Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging

352 Pages·2010·0.987 MB·English

by  Mark C. Jerng

C L A I M I N G
O T H E R S
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C L A I M I N G
O T H E R S
Transracial Adoption and
National Belonging
Mark C. Jerng
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of chapter 3 were previously published as “The Character of
Race: Adoption and Individuation in William Faulkner’s Light in August
and Charles Chesnutt’s The Quarry,” Arizona Quarterly 64, no. 4 (2008);
reprinted by permission of the Regents of the University of Arizona.
Portions of chapter 5 were previously published as “Recognizing the
TransracialAdoptee:AdoptionLifeStoriesandChange-raeLee’sAGesture
Life,”MELUS:JournaloftheSocietyfortheStudyofMulti-EthnicLiteratureof
theUnitedStates31,no.2(Summer2006):41–67;reprintedbypermission
ofMELUS.
Copyright2010bytheRegentsoftheUniversityofMinnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
priorwrittenpermissionofthepublisher.
PublishedbytheUniversityofMinnesotaPress
111ThirdAvenueSouth,Suite290
Minneapolis,MN55401–2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Jerng,MarkC.
Claimingothers:transracialadoptionandnationalbelonging/
MarkC.Jerng.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-8166-6958-5(hc:alk.paper)–
ISBN978-0-8166-6959-2(pb:alk.paper)
1.Americanliterature–20thcentury–Historyandcriticism.
2.Interracialadoptioninliterature. 3.Adoptioninliterature.
4.Raceinliterature. 5.Interracialadoption. I.Title.
PS228.I69J472010
810.9(cid:2)35254–dc22 2010031953
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaonacid-freepaper
TheUniversityofMinnesotaisanequal-opportunityeducatorandemployer.
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction
Transracial Adoption and the Reproduction of Personhood vii
I. ON THE BORDERS OF KINSHIP
1. Competing Logics of Possession
Unredeemed Captives in the 1820s 3
2. Unmanageable Attachments
Slavery, Abolition, and the Transformation of Kinship 45
3. The Character of Race
Individuation and the Institutionalization of Adoption 85
II. BETWEEN RIGHTS AND NEEDS
4. The Right to Belong
Legal Norms, Cultural Origins, and Adoptee Identity 125
5. Resisting Recognition
Narrating Transracial Adoptees as Subjects 168
6. Making Family “Look like Real”
Transracial Adoption and the Challenge to Family 209
Acknowledgments 245
Notes 249
Index 293
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Introduction
Transracial Adoption and
the Reproduction of Personhood
Adoptionasanactthatseversalllegaltiesbetweenachildand
its biological parents is a fairly recent legal concept. The 1851
Massachusetts statute that formed the precedent and basis for
ourmodernunderstandingofadoptionspecificallybrokefrom
English jurisprudence, which held the child–biological parent
bond inalienable “by any act of the parents themselves”1 and
“prohibitedtheabsolute,permanent,andvoluntarytransferof
parental power to third persons.”2 While this legal statute was
passed with surprisingly little comment at the time, its effects
have been far-reaching. Legally, this construction of adoption
would gain legitimacy through the nineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries, becoming an international phenomenon today.
Socially,thedevelopmentofadoptionhasraisedissuesaround
our political frameworks of family, nationality, and race and
has sparked off controversial debates over privacy and secrecy,
statewelfare,children’srights,andinternationalhumanrights.
But perhaps most important, this formalization of adoption
displacesthecentralityofbirthforourunderstandingsofwho
we are in ways that we have yet to fully understand. Persons
adoptedwithinthismodernconceptionchallengefundamental
expectations and assumptions about personhood because they
highlight the ways that birth situates the origins, continuities,
genealogies, and histories that provide the conditions for leg-
ibility within political society. Adoption in this sense assumes
vii
viii / Introduction
that adopted persons will change identity—they will take on
a new name, become part of a new family and sometimes
a new country. And yet the precise parameters of this shift
in the social standings of adopted persons have been unclear,
contested, and negotiated in ways that reveal the interrelated
construction of the categories of family, nation, and race.
In his short play Trying to Find Chinatown, David Henry
Hwangcomicallydramatizespreciselythisquestionofwhether
adoptees can change social identities. The play depicts a white
man, Benjamin, who is adopted by Chinese American par-
ents from the Midwest. Having fully assumed the cultural and
racialidentityofhisadoptedfamily,Benjaminissearchingfor
his “roots” in Chinatown. He asks a Chinese American street
musician, Ronnie, where he could find Chinatown. A series
of comic misunderstandings ensues built around the inability
of each person to fulfill the other’s expectations. Ronnie takes
Benjamin as a racist white man who is exoticizing and objec-
tifying him as a Chinatown tour guide (ronnie: “So why is
it that you picked me, of all the street musicians in the City, to
point you in the direction of Chinatown?”).3 Benjamin then
confuses Ronnie by answering back with his vocabulary of
antiorientalism and his knowledge of Asian American studies.
Benjamin talks about taking “pride in my ancestors who built
the railroads” and exploring the “history of oppression which
ismylegacy,”throwingRonnieintoafit(12).ThenBenjamin
states that he understands Ronnie’s confusion and explains by
saying that he was adopted:
ronnie.Idon’tknowwhatkindofbullshitethnicstudiespro-
gramthey’rerunningoverinWuss-consin,butdidtheybother
toteachyouthatinordertofindyourAsian“roots,”it’sagood
ideatofirstbeAsian?
(Pause)
benjamin.Areyouspeakingmetaphorically?
Introduction / ix
ronnie.No!Literally!Lookatyourskin!
...
benjamin. You see, I was adopted by Chinese American
parentsatbirth.So,clearly,I’manAsianAmerican—
ronnie.Eventhoughyou’reblondandblue-eyed.
benjamin. Well, you can’t judge my race by my genetic heri-
tagealone.
ronnie.Ifgenesdon’tdeterminerace,whatdoes?
benjamin. Perhaps you’d prefer that I continue in denial,
masqueradingasawhiteman?(12–13)
BenjaminthentalksaboutgainingarealsenseofAsianAmer-
icancommunitysteepedinthetraditionsofChinesemythand
spirituality and accuses Ronnie of being one of those “self-
hating assimilated Chinese Americans” (14). The play ends
with Ronnie’s resistance to this cultural nationalist version of
Chinese American identity and Benjamin immersing himself
intothespirituallineageofhisadoptedforefathers.BothBen-
jaminandRonnieclaimdistinctversionsofChineseAmerican
identity in relation to the question of “birth.” Though Ben-
jamin’sskiniswhite,hebelievesheisAsianAmericanbyvirtue
of adoption and is seeking to gain the cultural, political, and
geographical trappings of that identity. Ronnie has a strictly
geneticist view of racial identity and yet does not have a cul-
tural nationalist view of Asian American identity, seeking to
expand conceptions of Chinese American culture by drawing
fromabroadswathofculturalresourcesandreferences(Hen-
drix,Armstrong,Urbaniak).Thisplayshowsthewayinwhich
“birth” acts as a pivot around which personal, national, racial,
and familial identities revolve.
Hwang’s play is a comic send-up of our assumptions about
what birth into a specific family, culture, or race entails.