speak and you're introduced and part of your intro is that you're an adopted person from Korea. How many folks come up to you and talk about adoption that are adoptees and perhaps maybe they're hearing some of these thoughts about adoption for the first time [00:20:00] from a fellow adoptee.
Lee Herrick: Oh it's one of the great gifts of this experience. Traveling and speaking as an author, of course, there are some where I think chances are high I'm going to meet an adoptee. For example, if I'm in Los Angeles or San Francisco or something like that, but I've been in towns that are probably 80, 90 percent white and someone will come up to me invariably they might be Asian American, but often they aren't. And they'll tell me that they were adopted, or, a sibling, or it might be an adoptive parent. But what's really neat is when it's an adoptee who is a little nervous and tells me that they've really never met an adoptee before. Or they've never met an adoptee author.
And I really love that [00:21:00] because whatever journey they're on and it's not my purpose or point to direct their purpose but I can see it when they're telling me that's really wonderful. Yeah, and there are a lot of other connections to it, too. You know I had one woman say to me after an event that she really resonated with a poem I was reading about names and name changes and identities, because even though she wasn't an adoptee, she said that when she was a young girl, her father had committed a very grisly, heinous crime, and she and her mother had to go in hiding through a witness protection program, and they had to change their name.
And she said even though she wasn't adopted, she really felt some connection with that. So it's been. It's been exciting and eye opening, the different ways people connect with adoptees. And then, of [00:22:00] course, there's sometimes one that's not so pleasant. I hesitate to talk too much about this one publicly, but just.
Haley Radke: Please, Dish, we're desperate. I want to hear it.
Lee Herrick: If you insist No. I was doing an event recently and my new book is the most I've ever written about adoption. It's the most bare and honest and vulnerable in many ways I've ever written about my adoption. There's probably 20 to 30 pages of poems, very specific and autobiographical. So I was reading one of these poems, and afterwards, during the Q& A, the first person to ask a question.
She raised her hand and said that, she said to me, in your reading, and you even said it, you mentioned sadness. You mentioned feeling sad [00:23:00] and grief, but you were adopted into such a loving family. She said, I think you may have misread your adoption experience. I couldn't believe it. Here's a woman, I'm a grown man, I'm not new to this, and and it also flies in the face of my philosophy, or one of my philosophies, and that is to let each person have their own traumas and joys.
She tells me that I misread my experience, and I took it in for a minute when I could feel the audience looking at me, wondering, how is he going to respond to this? And I told her that I really hesitate personally to tell anybody how to feel or what to make of their experience.
But I told her, I said, I take great great umbrage [00:24:00] at being told that my lived experience and sadness around loss related to adoption was a misreading. I take great umbrage with that. And then I, that was it. And some of the audience started clapping. So it reminds me how little sometimes people know, but also how forcefully some people feel that adoption is very simple and positive and unemotional.
So we have a long way to go, but in the vast majority, it's wonderful folks coming up to me telling me, they might tell me their adoption story or things like that. I'm speaking in a few weeks to a group in the San Francisco Bay Area. And so I love meeting [00:25:00] with groups of adoptees of all ages. It's been interesting.
Haley Radke: So initially when you're telling that story, I just started laughing because it's so absurd. And then I got really emotional towards the end because It's I want, I would love for you to tell us why now the prose section of this book, why the full, fully themed adoption book, even though in all your prior works, there's always, of course, some pieces about adoption and in your, some autobiographical work.
But I just, God, we just, we give it all, the whole story, pour out our heart, your books out there, you're walking around naked in the world feels like cause people can see all your innermost thoughts and hurts and it's and even that, you won't even believe that?
Lee Herrick: Yeah.
Haley Radke: It's so deeply painful. So I'm very sorry. That is [00:26:00] really egregious.
Lee Herrick: Yeah, I, I appreciate it. This is actually the first time I've talked about that. It only happened a couple of months ago. I think as a writer, at least in my experience as a poet, as an author, before I put a poem out into the world on the page, for example, or published
or read at an event. I have worked through and with those experiences, and I've also worked through and with the poem, so much so that I almost feel, I wouldn't say impervious, but I fully understand, as authors often say, that it's no longer mine. And so a person can praise it, and that's her praise, and a person could also critique [00:27:00] it.
Or not believe it or dislike it, and that's also for the reader. And so what that allows me is a little bit of distance when that woman said that. It threw me off because I've never had somebody tell me that. That I misread it. It's a unbelievable audacity to say that to someone.
Haley Radke: I'm still laughing about it again.
Lee Herrick: Yeah.
Haley Radke: It is. It's so absurd.
Lee Herrick: Yeah, I just couldn't believe that and, I didn't want to make it personal and attack her and whatnot. But I think that's maybe just part of the time spent with it, there, there have been times when I was much younger when I allowed everything to affect me, but I'm just at the point in my life where I'm not that impacted by someone's take on it.
Unless it's really violent or [00:28:00] aggressive or harmful to what I think an adoptee or a person's experience is then I will engage, then I will definitely push back. I'm not someone to just. Take it passively. And I think that's a turning point too for us as adoptees. And usually I think it starts first with the family conversations or the comments, because if it's something on television that's offensive we could bristle or take umbrage or maybe even take some action, but there's a real distance with media, but with the family or friends.
That was a big turning point for me, when we can stand up for ourselves with language and we can stand up for our sense of who we are as adoptees, I think that's deeply meaningful. And whether a person goes on to host a podcast or write a book, that's another subject, but I think just being able to defend ourselves and [00:29:00] have a boundary in terms of what hurts us. That's very meaningful.
Haley Radke: I, I love the title. There's a poem in the book called In Praise of Late Wonder. And there's another poem called Wonder, and I was just thinking about the word again, like we were talking about place before, What a great word, wonder. What does that mean for you? And how do you see it? There's a that's one of those words that can mean a few different things.
Lee Herrick: Yeah, Haley. I love your questions I feel like we could and I know there's a time frame here but I every time you ask a question, I just think Ooh, I could really play around with that question and have fun with it.
So I love etymology and so word origins, and I love the sound of words and wordplay. So with wonder, a word that I think of in tandem with wonder is wander. And I wonder [00:30:00] about other adoptees experiences with wandering. Even mentally, what do we dream of, or do we think about what our birth parents looked like, or things like that.
But also, just literally there was a span of about maybe 10 or 12 years where I traveled. And backpacked for about two or three months at a time each year. And I would just wander and love the feeling, not so much of being lost, but not knowing exactly where I was. I could find my way back. But I loved just exploring, and I felt at home a lot. It helped me, I think, feel at home wherever I was. And maybe that's a rationalization for the adoptee's sense of displacement. I don't know, but and I just love the sound of the word wonder. One of my favorite speeches was Steve [00:31:00] Jobs, commencement speech that he gave at Stanford and Steve Jobs, as you may know, is adopted. And he talked about staying foolish. He said he encouraged graduates and young people to stay foolish, which I read as keep your curiosity. Keep your sense of wonder. That's partly what I was thinking, and then with the title, In Praise of Late Wonder, it's just as it sounds, really I praise the idea and the gift of being able to wonder. To know some things, but if we don't know some things that we can still wonder and be okay with that. We don't have to know everything to be okay.
Haley Radke: Just an aside, one of the later poems you talk about crosswords, watching someone do a crossword on a plane, and I was really sick a couple months ago, so sick. I joke with friends. There was only one day I really thought I was actually going to die, but the rest of the time it was just, I [00:32:00] was really sick and I had double pneumonia.
That's another story. But I got into doing crosswords. I was watching this lady do crosswords on Tik Tok and she taught me how to do crosswords. And so now like I read the poem with as a person that does crosswords, I love your wordplay and all those things like I'm totally getting into that now.
Lee Herrick: Oh, I love it. I love it. And I hope you're feeling better.
Haley Radke: Yes. I am totally 100 percent better. All good That was the reason for my like two months of trying to fill space with something to do. That was less effort than my normal life.
Lee Herrick: Yeah. I love them. And they also slow us down. Don't they don't crosswords and there's nothing flashing at us saying in five seconds, here's the next one coming along or there are no banner ads.
It's just. It's just you and the puzzle, it's fun.
Haley Radke: And you can't do anything else. Like I, as a chronically online person, [00:33:00] I absolutely, I'm usually doing one thing with something going in the background and it's you're not successful at a crossword if you're also trying to listen or watch something else, you can't do it. It's true. Focus. Yeah.
Lee Herrick: It's true.
Haley Radke: Would you mind reading the poem that's called Wonder on page 20.
Lee Herrick: Wonder. For a period of time in my late 20s. I thought every Korean woman 15 to 50 years older than me could be my mother. I'd imagine walking up to her and asking, Did you ever give birth to a boy and then lose him or give him away?
The classy businesswoman wearing expensive shoes. The dry cleaner who wanted to teach me Korean. The woman who shoved kimchi in my mouth and said hers was the [00:34:00] best in Seoul, the homeless one, I could be part of each one. This lasted for about five years, until I realized I was wrong, that not knowing who a woman was did not mean she was likely who I thought.
I began to study logic and reason and devoured philosophy. I began to see Korean women as a source of pride and strength and wholeness rather than a mystery or a curse. I began to see people everywhere around the planet in full dimension rather than through my singular and limited lens. This changed everything.
Haley Radke: I love that one. Thank you for reading that.
Lee Herrick: Of course.
Haley Radke: Can you talk to us about why now a collection fully about you, autobiographical, [00:35:00] adoption themed, and the first whole chunk is prose, like fully prose, which is different from your other works. And it's a totally different style.
Lee Herrick: Yeah. For a while, I'd say over the last maybe 10, 12 years, I've thought about a memoir and I was asked by a couple of agents if I would consider or would I consider writing a memoir.
And, people will come up to you saying, oh, I'd love to read a memoir. But I never really took it all that seriously. And then I started writing these little vignettes. I was thinking of them as little stories or vignettes about my adoption. And it just didn't take shape as a memoir.
I thought for a while about writing a YA book, as I'm sure There's a real need for YA literature [00:36:00] about adoption. And, but I couldn't do that either. I just couldn't access that genre. So then I thought about making them prose poems, which is how I see these prose like pieces or these poems of sorts.
Really, I don't know what to call them. They're little vignettes maybe, but I just decided to put them into this book. I feel most at home as a poet. As far as, why now in terms of readiness? I think, for me, it just got to the point where I was comfortable enough with myself to put these kinds of things out there, regardless of what may come, regardless of reception, or criticism, or anything else.
For example, I thought if I don't have a real section praising my family, will they be upset? Or, there are a [00:37:00] couple very personal among all of them that are personal, but there are two letters that I wrote for my birth father and birth mother. And even though they're letters to them, they're still created a little bit.
I still think of them as creative writing, but those are very personal. You just get to a point where it's not for anyone else, and I'm, it's felt liberating to do Haley. It just felt good to write that stuff because we're asked it so many times. I can only imagine how many times you've been asked certain questions about your experience.
I know a little bit about your background, having read about you, and in reunion, and in and out of reunion, and different things like that. For me, it just felt good to write it all out. The opening poem is about a time I was taking a shower, scrubbing my skin to see if I could turn my skin white.
And as I said in the piece, not because I wanted to be white, but because I wondered why I wasn't white. And [00:38:00] why now? It's just, we get to a point where we need or want to say these things. There it is.
Haley Radke: Do you feel more free? And can you attribute that to aging? Or what?
Lee Herrick: Yeah, it's a good question.
Some of it might be aging. You know how a lot of times you, and I'm not generalizing, but it happened with some of my grandparents or other folks who are wonderfully seasoned and experienced where they give less concern about judgment or opinion or what the cashier says. And, so my, some of it might be age.
Yeah. Yeah. Also it's, it. I think it also depends on if something's eating away at a [00:39:00] person, I think that stuff is best aired out to someone, somehow. It could even just be in a journal, privately. But that's the kind of stuff that the poet Audre Lorde says. That's tyrannical. That stuff is the thing, the sort of thing that can really harm us, I think. Yeah.
Haley Radke: Maybe this is my last question before I do our recommended resources section. Is you write about doing the search and part of it is on a TV show and those things. And it feels like to me that you've come to terms with, I'm probably not going to get my answers. And again, with both of you living in this space where we are connected with so many fellow adoptees, like that's what we see. Lots of people search, don't find anything. Lots of [00:40:00] people search, find things maybe they didn't want to know and, or have, some happy moments. And yeah. What does that look like for you now and in your fifties, thinking about that, being public about it.
And if you're able to give folks something to like, I don't know, hang on to can peace come if you feel like you're actually never going to get answers.
Lee Herrick: Yeah, so I hesitate to say to anybody what they can receive or get I just don't know enough about it to tell anybody else what to, what they can do.
But in my experience, I can speak from my own experience. Is that I feel like I not that I had, maybe that I had to, because if my sense of, quote, peace, if my sense of being okay, was [00:41:00] contingent upon one, the one thing that I had great odds against me finding, Then what would that mean for me?
So I think there are a lot of different ways that I've been able to make it through, and one of them is doing some kind of earnest search in my experience. I went back to Korea. I've been back twice. I think those things help. I've worked, it's been quite some years, but I probably had a year of good, solid work with forgiveness.
And so there's a mental health aspect to all of this. And, yeah, I think there are a lot of ways that we can make it through and find a sense of peace or wholeness. I also used to think that I was not whole because I didn't have this. [00:42:00] Part of my family or my birth family history now, and I might be deluding myself.
I don't think I am, but I say now that we've always been whole, at least we are certainly capable of wholeness without every fact of every person in our families. It's also helped me to fight and advocate where I can. As my time and energies and spirit allow, we all can't do everything all the time for everyone on their terms, but there are some things that I am trying to be a part of, for example, California, becoming one of the states that allows adoptees access to their birth records.
I think there are somewhere around 20 states now that have passed that. I'm hopeful that the citizenship amendment to the congressional bill, Adoptee Citizenship Acts, will be passed [00:43:00] that will allow adoptees citizenship retroactively so we won't keep being deported and things like that. But in the meantime, I think as much as the adoption work is core and central, just other things, trying to work through fears was a big part of my life.
That's been probably the biggest thing that has helped me feel liberated is working through fears, which I tell my students keep us from living our fullest lives. Fears keep us from being our truest, fullest selves. Turning the corner on those, the whole world opens up. It felt very liberating and has been very liberating for me, moving beyond some of those fears that I used to think would cripple me.
Haley Radke: And to see you as an introvert stepping what looks like to us confidently onto [00:44:00] stages that are bigger than likely you've taught before is so amazing. It's so impressive and exciting for me to follow along with that. I love that I had this recent conversation with an adoptee therapist and she was talking about how we have our true identity within us. And so I'm thinking about that as no matter what, if we want to search or not, if we get a reunion or not, if we're able to really truly get to know ourselves, like some of those answers are within. And that feels a little bit like woo to say out loud, but I really think it's true.
And the last time you were on Lee, I was telling you, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm really trying to figure out my preferences. So embarrassing in my late thirties to figure out what kind of perfume I like. I don't know if you remember that, but we talked about that and now [00:45:00] it's a few years later, I absolutely know what my favorites are.
I have more pieces of my identity. I feel like nailed down and those passions and loves within you and the joy that you found through all your writing, like those are pieces of your identity that you found and claimed. Like it's so I hope for people listening. I hope that is liberating to hear.
This is possible for me too. Your book, this one, In Praise of Late Wonder, you can't see behind me, but that's where my hundreds of adoptee books live, and I have two of your other poetry collections there. They're on my desk now, but normally live there. I love this so much, Lee. It is evocative. And I got mad at you when you were saying you didn't want to really write a memoir. You couldn't do it because I was like, no, I do want the memoir. Could you write, could you also write a memoir? No, but we so get to know you, especially through [00:46:00] the beginning of the book and all these prose pieces.
It's just so lovely that you let us in and allow us to into these really deep places. And I, and you mentioned in our interview the letters, I was going to mention that now, the Dear Korean mother and Dear Korean father. I think many of us will have written a letter like this. So to be able to read yours, that's so deeply personal is really special. So thank you. Thank you so much.
Lee Herrick: Thank you, Haley.
Haley Radke: You're welcome.
Lee Herrick: That means a lot coming from you. That means a lot to me.
Haley Radke: I mean it.
Lee Herrick: Yeah. Thank you. I feel like we're very much in the same world, and grateful for what you do and, for your reading of the book and for the interview. Yeah, it's wonderful to be here with you.
Haley Radke: Thank you. Yeah, I know for some people poetry can be intimidating and this is [00:47:00] like such a great way in my opinion, especially through prose. I'm at the beginning and you get to know Lee a little more And then I love having pieces of some of your other collections in there and you touch on really important things.
You talk about suicide, you talk about adoptee citizenship, you talk about many of the themes that are really important to us, particularly as adoptees and also just as humans. So yes, I hope folks will go out and grab this. And the other cool thing that you are working on is, are these collections of poems from Californians. I was clicking around through the website for Our California today and I found like poems from grade 5 kids and poems from adults. And it's really a special thing, project that you're doing. So we'll link to that too for folks to explore. Yeah. What a great project.
Lee Herrick: Yeah, thank you. That's been [00:48:00] fun. In the governor's office and the California Arts Council were really supportive. It's just my, a way to give any Californian a chance to write a poem about their place or town or their vision of their state. Yeah, those have been fun to read.
Haley Radke: That's a nice light. Not always light, but that's a cool thing to click around on, especially if you're from California and I'm not, but I found it interesting.
Lee Herrick: They're fun.
Haley Radke: What did you want to recommend to us today, Lee?
Lee Herrick: It's not a book, or a film, or a podcast even, but I would like to recommend the Adoptee Literary Festival.
It was the first one held about a year and a half ago, maybe. And it's archived, and anyone could watch it and they're planning another one. It is a wonderful literary festival online and the next one will be coming out later this year and they've got wonderful writers and panelists in fiction, [00:49:00] creative non fiction, poetry, and young adult writing.
Some of the panelists you've had on your podcast, and so I really highly recommend that. It was co founded by the adopted writers Alice Stevens and Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, and it's just fantastic.
Haley Radke: I went last year. It's such a great event. Awesome recommendation. We'll link to that. It's scheduled for end of March, 2025. And so I'm sure lots of our listeners will get to enjoy that. Thank you so much, Lee, for this very stimulating conversation. I enjoyed it so much. Where can we follow your work and catch up with you online?
Lee Herrick: You could keep up with me or be in touch through my website. It's just LeeHerrick. com. I'm also on Facebook and that's the extent of my social media at this point, but I'd [00:50:00] love to be in touch with anyone.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Lee Herrick: Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: I don't know what it is about Lee, but I just have this super comfortable feeling talking with him. And, I think I've described other folks like this wholehearted way of being, and I really get that from Lee and his poetry as well. So even if you're not super into poetry, I think this is a great collection to get started with.
And yeah, I just, I love hearing people be vulnerable about the real stuff that we're all going through. And it's so special to see an adoptee get to have the stage that [00:51:00] Leigh has access to right now as California Poet Laureate and talking to so many people. And I was thinking you told us that really shocking story, but I was thinking how special for so many young adoptees to see someone that they can aspire to be and whether or not they want to be a poet, but to write down and heal through some writing work to share their story and in some sort of way, whether it's for themselves or to share publicly like that.
I just think it's so powerful to have that to look up to for young people and for us olds. Yeah, I just, yeah, well done Lee, we are cheering you on and thank you for being vulnerable with us and modeling that for us and for the future generations. Thank you so much for listening. Let's talk again [00:52:00] soon.
