#foreign adoption

I was born in August of 1999, in Mixco, Guatemala.  In the time between my birth and my final destination of US, I had a total of four different maternal figures.  To the best of my knowledge, my birth mother took care of me for a short time, and then another woman when my birth mother was unable to look after me during the day (work?).  Then, for whatever reason, I was put up for adoption and was delivered into the care of my foster mother, who did a tremendous job looking after me.  Final, I ended up in the loving arms of my mom, who then, after the adoption was finalized, took me home to America.  I have spent the rest of my life up until this point in the American Midwest. 

I will first say that I am tremendously lucky.  I have a loving home, and my adoption was never something that was held over my head, my parents were never of the mindset that they had rescued me from my original country or belittled me because my birth mother had given me up.  In fact, my mom is herself adopted, so she is herself acutely aware of both the struggles that come with adoption, and that missing or wondering about ones birth family in no way detracts from their love for their adopted family.  Mom had even reunited with her birth mother and I am very close to that side of the family, having grown up knowing them and celebrating birthdays and holidays with them. Adoption was always a subject that was open for discussion in my house, and my brother (also adopted) and I were encouraged to ask questions and share concerns about where we came from.  It has always just been a part of who I am.

That said, even has happy as my story is, there are still struggles that I have to deal with, scars that are still healing.  Due, I believe, to the rapid changes in a maternal figure at such a young age, I have deep seated trust issues and, outside of my family, I have yet to form a deep, lasting bond with another person.  I enjoy the company of others, and I do have friends, but those relationships are based primarily on proximity, such as attending the same school or youth group.  When I leave that environment, those relationships slip away.  I have yet to figure out how to fix that broken piece inside me that allows me to watch years of friendship fall apart.  

Ever since my senior year of high school, I have been dealing with some identity issues as I discern where I belong in terms of culture and ethnicity.  I was born and lived out my infancy in Guatemala, and am therefore most definitely Guatemalan.  At the same time, I can’t speak the language beyond a little over half a semester of college Spanish at this point, I don’t share the same cultural experience as my peers who were raised in a more Hispanic environment growing up as my family is very much white.  I want to belong to a my ethnic group, but I share basically nothing in common with them as far as social background and to top it all off, I even look pretty white.  Over the past year, it has caused feelings of loss and confusion as I try and figure out where I belong, where it is I have a place.  When an internet search failed to turn up any satisfying articles on the subject, I turned to the tumblr community.  As you may have guessed, I was not disappointed, and thus this blog which pretty much brings us full circle :)

Babies with Scabies and Other Complaints

Adopting children from a foreign country is so glamorous, so heroic, attention-getting, show-stopping. If you adopt a child from another country, your friends will admire you and strangers will call you a saint. You, on the other hand, know the truth. You’re going to another country to adopt a child because you will go to any lengths required to have a child. Let’s be frank. Still, of the…

Adam Crapser was brought to the United States when he was 3, to start a new life — new parents, new culture, new country. But his adoptive parents didn't complete his citizenship papers. Then they abandoned him to the foster care system.

And now, as a 41-year-old father of four, he's being deported. Despite his appeals for help, he has been ordered to be sent back to South Korea, a country The Associated Press describes as "completely alien to him."

First, his adoptive parents never obtained citizenship for him.

He's not alone in that: One Korean-American advocacy group estimates some 35,000 people in the U.S. were adopted from abroad and don't have U.S. citizenship, the AP reports.

Then, after an abusive childhood, Crapser served jail time for crimes, Crapser later turned his life around, spending stints as a barbershop owner and in the insurance industry. He married and had several children; more recently, he was a stay-at-home father. But, the Times says, it was hard for him to hold a job without citizenship.

A law was passed in 2000 to grant automatic citizenship to children adopted by U.S. parents. But the law "only covered future adoptees and those 18 or younger," Starr reported. "One of the people who didn't make the age cut-off was Adam Crapser."

So Crapser had to apply for a Green Card to start down the path toward citizenship. When he did, his criminal convictions bumped up against a second law.

" 'I'm responsible for my actions, and I've done my time,' he said. 'Please, just listen to the details. ...

" 'I want to be here. I want to stay here. So I just ask everybody to just please, you know, have some leniency on me. ... All I want to do is be the best American I can be. I don't want to be this broken, screwed-up guy. Just don't take me out of the United States.' "

Since then, Crapser has spent nine months in a detention center in Washington state, separated from his family. On Monday, he waived an appeal because he is desperate to get out of detention, his lawyer Lori Walls told The Associated Press.

"In an email, Walls said Adam was eligible for a deportation reprieve called 'cancellation of removal,' but the 'judge decided he did not deserve this relief.'

Interview with Joanne Serling, author of GOOD NEIGHBORS

This week I’m speaking with author Joanne Serling. Her new book of literary fiction, Good Neighbors, was published on February 6, 2018 by Twelve.

Joanne’s fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in New Ohio Review and North American Review. She lived and worked as an English teacher in Seville, Spain for a year after graduating college. She was horrible at learning…

According to the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), the country has banned all foreign adoptions due to concerns over child abuse. The ENA released a statement saying children adopted by foreign families have been exposed to “crime and social crises in the country they grew up in”.  Ethiopia is one of the popular countries for adoptions to the United States. Over 15,000 Ethiopian children have been…

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