Mission Statement
Through this fellowship, I aim to explore how transracial Asian adoptees within the Bryn Mawr community have a unique story to tell. The project will center around two questions: What makes the transracial Asian adoptee community diverse? How does our diversity inform our intersections and interactions with other marginalized identities at Bryn Mawr? In order to unearth these stories, I plan to collect oral histories from transracial Asian adoptees within the Bryn Mawr community. I then intend to launch a digital archive with these oral histories, from which other Bryn Mawr adoptees may contribute to as well. Finally, I will finish this project by producing a creative writing piece in response to the project’s central questions, inspired by my own experiences as well as the stories told in the oral histories. Through this project, I aim not only to increase the visibility of adoptee identity but educate others on the complexity of the transracial Asian adoptee experience.
Scopes
Sociopolitical implications
In a time of increasing social change, in an effort to stand as a united front, the individual contexts of marginalized identities can become secondary. However, without individual contexts, we risk being perceived as a monolith. While we may have shared experiences that motivate us to resist current systems of power, we all have an individual story that has led us down a path to resistance. In order to become truly united, we need to listen to individual stories and understand people’s different paths, in order to envision a future that provides protection, empowerment, and opportunity for all.
The Adoptee Community
By illustrating that marginalized communities, specifically transracial Asian adoptees, are not monoliths, I hope to show other transracial Asian adoptees that they have a space and representation within the Bryn Mawr community. I hope adoptees feel supported, represented, and heard, through these oral histories. Potentially these oral histories will help guide other adoptees as they navigate through different spaces on and off campus. This project may also help adoptees understand the intricacies of existing with certain intersections of privilege (in certain contexts) and lack thereof (in other contexts). Finally, I hope to show adoptees it is okay to exist as an incomplete, multiple, and dispersed self.
The Bryn Mawr Community
While we may have shared experiences that motivate us to resist current systems of power, we each have an individual story of how we were led down a path of resistance. There is no single voice that represents a marginalized group on campus. There is no single voice representing BIPOC, Black, Latinx, Asian, Queer etc identities on campus. My focus on the transracial Asian adoptee community can demonstrate that even a niche group can contain multiple identities, stories, histories etc. By focusing on the detail and complexity of each experience in the oral histories, this project can illustrate how BIPOC groups are not a monolith. We may stand as a united front but that does not give others the excuse to ignore our individual contexts and the uniqueness of our identities.
Furthermore, in a space such as Bryn Mawr, which is predominantly white upper middle class, it is difficult for marginalized students to exist within our individualities and complexities. Due to monolithism, we are often perceived, and in turn, risk perceiving ourselves, as representations of a marginalized group, instead of members within one. By exemplifying the adoptee experience, to illustrate that marginalized identities are not monoliths, I hope this project reminds BIPOC students that they are valid within their multitudes and their contradictions. We do not need to fit a certain image to be a united front.
Allies
​By illustrating that marginalized communities, specifically transracial Asian adoptees, are not monoliths, this project also demonstrates that anti-racism is not simply listening to one story once, but conscious and continuous interaction with a community and hearing their many stories. In order to become a truly united Bryn Mawr community, we need to listen to individual stories and understand people’s different paths to resistance, in order to envision a campus that provides protection, empowerment, and opportunity for all. While this oral history project will only interview around five people, I intend to show the depth and complexity of these five individual’s stories, to illustrate the validity of each individual within a community.