When My Family Looks Nothing Like Me

The Joys and Challenges of Transracial Adoption Viewed from Both Sides

By Yayoi Lena Winfrey, AAV Contributing Editor

Up until the time my father integrated our previously all-white neighborhood, I rarely thought about my parents being two different colors. Growing up among a slew of postwar military children whose mothers were Japanese or German married to Black and Caucasian Americans prepared me poorly for the mono-racial world beyond the Army dependents' quarters. On base, it was almost common to reside in a multinational household.

During soggy summer months, the sight of my Japanese mother clad in shorts ignited guffaws from my cocoa-colored father. She cracked jokes about her own paler-than-rice-paper legs. The beauty of her curvaceous calves, dimpled by plump knees, couldn't stop us from giggling over their stringy blue veins. Other than my mother's ghostly legs, though, I never gave skin color much thought until I was eleven and living in the suburbs where everyone was white. The children in my school were white; their mothers were white, their fathers were white and their sisters and brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents were white.

As tough as it was being a member of a tri-colored family in a one-color environment, however, I can't imagine life with adoptive parents who look nothing like me.

Mix and Match Families

For Katie Tupper, a Korean adoptee growing up in a white family, having parents with whom she shared no physical traits was difficult.

"It was really hard fitting in and I had a lot of challenges with my extended family as well as classmates and teachers..." says Tupper, an accomplished actress. "I wanted to (look) like my parents. I thought it was a punishment (that I didn't)..."

Today, at 23, Tupper is happy, but in earlier days on Seattle's Eastside, she suffered from isolation.

"I didn't know anybody who was adopted...The people around me would make it pretty much clear that it was not okay to be different."

So, Tupper "refused the Asian part because I was always made fun of…I had a lot of issues at the time."

Dr. Chia Wang (pronounced Shaw Wong) is confident that her adopted children won't have "a lot of issues" despite being Black with a Chinese-American mother and Caucasian father.

Even though son Mohammed has been called "a nigger several times," Wang insists "there's very little racial tension here [in Seattle] compared to other parts of the country. It's nothing like being in Chicago."

In 1993, Wang, a hepatitis specialist, volunteered at an East African hospital with her husband, Neil Josephson, also a doctor.

One morning, Mohammed was delivered to the hospital complaining of abdominal pain that turned out to be tuberculosis. Shortly after operating on him, Wang met Mohammed's sister Amina (Ah-mee-nah).

Gradually coaxing the story from a reluctant Mohammed, Wang was appalled to learn of his family's harrowing escape from drought, famine and war-torn Ethiopia. In the middle of the night, Mohammed, his sister, parents and a new baby set out on their journey by foot. At some point, Mohammed's father, a blacksmith, decided to go back to collect his expensive tools. After two days with no sign of him, the family continued their exodus convinced he'd been killed by robbers. By the time they arrived at a Kenyan refugee camp, Mohammed's mother and the baby were extremely ill, turning yellow shortly before dying. Although tribal customs dictate that the community performs funeral rites, fear of infection drove them away leaving Mohammed to tend to his mother's lifeless body alone.

With the onslaught of torrential rains, countless Ethiopians began returning home. But Mohammed's bitterness at being shunned by his own prevented a reunion with them. Since the United Nations makes no provision for orphans and because Mohammed had been a TB patient for six months, he was offered the choice of going to a Sudanese refugee camp.

"We wanted to bring them with us because no one individual would be responsible for them and they would have died," says Wang about their decision to adopt Mohammed and Amina.

The next five years were a bureaucratic nightmare while Mohammed and Amina waited in a private orphanage run by a German Catholic nun. Muslim by birth, the kids don't know their true ages because their nomadic group doesn't celebrate birthdays. Amina, whose name means 'amen' in Islam, is thought to be twelve and Mohammed sixteen.

Three lawyers later and with the intervention of a volunteer specialist, the children came to America.

"Home Sweet Home"

Going home to Korea for the first time was a heart-wrenching affair for Katie Tupper when, right after high school graduation, she and 25 adoptees from all across the U.S. returned to their birthplace.

Tupper says, "It was pretty deep to see where you came from... Some people actually got to meet their [birth] parents." The group stayed in orphanages. "I slept with the kids on (unheated) floors with blankets. When I woke up in the morning, there were all these little kids sleeping next to me."

"Korea is really changing their viewpoint on adoption. In the last five to ten years, they've been trying to change their image... They don't want to have a reputation of not taking care of their kids."

Tupper describes a Korean television show devoted to parents searching for children they gave away.

"There's a lot of media attention," says Tupper. "The government sponsors free trips and education programs for adoptees to come to Korea for up to two years to learn the culture and go to school there and learn more about being Korean."

Unlike Tupper, Mohammed has no interest in going back home.

"Both children are happy to be here," says Wang. "Mohammed never wants to go back to Kenya. He has many more opportunities here."

His sister, Amina, however, was extremely "homesick when she first came" to Seattle according to Wang and "she may choose to go back. Part of her heart is in Kenya."

"When the kids first arrived they were so sensitive about which African country they came from and which tribe," Wang chuckles. "Yet they would say Chinese and Japanese is the same thing. I was offended by that, but they couldn't understand that then. Now, if someone (says) I'm Japanese they are very quick to correct them. The children are rather proud of the fact that I'm Chinese. Mohammed had bets with his classmates that his mother (is) Chinese."

Before telling her mother about Mohammed and Amina, Wang waited five years for the adoption papers to be finalized.

"There was a long silence," says Wang, "before she said with resignation, 'I guess I have my first two grandchildren'."

"My parents had a harder time dealing with me not marrying a Chinese man than anything," Wang confides. She and her father stopped speaking for several years following her marriage.

Arriving in New York from China with seven American dollars in his pocket, Wang's father eventually became a nuclear engineer while his wife taught school.

For Katie Tupper, family relationships are a high priority.

"We're so close," says Tupper about her parents. "They have always been my family since I was six months old. I can't imagine being with anyone else. They're my mom and dad."

Despite these strong bonds, Tupper says she has also "met so many people who've had bad experiences, who were told, 'If you're not a good little China doll, I'll send you back to Korea in a banana boat'."

In college, Tupper started meeting many more Asians, but quickly ran afoul of those testing her on her "Asian-ness".

"Why is your name Katherine Elizabeth Tupper?" she was asked bluntly.

"Unless you're Korean and speak Korean, no one gives you a chance," she says sadly. "If your parents aren't Korean, there's all these strikes against you."

Wang admits that she and her husband are "sometimes uncertain what we should tell the children about how they may be discriminated against. For example, we took [them] to a Broadway play and to some fancy playhouse with a big Christmas tree. Amina went, but Mohammed stood by the door. When we came back, a policeman was talking to him and telling him to move on. He was dressed like other teenagers...with a puffy jacket. I'm sure if he'd been another color, he wouldn't have been asked to move on. He told the policeman he was waiting for his mother and the police didn't believe him. In that moment, I chose not to tell Mohammed that part of it was due to his color."

Perhaps, as Tupper discovered at his age, Mohammed already knew.

Wang says she has not experienced that particular type of race discrimination herself, or she may have felt differently. "I don't know how I would have handled that if I was a Black parent...We who are not subjected to it may not understand it completely."

Worried that Mohammed and Amina could "run into...parents who may not be enthusiastic for them to date their children," Wang says, "I think it's better not to say that before it happens."

Part of her reluctance is the risk of bringing up unchecked emotions in such conversations. "I was afraid (Mohammed) would be angry about (the playhouse incident) and it's not the kind of anger he would be able to channel constructively. They never experienced it in Africa, of course. I've never heard him say I wasn't allowed do that or they don't like me because I'm Black."

"All in the Roots"

A frequent complaint of African Americans is that white people who give birth to or adopt Black children "can't do our hair."

Although my own hair is far from "nappy", it is unusually thick and wavy. My Japanese mother's solution for dealing with such unruliness in the pre-blow dryer days was to dry it by inverting the hose of a vacuum cleaner.

"I took Amina to DeCharlene," says Wang naming a popular local hair stylist. "She had relaxed (her hair) herself and it didn't work. Now she's learning how to set it. We're making progress in that department."

The last time I saw Amina, she was sporting extensions--tiny synthetic braids attached to her own hair and Wang was enthusiastic about giving her a home perm. Amina knew every lyric to every rap song playing on the radio and her photo album was crammed with snapshots taken at the Central Area's Black Heritage Festival. But Amina also speaks some Chinese and knows about cultural taboos like young girls in China not wearing black.

Tupper says her parents "exposed me and my younger brother to Asian culture by taking us to Chinese restaurants, and sending us to Korean Cultural Camp through a program called KIDS--Korean Identification Development Society." The program started about 15 to 20 years ago with the boom of adoptees from Korea.

"Basically the families wanted to get together and do this bonding thing and started this cultural camp for adoptees to learn Korean culture as well as they could at that time period."

Tupper attended the camp a few over two years, but lost interest because she "wasn't into it at the time."

Now she's making up for lost time by embracing the Asian roots she initially rejected. Currently a student at the University of Washington, Tupper is majoring in American Ethnic Studies.

"It helps me to understand what it's like to grow up in a household with Asian parents," she says about the dilemma of not knowing Asian culture, yet looking the part.

Four years ago, Tupper co-founded Asian Adult Adoptees of Washington. Besides a mentorship program for teen adoptees, the organization hosts panels, film screenings and documentaries about adoptees.

In this brave new world of rainbow families and multicultural households, perhaps it's just a matter of time before we all become as colorblind as I was in my childhood.''

Other Readings of Interest

• Reading Resources for Asian Adoptees and Transracial Adoption Families
  By Linh Song, Executive Director, Mam Non Organization
  Part 1: Books for Asian Adoptees and Transracial Adoption Families
  Part 2: Books about Race and Diversity
• Adoption, Hapas, and Asian-American Heritage
  By S. D. Ikeda, Editor, Asian-American Village
  On the future of the 'traditional non-traditional' Japanese-Am. family
• Village Views: Transracial Adoption
  Villager letters on the topic from the AAV archives
• Crossing the Cultural Bridge: Learning to Build a Child's Confidence
  By Chris Winston, Chairperson, Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network
  An adoptive parent's lessons on building a child's confidence through role models and community involvement
• AAV Archives: Multiracial Issues
  Multiracial families, interracial relationships, biracial identity, transracial adoption, and other topics in our extended (H)APA community