298 Kit Myers
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/298
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 are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. I have been waiting several years to have today's guest on, and when better than to celebrate his brand new book. Professor and critical adoption scholar Kit Myers is with us to talk about his new book, The Violence of Love, Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States.
Kit is an adoptee from Hong Kong, and he shares some of his personal story, including a recent reunion he got to experience a couple of months ago. We also dive into culture camps and what happened when society tried to quote unquote [00:01:00] destigmatize adoption for the sake of adoptive parents. Before we get started, I want to personally invite you 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, 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, Kit Myers. Hi, Kit.
Kit Myers: Hi, Haley, it's so great to meet you and be on your podcast.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited. I've learned under you through several different conference events and now getting to read your book, which has a lot of the culmination of your work and research, it's just been really amazing for me so I'm really excited. But first, can you share a little bit of your story with [00:02:00] us?
Kit Myers: , Yeah thank you for those kind words. I guess the shorter version is that I'm adopted from Hong Kong. I was adopted right before I turned four and I grew up, I mean, I was, I was relinquished and, I actually have a lot of I have my original birth certificate and has my, my mother's name on it and had her address where she lived at the time.
And I stayed at multiple sort of institutions, orphanages in Hong Kong. Four different places. And then eventually I was adopted to the United States and I grew up in Oregon. With my family my mom and my dad and, and my brother who's, who's not adopted and we're actually really close in age he's six months, six months older than me, butit was, it was a small town in Oregon and between Portland and Salem.
And it's a town about 15, 000 people or maybe even less when it, when I was actually first adopted 12, 000 or [00:03:00] so when I was adopted. So as a rule sort of setting, we lived on a, was it two and a half acres. And had a lot of miniature animals growing up, so we had a just a farm of miniature pigs, and a couple miniature donkeys, and a pony and rabbits, cats, dogs.
Haley Radke: Oh my god, you grew up with a pony Kit.
Kit Myers: We did, , I got to ride the pony for, , I forgot when the pony passed away, but , we definitely had pony rides and oh we had a couple miniature goats as well so it was It was kind of like this fun childhood out in the country living next to a creek and a overgrown Christmas tree farm and , so so that part was was quite wonderful. Of course, as you can imagine, , it was kind of, sort of racially isolating, so that part was difficult, but I did, , grow up with a loving family, and then when I grew up, I didn't really have exposure to [00:04:00] much about adoption, , I did go to therapy when I was younger to kind of talk through some of the stuff that comes up with adoption, but I didn't, I kind of was quite dismissive of a lot of that stuff until, I got to University of Oregon where I met a lot of other students of color and started learning about more histories about people of color in the United States learned a little bit more about adoption and started doing some research on it.
And that's where I kind of did, what, a research paper on Holt, which is based out of Eugene, Oregon, and did a paper on First Person Plural, which is, , pretty well known documentary by Deann Borshay Liem. That, that kind of propelled me into graduate school, where I started studying it, and then here I am at UC Merced, .
I'm an ethnic studies professor, and I teach classes on [00:05:00] primarily how race is socially constructed, but I also in my classes I talk about gender and class and sexuality and, and disability to think through the law and media and literature and, all of those sort of things. But that's what I teach and then, , my research is, is primarily focused on adoption.
Haley Radke: Well, I I'm so glad you you sort of answered a question I had because a lot of adoptees we get critiqued It's like oh, well, you're critical about adoption because you had a bad experience and you're like no like I had a happy childhood To what I understand you're still in a good relationship with your adoptive parents to this day. Is that right?
Kit Myers: .
We, I talked to him, on a weekly basis and , I mean, I love them dearly and they, they love me a lot. I think it was, it's been hard to fully share what my research [00:06:00] has been on, but , in this last year I've, I've been more open and transparent about that, and they've been supportive.
I mean, I think there's still, there's still some stuff in the book that they haven't had like full exposure to, but, but we've started to have more conversations about that. .
Haley Radke: Well, as you study these things, it's like, oh my gosh, I can't unsee it now.
And we didn't know what we didn't know. And now we know. So . Oh my goodness. Okay. So they have they, they've not read your book fully yet.
Kit Myers: No, no. But my mom was probably the first one to pre order it.
Haley Radke: Okay. Good job, Mom.
Kit Myers: So I think they'll, they'll probably take a look at it. She did ask if she was going to be able to understand anything in the book, and I think, , she'll, , they'll be able to understand the, the main points. And I, I think that, really, I tried to write the book for the broadest audience possible. And [00:07:00] in terms of those who are connected to adoption. So the idea was to try to invite everyone into this sort of conversation and to try to write in a way that wasn't going to judge people for maybe what they've done or how they felt or what their experiences have been, but to really sort of say that we have all these feelings and intentions, but what has If we take a, a sort of a larger picture view, how has adoption been constructed and shaped and despite, , people's intentions, what have the outcomes been and why has adoption been needed in the first place historically?
Haley Radke: You write a lot about summer camp, like culture camp, heritage camp, they've been called different things. And I [00:08:00] interviewed SunAh Laybourn last year or the year before, I can't remember. But in the recent past years, y'all can listen to that episode. And her book was the first one where I was like, she, she writes about this, like this fact that it's like these camps are for the white adoptive parents to get together and feel good about their choice.
It's, I mean, listen, I'm, that's super paraphrasing. That's what I took from it. And I was like, whoa. And you really kind of go into that too, about the reason really why they exist. Can you talk a little bit about camps, what they meant to you and how you see them?
Kit Myers: Yeah I mean, and SunAh is, great, so I'm, glad, I mean, the list of people who you've interviewed for this podcast is just amazing, and she is, , one of the countless amazing people who've been on your podcast.
So, I got involved in [00:09:00] 2006, and the summer camp that I worked for used to be a culture camp, and I'm purposely keeping vague the name of the camp because it's a part of it was it's been a part of an article that I published and I mentioned it in the book as well. But because it's a part of research, I try to create anonymity for the people who are interviewed.
So anyway, it used to be a culture camp, but it changed that, , the director who is a Korean adoptee, he came in and felt like the camp, which is a Korean culture camp was serving adoptees from children from probably like 14 different countries and so it felt odd that it was a Korean culture camp But but there was all of these kids who are attending. And so he felt like we should really shift it and, sort of think about adoptee identity and adoption issues and, race, and racism.
And so [00:10:00] that's kind of that was my first exposure to summer camps, I think really at all in terms of these overnight camps. I mean, on the West Coast, there's just, there's not as strong of summer camp culture on the West Coast as there is, I think, in the Midwest and on the East Coast. So I'd never been to any summer camp let alone one for adoptees.
And so that was just an amazing experience right after graduating college and meeting that was the first time meeting a ton of adoptees for the first time in my life. And it was, it was a big group of us and we traveled to different states and hosted a summer camp for mostly transnational adoptees, but but also a few domestic transracial adoptees and and then eventually when I am in grad school and I I took this critical pedagogy class, which is a class that's thinking about how do we teach.
And so for the class, [00:11:00] I talked about the summer camp as a space of teaching. And through the interviews that I did, talking with some of the adult camp counselors who are all adoptees it became clear that, that the camps were the, primary driver of the camps was less about learning birth culture.
So the camps were kind of emerged in first in the, in the eighties, like the first one was in the eighties and it was a Korean culture camp. And it really was this attempt to go past the color evasiveness. That a lot of adoption agencies and a lot of adoptive parents practice, right, is where, , we want to have our child assimilate into a family and be fully a part of the family, but to do so, we're going to kind of erase their, their culture.
And so the summer camp was an attempt to, it's this early multiculturalism, right, where we're going to embrace and celebrate culture. And so this [00:12:00] is supposed to be. , it's coming from this really loving space or, or place and and agencies are starting to promote this, right? And they're, they're either hosting their own summer camps or they are recommending these summer camps as a way to preserve or cultivate lost heritage, right?
And of course they're popular for adoptees. What's very interesting is that,in my experience, , kids, some kids would, a lot of kids are excited to come, but there's a few who are like, kicking and screaming, like, I don't want to go, I don't want to go, I don't want to go, because this is going to highlight my difference from my family and I don't want to be around all these other adoptees and they feel weird and this is gonna just highlight my differences. But once the children who come who were against it, I think there there is this and one of the the interviewees said it [00:13:00] is this like invisible need for adoptees To it is something where if you don't have it, you don't realize that it's something so special right to meet other adoptees to be able to share your experiences to be able to share in a safe environment where you're not going to be judged where there could be people who could say, I've felt that same same way too, or I've experienced that, or someone has said that to me as well, or I've had that thought, or I've had that fear, and so there's so much to the summer camp and the birth culture camp in terms of trying to provide this space, this educational space for your child, right, and they were really run by adoptive parents, right, and adoptive parents are trying to provide this for their children, and this. They've been told that culture is the primary thing that they've lost, that their kids have lost, and so this is a way to fill that [00:14:00] void.
And so I think it's coming from a good place, but in doing research on the camps, , what I found is a lot of them are focusing on culture while not really attending to the other complexities of adoption and primarily this notion of where does culture come from? Well, it comes from not just the birth nation, but it comes from the birth parents.
And, and so a lot of these camps were not really bringing up birth parents because that's like a whole nother level, right? So I talk about how birth culture is kind of containable, right? You can sort of contain the dangers that exist in talking about birth culture, but it's really difficult to contain the potential, , and I don't want to say it's, it's guaranteed danger, but that's the perceived. That's the perception, right? Is that it would be a can of worms to talk about birth parents because then that threatens adoptive parents place [00:15:00] as parents, right?
Haley Radke: Sure. Let's get a bunch of kids together who've had that stripped away and see if they can learn it from each other while eating , sorry, kimchi will say it's Korean adoptee camp, , like, okay. But can I read you a quote from your book about community? Because that part, I was like, yes, they got that at least, right?
Haley Radke: This is from your conclusion. You say, adoptees who meet a community or communities of other adoptees develop a more complex and sophisticated understanding of adoption experiences, ideologies and practices, and they are given space to hold complex feelings about adoption. And like, what a gift to give those young people.
Kit Myers: And I think I think that adoptive parents were, that's what they were aiming for. I think in, and my memory is so bad, but I, so I don't know if that quote was talking about the birth culture [00:16:00] camps or if it was talking about the camp that I worked at.
Haley Radke: No, no, it's talking about it in general and probably more towards adults, but I'm picturing this as like, how can we get this out of?
Kit Myers: Yeah absolutely. I mean, I think it really is about when we're talking about. This sort of stuff. It's so weighted with a range of experiences. I mean, y'all are coming into this space thinking, oh we have this commonality and we do, but there is a range of experiences and feelings.
And , how do we hold that diversity and acknowledge sort of the the difficult things that people are saying as valid and , what do we do to contend with that?
Haley Radke: I remember one of the sessions I went to at an ASAC conference and you were presenting Adoptee from Hong Kong and then with a room full of scholars [00:17:00] learning about adoption from China and y'all were talking about like how much research and, all the academics who've been studying adoption from Korea for all these years and now making this new space for researching critical adoption studies, whether it's from your country or just overall, you, have such a broad historical research in your book that you present all kinds of things that you're talking about, but I really love that.
I still think about it. I wish I could have found my notes. I'm just, like, so mad about that. That's okay. But I was, I was wondering how it is for you being an adoptee from Hong Kong. Can you talk about some of the numbers, like how prolific the international adoption is from Hong Kong? And then china closed its adoption program last year. Does that affect adoption from Hong Kong as well? And also I [00:18:00] noted that you shared this in another interview because of British colonization of Hong Kong. A lot of your paperwork is also in English. So small benefit, I guess, that you could read some of your paperwork. I don't know. I'm always looking for like a sliver of good in these things, but anyway, go ahead.
Kit Myers: I mean, and it's funny because I went back to Hong Kong for the first time in 2013. And that's when I kind of started searching. Before that, I definitely never, I'm pretty sure I did not identify as like a Chinese adoptee or a Hong Kong adoptee 2013. This, I mean, I'm 31 years old. I'm, , I've graduated.
I finished my dissertation, graduated from grad school. And at that time, I don't think I really identified as a Chinese or Hong Kong adoptee. I identified mostly as a Asian American adoptee and 2015 I went back and went back with a [00:19:00] group of like 30 Hong Kong adoptees, right, who I just kind of met within the last two years.
There's a small group in the Bay Area and, and then there's this larger group in the UK. Because there was a Hong Kong adoption project in the UK during the late fifties, early sixties, and they adopted 100 children from Hong Kong. And there was this study that was done in the 2000s, and that study reunited many of them.
I mean, I think it was like 80 of them or so were found and kind of reunited, and they did a study on, on this group of adoptees. And so, through that group, the Hong Kong adoptee group, the, , they all went back to Hong Kong. And Amanda Baden and I, we, we did some surveys and interviews of some of the folks who went on that trip.
And it was [00:20:00] probably after that trip where I started to identify more as a Hong Kong adoptee. And so, it's very interesting how that is evolved. There aren't that many of us in the United States. And this is just a guess from what I've, , the very little that, I've found, it's like 500 to 700 total.
Haley Radke: Whoa!
Kit Myers: . So like, , maybe 20 a year or, or less. And in the UK, , there was that sort of huge wave of 100 people. I mean, relative because it's like, , Hong Kong is, it's a large city. But , the amount of adoptions coming out of Hong Kong were not as significant as some of these other countries and so , it's it's not a big group and , I didn't identify as a Hong Kong adoptee. So for a long time, there's a lot of people who just assumed I was a Korean adoptee and then they'd find out much later that I was not so.
Haley Radke: Are there [00:21:00] any implications of China ending international adoption for Hong Kong is that still.
Kit Myers: Yeah so I've tried to look into that and from what I can tell it's it hasn't impacted Hong Kong yet. That adoptions from Hong Kong are still available, but again, it's not like there were there was a ton.
Haley Radke: Is it similar to China where it's like older kids kids with like severe special needs in some way, medical or otherwise?
Kit Myers: That's, that's exactly the situation. . Primarily.
Haley Radke: To get a little bit personal, are you okay talking about your birth search and some of what you found? Is that okay?
Kit Myers: Well, I guess I could start with,first finding one of my first cousins on 23andMe. So that was quite a shock. I was very sort of hesitant to do it. But eventually I did, and a first cousin showed up, , right away. Which I know is very [00:22:00] rare. And, , the other thing, actually, I'm going to backtrack, because I remember your other question or comment. And it was about sort of British colonialism.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Kit Myers: And , and so that's that's a very fortuitous, it's like really one of the only times that I'm grateful that a place that's been colonized, because it's certainly helped me, right? So, , all my documents are in English, and then the family that I've met, , they all speak English. And I just posted on social media that I did this review of Dr.Sara Docan-Morgan's book, In Reunion.
Haley Radke: Oh, it's so good.
Kit Myers: , it's a fantastic book, and it's a great resource for anyone who's thinking about it or in the midst of reunion and, but a lot of the book is about language and, the difficulties of overcoming that language gap. And, so I've been very fortunate for the people who I've met to, to speak English.
And so, , I met first cousin [00:23:00] and, and what's kind of wild is that he , it took two years for him to reach back out to me. And so, but eventually he does and he, lived , I live in Merced, California. And he, interestingly, lived in Berkeley, California, which is just two hours away.
So that was really great to kind of connect with him, and eventually, we meet a couple times what, like three times now in person? And so it's been wonderful to meet him. And then I got introduced to two other first cousins through zoom. And they're both in Canada.
Haley Radke: So is this all on your mother's side?
Kit Myers: , it's all on her side. And their parents are siblings of my mother. But, but I mean, I think the difficult part of this is that none of their parents, and there's three other siblings, she had, three siblings, none, of their parents knew where she was. I mean, eventually all of the cousins tell their parents, it [00:24:00] takes a while, but they did eventually all tell, and there was valid reasons for kind of waiting.
And so that they didn't know where she was, and the cousins actually didn't even know that she existed, which kind of says that she was a family secret by the time that the cousins were old enough to understand anything. And so, , like I said, I was looking for her since 2013.
And I went back in 2015, I did a little bit more searching. During this time I have a friend in Hong Kong and he's helping me look up government records and, and whatnot and we're, we're finding bits and pieces of information and, then I have a, I had a trip planned for June of this last year and so I reach out to another friend who's helped a lot of adoptees actually find and reconnect with their birth family. And so the two of them started doing some work in early last year. And then eventually they found out [00:25:00] it's kind of a long story, but, they found out that my mom had passed away in 1995. So a long time ago, I mean, she's, she was 42 years old and I found out about it like literally the day that my book was due back to the editor and I still had quite a bit of work to do that last day to finish things up and it was also, , a week before I turned 42.
And so, , that hit pretty hard, and it felt, it felt really bizarre. It felt very weird because we actually didn't know 100 percent if it was true. Because there's just like a small chance that another person with the same name and the same birthday existed. Because we couldn't cross, there wasn't a third point to triangulate if this was actually her.
And so the, idea of ambiguous loss felt very salient to me for the next few months. And I [00:26:00] wrote, I wrote a post about it, about adoptee temporality and how adoptees can experience time differently. And this being kind of an example of that to find out that you're the person who gave birth to you died nearly 20 years ago is kind of a shock.
So the other side of this is that from her death certificate, I found out that she had married through common law, this other person, and through a wild turn of events, I was able to connect with that person. to find him and connect with him, and he does not speak much English, but my friends help translate.
And so he was able to tell me a little bit about her and her life and her situation, which her situation was very difficult, especially after I was born. But she [00:27:00] had a developmental disability and then,I don't know if it was, before I was conceived, or if it only happened afterwards, but she it appears that she, went into sex work for quite a long time afterwards, and then she developed cervical cancer.
I don't know, I would assume maybe because of it, and that's how she passed at such a young age. And so, this gentleman Mr. Wong, , he helped take care of her in her last couple years. And so that, , brought me some comfort that even though she was not really connected with her family anymore, that there was someone who cared for her and treated her as a human.
Haley Radke: I'm sorry, Kit. That's hard. Did, did he know about you?
Kit Myers: He did, . She, mentioned me and the, I have two half siblings. , one of the things, one of the gifts he gave me was telling me that literally, , the day before she died, or [00:28:00] maybe a couple days before she passed away, one of the last things she wanted to do was to go back to the orphanage that she thought that all three of us were at.
And I think that my two younger siblings might have still been there. But, , I'd been adopted at that point. But she wanted to try to see us. One last time. So , he knew about us and and that's how I found out that I had two half siblings. I didn't know about that before this summer. That's kind of the third part of the story of searching for them and, and finding one of 'em.
And then meeting, I went back to Hong Kong in November and, got to meet him, the younger brother and his family. That was just another,thing that is a part of the adoption journey.
Haley Radke: Was that exciting or difficult? And difficult?
Kit Myers: It was everything. It was, I was very anxious about it. I was anxious because I've, I was raised by, , my family [00:29:00] was middle class, was solidly middle class. And now here I am a professor and my, spouse is a professor. And so, and we have two kids. And so I feel very lucky in that regards, right? In terms of what I'm doing and how my life is right now.
And so, , I think I was anxious about what their lives were like. And it turns out that he was adopted, but he was adopted in Hong Kong. And his father is Chinese from Hong Kong, and his mother is actually Welsh. And so they're actually a very, a quite wealthy family, and they adopted him when he was also around four years old.
And when they adopted him, they knew he had a, a developmental disability as well. And so, , I met him, and he's a wonderful person. He just has a very, a bright spirit, and he's got a good sense of humor. He, [00:30:00] they seem to have a good relationship. He with his parents, and his siblings, and they with him.
And so, , I mean, there's a lot of, like I said, I felt everything. And it was great to meet them. And , they spoke English. My half sibling actually only speaks English. And so , I'm hoping to stay connected,the plan is to stay connected. So when I go back I can,visit again. But it was a wonderful visit.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that with us. It's so, I'm assuming, it must be so strange to be living these things in your personal life and , if we're so intimately familiar with grief and yes, all the struggles of search or reunion or if people want to do that or not. And then to be doing the work that you do and, and having to sort of like separate, like draw this line and be like, okay, this is the personal and now this is we're going to critique time and like, I [00:31:00] don't know, it's just so complicated because you're in your book.
I want to ask you some questions about that before we run out of time. You, you talk about this adoption as an act of violence and, and you're talking about your brother and I'm like, well, in the circumstances, like, hopefully he's getting all the care he needs. And like, it sounds like this was like a pretty good setup.
And like, but, but the violence of,your mother's situation in which she felt , or was forced to take y'all to an orphanage at some point. God, it's so complicated.
Kit Myers: Yeah it is. And, I talk about this in my class all the time, , that this sort of the theories that, , people come up with, they're all coming from, I mean, some theory is developed from quote unquote sort of statistical data, but the theory that I'm more interested in is coming from lived [00:32:00] experiences and from people who are sharing their stories and, those sort of things. And so everything that's in the book is less based on numbers and more based on what have people experienced and felt. And, so, , it is as much as I had actually.
I try not to talk about myself in the book, and I was kind of encouraged to put myself, a little bit more of myself in the book. And so I kind of begrudgingly did it, but
Haley Radke: I wanted more, by the way. That's just because I'm nosy. I'm just, .
Kit Myers: But I do think it's helpful. I think it's helpful for readers to understand where the author's coming from. And of course, it's not because I'm, trying to be, , quote unquote objective. But it is difficult to, to write about your own experience, and I think part of it is because even though I think, a lot of my experiences can be relatable, there's other parts that I think are, highly [00:33:00] unrelatable with regards to adoption.
The fact that I have my birth certificate, when even most, , domestic adoptees don't have access to that, , , transnational adoptees, we understand like that's just like that record. Nobody, no official government entity has that and has the key to it, right? But here in the United States, of course, that's for, that exists for a lot of people, right? A lot of adoptees.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Kit Myers: And so, , I mean, I think that's one reason why I was, I was hesitant. But, at the same time, my experiences has, , obviously they've informed how I've thought about this, concept or this framework of the violence of love.
Because I kept thinking, like, , we hear about love, love, love and adoption. Adoption is love. And then, on the other hand, we've heard, , adoption is trauma and is violent and, and these things, and I felt [00:34:00] both, I felt both were true, not, not in the sense that it's just this relativism and that we can't have this sort of analytical perspective on it, and that we must hold them both as sort of equal things, But that they, that they actually, they are both true, and how do we contend with that?
And, and to go deeper, like, how does actually, how do these things inform each other? Right? Because the, the love that people talk about in adoption, , cannot exist without, the violence of separation, without the violence of that, that condition, that sort of creates the conditions of poverty, or patriarchy, or prisons.
, deportation of settler colonialism, , all of these things produce the condition in which families or single mothers or parents [00:35:00] get placed in this position where they feel like they must relinquish. They are coerced into relinquishing or they are, they have relinquishment, sort of this involuntary , relinquishment. And so you have this, like, aspect that oftentimes, I mean, as most of your listeners know, this aspect that isn't really validated and discussed. And it's really the idea of violence in adoption is that the child was going to experience sort of this guaranteed death. And so that adoption saves the child from violence.
Haley Radke: I was going to ask you about the word, the rescue word, like it's so, oh God, it's so frustrating.
Okay. Let me go here. Okay. This is from page 117. You say, well, rescue in quotation marks. Connotes removal from imminent danger. I contend that adoption as rescue marks originating countries [00:36:00] as spaces of inevitable death, adopting countries are spatially and temporally marked as an opposite and better future that enable freedom from violence and full as opposed to bare life.LOL. Let's take you to America.
Kit Myers: , that's, that's, that's the, too long didn't read sort of version is what a lot of people know as this sort of white saviourism. And, but that passage is really trying to explain a little bit more in detail what's going on in terms of the construction of race and the construction of space. Right? How race and space are tied together.
Because often times we think of race attached to bodies and not to space. And So in these circumstances, when we think about the inner city, when we think about the reservation, when we think about Asian countries, whether it's [00:37:00] China or Korea, Vietnam. Or, , Latin America, Ethiopia, right? We're talking about these spaces that are unable to take care of their children.
And in many cases, like, if you look, , more closely at the discourse, you'll see that there's this discourse of ineptitude. Not only that, it's not just about, like, resources, but that's, like, they're, either morally or culturally unable to, because they're kind of stuck in, in time. They're not as modern as the United States.
They, they don't. Treat girls in a particular way, or they don't value children with disability. And, so, I mean, what's, that, that sort of discourse, right, presumes what I call an opposite future. And so then, a lot of the book is trying to, sort of, show that the racialization of space and this, sort of, predetermined idea of space and time, that if we move the [00:38:00] child to the United States, that the space, and future for that child will be better is not guaranteed.
And there's so many examples in which, , Reuters did that expose on rehoming years ago and the AP Associated Press, , came out with their sort of long series on Korean adoptions. And we just have example after example of , whether it's estrangement or whether it's deportation, there's just a lot of examples right in which this isn't the case and then we can even go even broader and thinking about like how disability is thought of in the United States.
And so, yes, like. Some, I think there's some parents here in the U. S. who are adopting children with disability. But at the same time, some of those adoptive parents are doing it in a way in which they are treating their child in a particular way, right? That doesn't really empower them, that doesn't sort of [00:39:00] acknowledge them as, it sort of attaches disability to the person and in a really sort of messed up way, right?
And so, the way that we think about gender, obviously, , we have elected, , this person who has sexually assaulted women and, and bragged about it, and, so we have this idea of what America, is, but then if we take that wider lens, , right, that the discourse that justifies adoption doesn't actually match what is actually happening.
And and so that's kind of like what I'm trying to do. And really what I'm trying to do is like thinking about like the people who are really invested in adoptive care, care through adoption. Like my end argument is that we can actually provide care that we imagine through different means other than adoption.
Haley Radke: Absolutely. And I totally agree with you. For sure. [00:40:00] I want to ask you one more thing about your book, which I'm going to recommend. So let's just consider we're in the recommended resource section. So, Your book is so thorough about it's got this historical record keeping. You talk about MEPA and ICWA and several high profile trials that, have gone to the Supreme Court.
A lot of us will be familiar with them. You're also challenging positive adoption language. And this is what I wanted to talk to you a little bit about. You talk about de stigmatizing adoption, like this process that, I guess society went through and thought, God, this is exactly right. We have switched from, , adoptive parents were looked at as like infertile, broken somehow, like you can't, you can't do what we're supposed to do into glorifying adoptive parents and putting them up on this pedestal, like the, the white savior narrative you were talking about earlier. And I [00:41:00] thought, , and in doing so, what have we done to adoptees? We've forever infantilized them. And unfortunately, like birth parents have had the stigma before and after from this, , shameful, out of wedlock sex villainized in some way.
And then. , there's this desire to, like, move to calling them brave so that more people will relinquish and keep the baby supply going. Can you talk about that? Like, what do you see when you're looking at, say, current day society? What do you see people looking at adoptive parents as and adoptees as? And I know this book is to help change those views. But what are you seeing, like, working and changing that?
Kit Myers: A lot of what I'm, I, I try to write about is, or, certainly part of the book is, is talking [00:42:00] about the destigmatization of adoptive parenthood and adoption in general, and how the, the push to normalize adoption, right, as a, as a normative way to make families, of course, then in turn, creates another form of symbolic violence.
It kind of passes the violence on, so to speak. And so I talk about this in my class, this idea of creating, creating meaning is always relational. Like when you create meaning for something, you're, it's usually in relation to something else. And if something is devalued and you try to sort of imbue that devalued thing with value sort of to reclaim that value.
The danger is is that in reclaiming that value you would sort of inadvertently devalue something else and that's kind of what I feel has happened and I understand why because , I still [00:43:00] see adoption and adoptees as the sort of the butt of jokes in popular media, right? It's still even though they're Held up on this pedestal, it is a easy, it is a easy sort of quote unquote laugh, right, in a lot of media, film and TV shows and whatnot.
And so I understand the sort of tendency or the desire to sort of be viewed as normal and to claim this normalcy and to, and this is one of the reasons why I think adoptive parents really, really, for the longest time were like, well, we're the real parents and trying to claim that legitimacy and for even adoptees who say that these are my real parents because they are trying to be a part of a legitimate family, right?
And so this discourse is very much informed by how society has constructed this idea of family in such a narrow [00:44:00] way and then so adoption has in turned sort of solidified or concretized that definition of family and said, okay, we're going to just add this, but we're going to still keep the same rigid structure of what family is.
We're just going to kind of squeeze ourself in there. And so I think that a lot of adoptees, especially right adult adoptees who have. Who are adding to the discourse and who are, , writing poetry or memoirs or, , your podcast and documentary films like all of this work by these amazing adult adoptees, as you said, right, that, that we are no longer children, this constantly infantilized group of people, right, that this sort of collective voice has helped shift How we think about adoption and, and so, , my book is just another contribution.
And I really try to, at the end , I want to make sure that readers understand that, , I'm not trying to [00:45:00] be the last voice on this, right? I'm, I really want people to seek out other adotee voices with love, like an, a sort of openness and a sort of love that, that is so often claimed to be taking place in adoption, I want us to have that love when we go out and search other information that might go against, , what we've been taught or told, or even what we've experienced, right? So, so , I do think that the narrative is changing or the discourse is changing, but there's still so much work to do and it's, it's very evident constantly. I think we're confronting with it all the time.
Haley Radke: We have just scratched the surface of Kit's book. It's called The Violence of Love, Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States. I am so, it's so cool you went with a publisher who's given open source access so people can buy it anywhere and support your work. And if you're not able to, there's a free version available also. So that's [00:46:00] amazing. Thank you for doing that. What did you want to recommend to us today?
Kit Myers: , , and I love this aspect about your podcast because I think it's just so important to like seek out different resources. And so this was such a hard question because you asked me to only pick one
Haley Radke: I know it's so mean.
Kit Myers: It is it's torturous, but I I sort of ended up on When We Become Ours, which is a young adult adoptee anthology edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung.
And I've known Shannon for years and, and I've just got connected with Nicole and she wrote this wonderful blurb for me, for my book. They're both amazing people. They're both amazing writers and the folks that they have called into this anthology are just, they're such exciting voices. And I think it's. It's going to help shape young adult literature. So I'm really excited that they put this book out [00:47:00] into the world and we need more like it.
Haley Radke: Oh, absolutely. I love it. I totally second that recommendation. It's so good. Such a great resource and especially for young people as well to have something like that in your high schools library, like how cool, amazing.
.
Thank you so much for sharing a little more of you with us, Kit. I've appreciated getting to know you a little today so much. Thank you. Where can we connect with you and find your book and all the things and take a class from you? We could do that.
Kit Myers: And we're all in UC Merced. Yes.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Kit Myers: . Well, you, the easiest way to find a lot of my stuff is just if you Google me, you'll, you'll find, I think my website, the UC Merced website, which I think hopefully you can put in the podcast information.
Haley Radke: I will.
Kit Myers: I'm on Twitter and Instagram. I don't know how long I'll be on those because of just the, the stuff that the people have been that the owners of [00:48:00] those companies have been saying and doing
Haley Radke: mm hmm
Kit Myers: I just got a blue sky account, so I might be more active over there But , my book is available, on sort of your traditional online sources to buy but it's also available on Luminosoa. org and you can if you go to the University of California Press website there is a link to the free version.
Haley Radke: Amazing. That is wonderful. Thank you so much, Kit. It's such a pleasure to speak with you.
Kit Myers: It has been, , really wonderful chatting and I've been loving sort of listening to your podcast and really appreciate the work you do and I hope we can stay connected.
Haley Radke: Thank you.
Know that saying that people that people say good one Haley, that saying that history is written by the victors [00:49:00] I don't think I've talked about this enough on the podcast, but for every academic that includes historical facts, research, and data in their work, preserving adoption history. I just think it's so important, especially when it's an adoptee, right?
Because you can think of, I was just thinking, like, thinking back to Kit's book and had an adoptive parent written, parts of these histories would surely be erased because being complicit in such a problematic system, it's very difficult for some adoptive parents to look on it with, let's say, clear lenses, okay?
So, [00:50:00] I just, I really want us to support critical adoption scholars like Kit and others who we've had on the show. And sometimes it's like, I know, I know, God, listen, I know, it can sound like, oh my gosh, Haley, really? You want us to like read more about this depressing history of like, , I do. I do because we have to be the ones to talk about all of these problematic things, and we didn't really go too much into it today, but Kit has a whole chapter on the couple versus Veronica. That went all the way to the Supreme Court. I don't know if you remember that case, like the adoptive parents who were insistent on trying to adopt this baby girl who was very much wanted by her biological father.
[00:51:00] And , preserving these stories is so important, and I was almost going to say critical, but, , critical adoption scholar. How many times can I say critical? Anyway, it's, it's really important. And so I would encourage you to read Kit's book and, and other adoption history books, so many of the ones we've had on in recent years.
Many of the critical adoption scholar, professor types have sections of their books that include adoption history, and it's just, it's just so important for us. So I know it's difficult, but , just one bite at a time, we can do it. I believe in you. And I think Kit mentioned like, his parents were I don't remember the wording, but like intimidated or worried they wouldn't understand.
I know you are a very smart audience because I interact with [00:52:00] you regularly and you're very smart people. And so this book will not be difficult for you. It definitely is academic, but it's absolutely doable. And I learned so many things and there were so many things he pointed out that I was like, oh, that's where that's from.
It's one another one of those books where you can look at the bibliography and, , get a new reading list for the rest of your life. No, not, , I mean, actually, yes, but just extensive, extensive research and work has gone into it. So, I hope you all pick it up, and there's free version, so no excuse.
Thank you for supporting these conversations that I get to have with folks that are doing the research and work which is what we've been asking for right. Thank you so much for listening and let's talk again very [00:53:00] soon.
