More to adoption than 'saving a baby'
Look up this interesting article on Kim Park Nelson and Jane Jeong Trenka in The Minnasota Monthly. These Korean adoptees raise strong voices on adoption and postadoption issues.
Here's an excerpt:
"Kim Park Nelson says she would like to see Americans get beyond the idea that adoption is a simple win-win proposition, solving America’s infertility problems and saving babies in one
stroke. And she’d like people to realize that the way transnational adoption is practiced reflects inequalities in the global economy.
“Transnational adoption right now depends on rich nations and poor nations and there being this huge gap between rich and poor and being white and non-white,” she says. “The reason an American woman can be 41 and wanting to have children even though she’s no longer fertile. . . is because of the way that transnational adoption is set up. It depends on some person she will never meet and doesn’t want to think about—someone who has no options and no choices and lives in a society where single motherhood isn’t a viable option
or is unfeasible economically. "
And Kim Park Nelson then says,
"I refuse to believe that it’s because those women don’t want to keep their kids. Women want to keep their kids.”
"Helping birth mothers keep their children is one of the many causes taken on by Jane Jeong Trenka, adopted with one of her sisters in 1972 by a rural Minnesota family. Trenka’s memoir, The Language of Blood, examines her sense of displacement as an adopted Korean and her return trip to Korea in 1995. Trenka now lives in Korea and is a co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, an anthology that explores the emotional, cultural, economic, and political toll that transracial adoption can take. Trenka would like to see countries like the United States spend less of their considerable wealth on adopting foreign children and more on improving conditions in the “sending” countries, so that birth mothers are not forced to “choose” adoption."
Thanks to Made in Korea
Here's an excerpt:
"Kim Park Nelson says she would like to see Americans get beyond the idea that adoption is a simple win-win proposition, solving America’s infertility problems and saving babies in one
stroke. And she’d like people to realize that the way transnational adoption is practiced reflects inequalities in the global economy.
“Transnational adoption right now depends on rich nations and poor nations and there being this huge gap between rich and poor and being white and non-white,” she says. “The reason an American woman can be 41 and wanting to have children even though she’s no longer fertile. . . is because of the way that transnational adoption is set up. It depends on some person she will never meet and doesn’t want to think about—someone who has no options and no choices and lives in a society where single motherhood isn’t a viable option
or is unfeasible economically. "
And Kim Park Nelson then says,
"I refuse to believe that it’s because those women don’t want to keep their kids. Women want to keep their kids.”
"Helping birth mothers keep their children is one of the many causes taken on by Jane Jeong Trenka, adopted with one of her sisters in 1972 by a rural Minnesota family. Trenka’s memoir, The Language of Blood, examines her sense of displacement as an adopted Korean and her return trip to Korea in 1995. Trenka now lives in Korea and is a co-editor of Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, an anthology that explores the emotional, cultural, economic, and political toll that transracial adoption can take. Trenka would like to see countries like the United States spend less of their considerable wealth on adopting foreign children and more on improving conditions in the “sending” countries, so that birth mothers are not forced to “choose” adoption."
Thanks to Made in Korea
posted by Brit Kim at 4:18 AM
1 Comments:
Very nice website and webwork! CPH is wonderful. Happy to know there are other Koreans in Denmark and there are restaurants like Korean Palace Restaurant if you want Korean food. Is there a larger community there? :-)
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