Year of the Dragon Boats

I was going to write a post reflecting back on my accomplishments of 2007, but since that was such a short list (no, really) I thought I would focus on just one. (Mama2Roo — I’m hoping this can count as a post for your contest as well!)

I’ve always been wary of competitive team sports, mostly because I suck at them. Big time. This fact was confirmed by a bad experience with CYO basketball in fourth grade, which cemented my view of team sports, or at least my interest in participating in them, for about 23 years. (Let’s just say that no one ever sufficiently explained the rules of the game to me, including the terms “offense” and “defense” and how they differed. Needless to say, much unhelpful ridicule from my teammates ensued. Oh, and the fact that I was Asian didn’t help — no one had heard of Yao Ming back in 1984.)

But this past May, some of my classmates invited me to join an all-women dragon boat team that was being formed to compete in an upcoming dragon boat festival. I had never heard of dragon boating before, but it sounded like fun. I was intrigued by the idea of doing something with an Asian connection, and with getting to know the people from my class better. I had also liked canoing when I was younger, and a dragon boat looks a lot like a really big canoe:

Sixteen people (seated in eight rows of two) paddle at a time; a seventeenth person sits at the front as the drummer, and an eighteenth person stands at the back as the steerer. I actually tried steering for about half a practice, but felt really nauseous standing up and went back to paddling.

Getting Ready

Without fail, our practice warm-ups included jumping jacks as I had never done them before: We stood in a circle next to the boathouse, and did ten jumping jacks while our team leader counted off each one. Then she would say the name of the person to her left, who would then count off ten, and so on until we had all either counted or collapsed. One time someone decided to say her ten in Spanish, and feeling bold, I counted grunted mine in Korean. The person after me shouted hers in Japanese, and from then on we usually heard several different languages along with jumping-jack-induced groans.

We practiced on the same river that we would race on, one that is not exactly known for its cleanliness despite claims that it is now “swimmable.” (The color is a dark brown reminiscent of my mom’s gravy, and like gravy, just because you are able to swim in it doesn’t mean that you would want to. Or that you should.) Our boat never tipped over, but there is still a lot of splash and spray. After each practice I couldn’t wait to jump in the shower, more to scrub any possible river-borne toxins off my skin than to clean off the sweat.

Race Day!

On the day of the festival, all the teams arrived early and lined one side of the river with tents, blankets, coolers, and chairs. Apparently some folks practice year-round, rather than just the three weeks prior to the festival, and have pre-race preparations that included militaristic-looking push-ups. (But I didn’t see anyone else doing 200+ jumping jacks, so I remained hopeful that those would give us a competitive edge!) All teams had completed time trials the day before, and were assigned to divisions based on their times. Especially after watching the Push-Up Brigade, I was more than content to be in the slowest least competitive division.

The races took place over the same 500-meter course, with up to three boats racing at a time. My team would be participating in three races spaced throughout the day. Each race begins from a “floating start,” where a festival judge standing on the river bank tries to line up the three boats along a diagonal line (diagonal to account for the bend in the river). Each race ends with a loud blast from an air horn, but if you’re sitting in the boat shouting and chanting with everyone else, even the loud horn is easy to miss.

We won our first race, although we didn’t realize it until we were several strokes past the horn. We lost our second. We also lost our third and final race, but came in at our best time all weekend, and so in some ways it felt like a victory.

Looking back, it was great being out on the water, doing something fun and athletic and with other women. And finally, for a couple of weeks at least, I was part of a sports team.

Living In Color

The summer before I started college, I wrote to the person I was to live with for the next year to say hi and introduce myself. She wrote back with a very nice note on pink ballerina stationery, and mentioned that she used to live only two hours away from me before her family moved to Brooklyn when she was seven.

When we arrived on campus and were getting settled in, I asked why her family had moved to New York City.

“Well, I came home from school one day and asked my mom when I would turn white like my teachers and my friends’ parents,” she told me in a very matter-of-fact way. “That’s when my parents decided that growing up as a Black kid in a mostly-white town wasn’t good for me.”

She wasn’t adopted, and at the time, I mostly wondered why a young Black child with Black parents would think that her skin would “turn white” when she got older. Hadn’t she noticed that her parents’ skin never turned white? I mean, I had white parents, and I never thought that I would become white at a certain age. (Although there certainly were, and are, many times when I wished that I would.) Needless to say, I have since learned that kids’ minds don’t always work in the ways we might think.

But her story has stayed with me, and usually resurfaces when I think about people of color living in predominantly white communities. Such as yesterday, when I read a story in the New York Times about racism in Maine, which is referred to as “the Whitest State”: Threat in Maine, the Whitest State, Shakes Local N.A.A.C.P.

Last year, a white man shouted racial slurs at a pregnant black woman in Hancock, near Bangor, and kicked her in the abdomen, according to Mr. Harnett’s [assistant attorney general for civil rights education and enforcement] office. And in March, Assata Sherrill, a black resident of Bangor, told the police that three white boys had thrown stones and shouted racial epithets at her as she walked her dog near the city’s waterfront.

Ms. Sherrill — who lives here with her teenage daughter, a high school senior who “hates every minute of it” and wants to attend historically black Spelman College in Atlanta — says she moved to Maine from Detroit in search of tranquility.

I’m curious about the kind of “tranquility” that Ms. Sherrill mentions, and the price that she is willing to pay for it. I’m not necessarily criticizing her decision to move, although it sounds like her daughter is. I’m just curious about decisions that people of color, and white parents with children of color, make about why they live where they do.

It is important to note that Ms. Sherill is not standing by and suffering in silence, and is actively working to fight the kinds of racism that she has experienced:

After the attack on her, she organized a series of community forums to discuss race issues in Maine. This month she held an alternative Kwanzaa celebration after Mr. Sawyer’s threat led the N.A.A.C.P. to cancel its larger version.

“I’m not about to stop living and holding celebrations because somebody else is sick,” Ms. Sherrill said. “As long as your skin is black and you live in the United States of America, you are going to be confronted.”

I applaud her efforts and think her last statement is definitely true, and for other races as well as Blacks. But I also think there is a difference between being “confronted” within the context of a diverse community surrounded by people who face similar problems, and being “confronted” in a community where less than one percent of the population looks like you. Throw in the fact that for most transracially adopted kids, their own parents neither look like them nor face the same level of personal attacks, and I have to think that the importance of growing up in a diverse community is even more important for these kinds of families.

Ji In (formerly of Twice The Rice and now blogging at Sixth Sister) wrote a spot-on post recently about those kids who stick out like “sore thumbs” in their communities based on race:

I can’t help but feel a pang of grief when I see a kid in his or her class picture, Christmas pageant, Sunday school class or whatever, and s/he is the only one.

Alone in a sea of whiteness, the only Asian one. The only black one. The only brown one.

It shouldn’t have to be — and, I dare say, shouldn’t be — that way. Not when parents have a choice to place their kids’ ethnic identity development and self-esteem over their own comfort and convenience.

Indeed. (Be sure to read the rest of Ji In’s great post as well.)

My former roommate’s situation was a bit different than that of most transracially adoptive families, since her parents were also minorities. It may even have been in the interest of their own comfort and convenience to move to a more diverse community, and there may have been other factors involved besides race.

But there is something that has the potential to be similar to transracially adoptive families: the explanation that my roommate remembers, and tells others, as an adult. She knows that her parents believe that issues of race and racial identity are important. She understands the impact of community, and the diversity/lack of diversity in communities, on how children view themselves.

And mostly she knows that she, and her younger brother, were important enough for their parents to make a big, life-changing decision.

Perspective

I was going to write a post about how I “survived” the holidays, but it seemed too trite and superficial.

Then I was going to write a post about how sad it was that I thought about the holidays in terms of “survival,” but that didn’t quite work either.

Then I thought about people who are actually focusing on real survival, as in matters of life-and-death, and everything seemed to shift a little bit in my mind.

Sometimes I need these little mental nudges, from time to time, to help me put things in perspective.

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There are so many things I want to say right now, but they’re all trying to come out at once and they don’t make any sense that way.

…family… home… gains and losses… looking back on 2007… looking ahead to 2008… cultural appropriation… making a difference… the big picture in adoption… online communities… luck and gratitude… writing… blogging… moving… hopes and goals for the future… new directions… friends…

Hopefully things will settle down in my head a bit so I can get them into a format that other people might be actually be interested in reading.

P.S. Let me know if the snow is annoying and I’ll turn it off.

Unfinished (Christmas) Business

I haven’t finished sending out Christmas cards yet.

I haven’t finished Christmas shopping yet.

We didn’t put up a tree this year, but if we did I wouldn’t be finished with that either. (Kind of like this poor tree, which has a star but seems to be missing the other ornaments.)

At least this year I’m not making any presents that have those inflexible 12/25 deadlines. I believe it was last year that I was up until about 3 am on Christmas Eve (technically very early on Christmas Day) finishing a scrapbook for my mother. For some reason, scrapbooking always takes me So….. Much…… Longer……. than it does for normal people.

Other years I have spent Christmas Eve furiously knitting or crocheting scarves or afghans, wishing that I had chosen bigger needles/hooks and thicker yarn so that whatever it was would “work up” faster.

So, while I’m glad that I am not pretending to be crafty or creative this year, I still have some unfinished business that I need to take care of.

But I’ll be back, I promise.

Thank You/Kindness

Thank you to everyone who commented yesterday… part of my goal was to see if people in different places on the pro/anti adoption continuum could find more common ground. There will definitely always be things that people disagree on, sometimes quite a few things, and often quite vehemently.

I don’t want to fall into the why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along trap, because that seems naive given the divisiveness that I’ve witnessed so far. But is there more room for commonality than we think, the kind that can help further those goals that we do have in common? I was actually heartened into thinking that this was the case, in part by yesterday’s comments, but also by some of the goings-on elsewhere in adoption blogland.

Today, I’m not so sure. Rather than go into details, I’m just going to steal a quote posted on Judy’s blog (JustEnjoyHim) that I feel like shouting to everyone right now:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato

And special thoughts to Judy today as well.

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EDITED TO ADD: Unfortunately it turns out that Judy is fighting a harder battle than I had been hoping… if you can, please take a moment to write her a quick comment of good thoughts.

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What Does It Mean To Be Anti-Adoption?

I’m going to shamelessly use the “I’m new” card.

Although I am obviously not new to my own personal experience with adoption, I am relatively new as a critical thinker about adoption politics, and I am certainly new to writing about adoption. Which is why I’m genuinely asking:

What does it mean to be anti-adoption?

Some folks self-identify as being anti-adoption, but what do they actually believe? Do people who call themselves anti-adoption all mean the same thing by it? Other people take being called anti-adoption as an insult, but what do they actually believe?

I’ve been reading adoption blogs for a while now, and the more I read, the more certain I become of some things, and the less certain I become of other things. So for now, I’m just asking questions:

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• If you believe that in a perfect world, as impossible as that is, that adoption would not need to exist, are you anti-adoption?

• If you believe that adoption involves losses as well as gains, are you anti-adoption?

• If you believe that some people who would be able to parent their children are coerced into placing them for adoption, are you anti-adoption?

• If you believe that the first/birth parents of a child are just as real — but for different reasons — as her or his adoptive parents, are you anti-adoption?

• If you believe that other options should be explored (though not necessarily taken) before removing a child from one country to be adopted in another, are you anti-adoption?

• If you support changes to the adoption system as it exists today in order to make the process more ethical and effective, are you anti-adoption?

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• If you believe that there are cases where adoption is indeed in the best interests of a child, are you anti-adoption?

• If you believe that the adoptive parents of a child are just as real — but for different reasons — as her or his first/birth parents, are you anti-adoption?

• If you believe that international adoption, while not a first (or even second) choice, should still remain on the table as an option as long as it is needed, are you anti-adoption?

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Just asking, in an honest attempt to figure out what all the labels mean.

Still thinking, because thinking takes me a long time.

What do you think? What does it mean to be anti-adoption?

Hearing Loss

Several years ago, LB and I enrolled in a semester of Elementary Korean at a nearby university. As expected, we spent a lot of time at the beginning of the semester learning the different sounds of the Korean language, which are somewhat similar to English… but also somewhat different.

Our teacher tried over and over to help us understand the difference between the two different /s/ sounds: the basic /s/ sound (ㅅ) , and the double-/s/ sound (ㅆ). Our classroom drills went something like this:

“Sa-da (사다) ; Ssa-da (싸다); do you hear the difference?”

Over and over again.

“Sa-da (사다) ; Ssa-da (싸다); do you hear the difference?”

Try as I might, I never did.

Although we eventually had to move on to grammar and vocabulary, pronunciation problems would still crop up for all of us throughout the semester. And each time I missed the difference between an /s/ and a double-/s/, or the difference between a /ch/ (ㅈ), a double-/ch/ (ㅉ), and an aspirated /ch/ (ㅊ), I felt a kind of loss, as insignificant as it might seem. I lost the ability to discriminate between certain sounds in the Korean language, sounds that seem exactly the same to my American ear, but mean the difference between the action verb “to buy” (sa-da/사다) and the descriptive verb “to be inexpensive” (ssa-da/싸다).

True, I have gained many things through adoption, including the ability to pronounce English sounds that native speakers of Korean struggle with for years (the l/r distinction comes to mind). True, with hard work and determination (not to mention endless repetition), there is hope that I will eventually be able to speak Korean above the level of a three-year-old. I do try to remind myself of these things.

But whenever I try and explain that one of the losses of international adoption is the loss of language, people will often tell me, “Well, you can just learn Korean as an adult.” Well, yes and no. Yes, I can try, and no, it’s not the same as learning to differentiate and produce the sounds of Korean as a child, surrounded by people who speak Korean to me every day. It is still a loss.

Maybe it’s because I have always viewed language as so fundamental for communication, so basic and necessary, that the loss of the Korean language feels frustratingly deep to me. To say nothing of the loss of my Korean family.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever recover either one.

Welcome to the Land of the Not-So-Calm, LB!

It’s as crazy and random as you know me to be.

Chinese = ???

I’m still supposed to be Doing Real Work, and so unfortunately this post will not be particularly well planned or thought-out. But I was taking a teeny-tiny break by lurking ever so briefly in the Blogosphere, and came across the phrase “Chinese water torture.” And I wondered, what exactly are the origins of this phrase? Does it have anything to do with China?

While it’s true that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, it is very useful for quick info and ideas for critical consideration. What it told me about Chinese water torture was this:

There is no evidence that this form of torture was ever used by the Chinese. The popularity of the term “Chinese water torture” may have arisen from Harry Houdini’s Chinese Water Torture Cell…

And this:

It is also thought by many that the term Chinese water torture comes from the same set of terms as Chinese fire drill, Chinese whispers, and Chinese checkers, where the word Chinese was originally used by the Victorians as slang for “confusing” or “containing erratic qualities”.

Tangent: I first heard of the “Chinese fire drill” in high school, when my classmates and I first started getting our drivers licenses and obviously had no real place to go. When a friend explained to me what it was, my first thought was, “Wait, what’s the point?”

My second thought was, “I’m glad I’m not Chinese.” Because even then, used in this way it didn’t sound like something positive.

For kicks, I looked up Chinese fire drill:

The term is traditionally explained as coming from a British tendency around the time of World War I to use the adjective Chinese as a slur, implying “confused, disorganized, or inferior.” [2] Other “Chinese” slurs of the day included “Chinese national anthem” (an explosion) and “Chinese puzzle” (one with no solution).

But back to the torture, lest I stray too far from my original question. I surfed just a few clicks more, and found this from The Straight Dope:

Dear Cecil:

Did (or do) the Chinese torture prisoners using the Chinese water torture? –Fritz Reece, Chicago

Cecil replies:

Probably not. “Chinese” is one of those all-purpose English pejoratives in which foreign is equated with weird. Two variants may be noted. The first is Chinese in the sense of “confused, disorganized, or inferior,” as in “Chinese fire drill” (a chaotic scene, or more commonly these days, the collegiate prank in which everyone tumbles out of a car at a stoplight, runs around to the other side, and piles in again), “Chinese ace” (a bumbling pilot), “Chinese navy” (a disorganized group), and so on. The other sense is “exotic, mysterious, or devious,” as in Chinese handcuffs (the finger restraints that bind more tightly the harder you try to pull your fingers out), Chinese checkers (the game is said to have been invented in the latter 19th century by an Englishman), and of course the Chinese water torture.

And

Word sleuth Barry Popik tells me the first known use of the term was Harry Houdini’s “Chinese Water Torture Cell,” a stunt introduced circa 1903 in which Houdini was lowered into a tank of water upside down and had to come out alive. Popik says the drip-drip-drip method of torture, not referred to as “Chinese,” is described in Brian Innes’s The History of Torture (1998 ) as having been invented by one Hippolytus de Marsiliis in 16th-century Italy.

So maybe we should be saying “Italian water torture” instead.

I don’t want to be oversensitive, or “choose” to interpret things as being racist that really aren’t, or any of the other accusations that fly when people of color question the names that things (and people) are called.

But I do think twice when things that have nothing to do with China are called Chinese, because that often means that “Chinese” is being used as shorthand for some negative and pejorative adjective.

Okay, going back to my grindstone now.

Must Not Blog. Must Do Actual Work.

I have some deadlines coming up in a few days, one of them on something that I’ve had literally months to work on, and so I am trying not to write blog posts. Am also trying not to read Other People’s Blogs.

Am failing miserably at both, but do want to give another shout-out to Ungrateful Little Bastard for some great detective work (not to mention Photoshopping):

“More on those monsters who dumped their daughter” (Fabulous outing of Raymon and Meta Poeteray as the Dutch diplomat and his wife who returned their daughter, adopted from Korea, after 7 years.)

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Edited at 5.23 pm to add: I have absolutely no self-control and no self-discipline. NONE. Must stop procrastinating and sabotaging my future. (But it’s really not my fault that people write such interesting and thought-provoking blog posts… or that there are so many of them.)