Asian Adoptees Get Their Own NY Times Page (sort of)

The NYT launched a new blog on adoption and though it's not meant to solely focus on transracial adoption of Asian children, there's certainly a great deal of content oriented around those relations right now. It is well worth reading though prepared to be seriously perturbed.

Relative Choices

I've said this for years but we're in the midst of seeing the first major waves of Asian adoptees (mostly Korean) come of age in America and as this happens, the conversations that are likely to arise will be fascinating to consider, especially in thinking about how the next wave (mostly Chinese) children grow up.

Journey From a Chinese Orphanage to a Jewish Rite of Passage

after searching "chinese jewish", via flickr

Listening to the inaugural Rice Daddies podcast I learned that part of DISL's heritage is Jewish.

This occured to me when I came across this article, on NYTimes.com (registration required), via inherentthesis, a blog by a friend who is doing a MFA thesis on the modern definition of family.

"Of the 613 laws in the Torah, the one that appears most often is the directive to welcome strangers. The girl once known as Fu Qian has been thinking about that a lot lately.

"Three weeks ago, she stood at the altar of her synagogue on the Upper West Side and gave a speech about it.

"Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children — most of them girls — taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah." --continued at NYTimes.com