Unpacking Identity as a Transracial Adoptee
By Alex Free
My name is Alex Free, 김은영 (Kim Eun-Yeong), and מתנת החיים (Matanah Chai’ah). I am 35 years old, and I have no idea who I am.
I’m a Korean adoptee (KAD) and a transracial adoptee (TRA), and this is the adoption story my parents told me.
I was whisked away from my birth mom at the hospital and put in an orphanage. A few months later, I was placed with a foster mom, and then I was adopted at four months old. I had a one-time, one-way passport from South Korea that expired as soon as I took flight. At a JFK terminal, I met my adoptive parents and brothers (who are biological to them), and we drove directly to Albany to naturalize me.
My biological mother was pregnant with me at a very young age, and her boyfriend left her when he learned about the pregnancy. Her brothers helped her set up the adoption before I was born. They told me that my mother had to give me up because, in Korean culture, both my mother and I would have been ostracized and shunned, and I would have been bullied because my mother was a single mom. My biological mother gave me up for a better, happier life. My biological father has no story; he’s just a footnote, a man who abandoned my mother.
My adoptive parents told me they worked so hard and overcame so many obstacles to adopt me, making me very special. I was even more wanted than other babies.
Is any of this story true?
I don’t know.
A lot of people like to think of adoption as just that one “simple” transaction. Once you are in your adoptive home, that is your family, and that’s that. There is this belief that if you are loved enough and incorporated enough that nothing else matters. But I think it does more harm than good to assume that love can conquer all. When you are stripped of your culture and identity, you can be unsure of your sense of self and feel a lack of belonging everywhere.
This can cause particular problems as a TRA because loving someone enough doesn’t turn them white, change their DNA, or create cultural understanding. It doesn’t change the fact that your child will have completely different lived experiences than you. Or that your white privilege only extends so far.
I’ve always known that being a TRA, identity is complicated. Since I was little, I’ve been asked invasive and harmful questions as people try to make sense of me. Ranging from “Don’t you think it’s weird that you don’t look like anyone in your family?” to “But you want to meet your REAL mom at some point, right?” Adult people assume I’m the help, the nanny, the girlfriend — but never family.
From babyhood to early adulthood, I desperately wanted to fit in somewhere. I hate how much I wanted to be white and strongly disliked anything that felt stereotypically Asian. I pushed my family …
Alex Free (they/she) is a fierce mental health & social justice advocate who focuses on topics spanning intersectionality, reproductive health, disrupting rape culture, healing & trauma, identity, and dismantling white supremacy. They are a creator, storyteller, speaker, survivor leader, and yogi as well as an intersectional, trauma-informed facilitator of social justice and healing spaces. Alex speaks about their own journey as someone who lives with AuDHD, CPTSD, chronic pain, and other chronic illnesses and believes there is power in our stories. They are also a queer, non-binary femme who was displaced through trans-racial and trans-national adoption. Their hope is that each of us goes on the journey to decolonize our minds and our spaces so we can truly fight for collective liberation for all of us.
