Ick. Here’s an even worse description of this film:

“Hannah, an American writer, is heartbroken by her adopted daughter’s rejection. Hoping to unravel the mysteries of international adoption she travels to Korea. Her unacknowledged mission — even to herself — is to find her daughter’s birth mother. Instead she meets a Korean painter whose art awakens in her unexpected emotions. As he acquaints her with Korean culture and history, they begin an intense but delicate relationship, fueled by passion, the challenge to communicate, and her secret desire to make her family whole.”

From Google’s cache

Ten to one it’ll end up about the adoptive parent more than anything else. Even when we do get to tell our own stories, it’s being sifted and translated through perspectives other than our own.

I really feel you on this one. As a VN adoptee, I think it’s disgusting how our histories have been interpreted, packaged and sold back to us. All the while we’re suppose to be grateful we’re mentioned at all. And hey, sometimes we’re even allowed to speak.

Whatever.

What’s odd is that you (a TRA) received this solicitation, and not someone like me (amom to TRAs).

But it’s not about that. It’s not about any of that. And when they get confused, and we try to explain, they get all huffed up and offended before we even finish our sentences.

If they really want to know what it’s like… then why aren’t they listening to us? Why aren’t they really “hearing” us? WE’VE LIVED THROUGH IT.

But they just don’t want to hear that we have pain. Unresolved grief at realizing what it is that we’ve lost.

But we also give adoption a “bad” name. I will admit.. it’s probably extremely unsettling for a first mother to hear that her child is sad about the life they didn’t have. After all, wasn’t it a sacrifice on her part? Maybe it wasn’t one that she wanted to do, but it was a necessity at the time to ensure that the child would have been able to grow up alive and healthy, regardless of the circumstances.

- Mei-ling

PS. I went to the adoption.com chat a while ago… and one of the APs could not, for the life of her, figure out why I was sad about the loss of people I “don’t know.” She pretty said what I stated above: you keep talking about the negatives. Weren’t there *any* positive things in your life at ALL?

In short, many of us would rather have the chance to explore and explain our own histories than have them written and voiced over for us, so that the stories fashioned & produced for mass consumption are diluted and distorted by being framed through the POV of those who are doing and facilitating the adopting, instead of POVs of those who are living the experience of being adopted.

Several of my fellow adoptee bloggers and I have lamented this fact, and discussed extensively how the parent-child power relationship is used to reinforce the illusion that adoptees somehow either remain “adopted children” forever (infantilization), or cease to have any post-adoption-related needs after becoming adults. This power relationship also is leveraged to undermine our authority as experts of our own experiences — that is, refuting/glossing over the fact that we as adult adoptees are the experts.

~Ji In

I really don’t understand how this is offensive.

Wouldn’t it be a good thing for them to film an adoptive mother’s journey to Korea to enable her to understand what it is, precisely, that her daughter’s lost?

- Mei-Ling