Before you view the video, I ask that you read my Artist’s Statement.
After viewing the film, I invite you to leave a comment at the bottom of this page. Thanks!
One adoptee emailed me this comment: I thought it was brilliant, everything about it, the layered voice tracks, the timing/beats, the pop/funk graphics, the child narrating, the words you chose, and especially the sardonic, righteous, and un white-washed voice you chose. Great poem. It justified my outrage so much. And you did a technically masterful job at the production as well… It’s gratifying to see that someone ‘gets’ what I was trying to do, on all levels… Thanks for the feedback!
This is a very moving film which, as a transracial and transnational adoptee, is easy to relate to and to take in.
No discussion questions necessary as you covered my transRACIAL adoptee EXPERIENCE exquisitely. Sad that our “better off” is with people who need to study how being taken affects us…If people can’t understand this video, then they aren’t humane enough to adopt.
This entire film is incredibly, and deeply powerful. Two things in particular will remain with me.
The first is the way the message to suppress, forget, and turn away from the past and everything that goes with it is unrelentingly drummed home, in direct and subtle messages. It’s like living in a perpetual radioactive rainshower that constantly eats away at you.
The other is this, from the artist’s statement:
“My poetry and my music, like the work I do in the adoption community, is informed by a concern for social justice, a perspective that I believe is sorely lacking in most discussions of adoption.”
You are so completely right. This film will do a lot to change that.
Thank you, John.
Bravo!
Thank you John! your work is so filled with hope .. and knowledge and ah, and … love, thank you!
Loved it. Smiling through tears here.
Wow. That was extremely powerful. It resonated with me, a non-transracial adoptee, most powerfully in the invective not to search: “Why search? The past is past.” I left it disgusted with the state of adoption today, of international adoption. Happy Gotcha Day, indeed. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for this. It brings forth the anger and the loss that hides within. Identity ripped out and replaced with something foreign, just as I am foreign within the foreign-ness. And while that identity has been taken, my tongue still remembers that it likes rice, but can’t remember the words of my native country. I am saddened by the finality of someone else’s decision. That I must always walk between worlds.
Thanks so much for making this for all adoptees.
I’m the white mother of a black child from Ethiopia. This film is powerful and echos what I’m reading on transracial adult adoptee blogs. I have a lot to learn and it is hard. It is essential. Thank you for this creative and hard-hitting piece.
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Clear and loud. Thank you, John.
Thanks John – as always your work not only speaks a message that is so desperately needed, but is also said in a way that forces us examine every corner of our own thoughts, preconceptions and especially – priviledge. There is no escaping with the usual “that’s not what it’s like in my town”, or “I don’t see colour”, or “the world has come a long way and it’s not what is used to be like”…because you remind us that colour is just the tip of the iceburg and what is necessary is personal introspection/examination and acceptance from the inside out.
Thanks John from Norway
germanborn ernst Reise
The best in the world so far!
From Brenda Jaskola
German born in 1967 and abducted to Norway in illegale adoption!
Wow. What an amazing and sometimes shocking (necessarily so) film! I’m neither transracial nor transnational – I am however an adoptee. So many of the issues highlighted in this film are common in ALL adoptions. “Be grateful. You’re better off. We decided for you. You better love us.” OMG! The added complexities and difficulties of being transracial and/or transnational are so movingly expressed. Great great film!
I agree. We too are robbed of so much and made to be brought to the heal of our new families.
HI
I was adopted from Korea to Norway in 1970,I saw your video just now, its so awsome:) Khara..
Thank you for sharing and speaking out, John. Excellent video – disturbingly sad and true. We so need to unite to ensure that these acts of inhumanity as I view it are stopped. I am amazed that as a child you would already be advocating on behalf of your fellow transracial adoptees. As a child I’d be slapped into submission if ever I dared to speak out. Now as an adult I can finally speak out! Unity and education are key here and you are doing both. Please keep in touch as I would love to keep up to date with all your work.
Best Wishes and Warm Regards
Poshora :}
Wow, John. That was incredibly powerful and so on target. Thank you for doing this. Can I share this in workshops with folks that need some education?
Thanks for the message, Kim. Let me think about your request to share it at workshops. I’ll get back to you, or you can follow up with me later.
Hi John
Great film … the nurse reminds me of my adoptive mum ! … thanks for providing a forum for sharing … As a transracial adoptee brought up in a Baptist family I often felt that I ought to be ‘grateful’ to have been brought into a family and loved and accepted … but it is a double edged sword … It was my friend Poshora (above) who shared your film on facebook and now i’ll do the same.
Lots of love
Jade x
This is an amazing, insightful and, most importantly, a TRUTHFUL look at the abusive, destructive “bizarre social experiment” of adoption. Most in “Adoptionland” never really get it, do they? It’s what I like to call the “Let’s Pretend” game. An adoptee has no past, no roots, no culture; it’s all wiped away like a “clean slate.” He assimilates himself to be like the family he is adopted into, and of course, he must be eternally grateful that he was saved from “whatever” his natural family and heritage were; always a segment of the population who were not quite good enough. A lot of this is never spoken of, but it is definitely always there; just lurking in the shadows and in the background of an adoptee’s every-day existence.
Thanks for your work, John. Have you considered making it more easily available? I stumbled on this by a fluke. Those of us crushed by adoption have a lot of work to do. Thanks for getting your message out there. And, have you ever reconnected with your natural family? Just curious…