Amid global adoption reckoning, adoptees fight long-standing narrative they should be 'grateful'
Amid recent investigations on systemic adoption fraud by the Chinese and South Korean governments, adoptees are speaking out on a narrative they should be "grateful."
Cosette Eisenhauer-Epp, a Chinese transracial adoptee with white parents, said she remembers a salient moment after the March 2022 Atlanta-area spa shootings.
“The people he shot look like me, but he’s the same ethnicity as my parents, so where do I go from that?” said Eisenhauer-Epp, a 23-year-old master’s student at the University of Texas at Arlington.
For Eisenhauer-Epp, the shootings were just another reminder of how complicated it was navigating her identity as an adoptee.
Many adoptees say they have recently been pushing back against a certain narrative they feel is foisted upon them. Amid recent investigations that exposed systemic adoption fraud by the Chinese and South Korean governments, some adoptees have capitalized on the global reckoning with adoption to combat messages from the media and well-intentioned commentators that they should be “grateful.”
Many adoptees also say that with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and conservative-backed push to present adoption as an alternative to abortion, the idea that adoptees were “rescued” and should be thankful is woven into America’s political fabric.
Rating: 5