A Review of
Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, eds.

Reviewed by | Originally published in the Vol. 3 no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2007) issue.

Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, is the most recent and one of the most exciting collections to emerge out of the burgeoning body of work on transracial adoption.  The title refers to what the editors argue is a shared social position that transracial adoptees occupy across the world, and it also alludes to the unique insights that this social position affords transracial adoptees.  Indeed, this anthology demands that the perspectives of transracial adoptees be paid far greater attention in both academic circles and in public discourse, both of which have long been dominated by ‘expert’ authorities.  While adoptees have not been silent, their voices have been largely neglected in academic and public discussions.  “This book is a corrective action,” declare the editors.[1]  Furthermore, the strategic use of ‘transracial’ instead of the commonly used ‘transnational,’ ‘international,’ or ‘intercountry’ emphasizes the significance of race in the lives of transracial adoptees across the world and the connections among adoptees of colour.  This rubric gives cohesion to the anthology while allowing for the inclusion of a broad spectrum of experiences and standpoints present in the global transracial adoptee community. 

            As the editors state in their forceful introduction, this interdisciplinary and multi-genre anthology attempts to “create a hopeful vision of a different world, where children of color are neither sold nor expendable, our mothers and families neither erased nor exploited.”[2]  By emphasizing adoptee perspectives on adoption, the editors seek not only to develop a richer understanding of transracial adoptee communities but also to profoundly broaden the scope of this understanding.  Taking part in intellectual currents in American studies, ethnic studies, and transnational feminist cultural studies, these writings examine transracial adoption at the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality.  In so doing, the editors see this book as effectively exploding the narrowly framed debates about adoption put forth by adoption ‘experts’ for over fifty years.

The book’s six sections reflect this editorial and political standpoint. Part Two is one of the book’s strongest and most innovative portions.  This section focuses on the political economy of transracial adoption and offers a counter-narrative to the vast corpus of writing that naturalizes the relationship between adoptive family and adopted child by concealing the economic processes that facilitate adoption as a market exchange.  Kim Park Nelson powerfully and persuasively investigates the interlocking systems of racism, colonialism, and global capitalism that undergird transnational adoption in the United States.  Laura Briggs contributes an essay that links developments in welfare reform to developments in adoption reform, and Ellen M. Barry draws important connections between transracial adoption and the prison industrial complex. 

            The third, fourth, and fifth sections offer similarly incisive critiques of transracial adoption.  Part Three examines its colonial roots.  Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark and Kekek Jason Todd Stark write a powerful history of the Indian Child Welfare Act that illustrates the importance of child welfare to movements for decolonization.  Tobias Hübinette considers the relationships among empire, modernity, and the global migrations of children “that serve to regulate, control, and discipline women’s reproduction, ultimately upholding a patriarchal system in the countries of origin.”[3]  Part Four, “Growing Through the Pain,” explores abject pain, loss, and unbelonging in the transracial adoptee experience. Ron M. movingly recounts his personal journey “from victim to survivor”[4] as a mixed-race Indian Scottish adoptee in Australia, and Rachel Quy Collier’s essay focuses on her conflicted revelation that “those who have helped me have done so out of motives that were never purely altruistic or unselfish.”[5]  The theme of home coheres Part Five.  Here, Gregory Paul Choy and Catherine Ceniza Choy critique the film Daughter from Danang, arguing that it inadvertently perpetuates “the violence of war through the exclusion and silencing of adoptees’ agency and subjectivity.”[6]

The anthology’s organization draws out the connections between personal struggles and broader concerns for social justice.  The first and last sections illustrate the value of bringing these perspectives to bear on one another.  Part One, entitled “Where Are You Really From?” consists of four personal essays that address the lived complexities of belonging and identity through which transracial adoptees struggle.  Mark Haggard’s life-affirming essay investigates the linkages among his social identities as an adoptee, as an Asian American, as a gay man, and as a parent in order to comment on the human potential for connection and coalition building.  Part Six, “Speaking for Ourselves,” explores this potential by revisiting the editors’ initial demand that adoptee voices be heard.  It focuses on the “emergence of a social movement of transracial adoptees,” who organize themselves around claims for social justice.[7]  Three of the five chapters in this section draw on examples of already existing activism in adoptee communities to sketch out what a politically mobilized transnational social movement might look like.  Ending the book in this way strengthens the volume’s potential as a tool for political mobilization.

            This superb collection is full of clear, bold writing that raises provocative questions and offers exhilarating insights.  The decision to incorporate poetry, creative nonfiction, and visual art creates a rich, multi-faceted dialogue and makes the volume particularly useful as a teaching text in interdisciplinary classrooms.  The editors have also done a tremendous service by compiling a list of “Organizational Resources for Adoptees,” which will aid those seeking to connect across the world.  Outsiders Within invites readers to understand the richness of the global transracial adoptee community and to appreciate the ways that transracial adoption illuminates crucial parts of a larger pattern of racism, colonialism, imperialism, and globalization.  For this, we owe a debt of gratitude to these writers and artists and to this splendid book.

[1] Julia Chinyere Oparah, Sun Yung Shin, and Jane Jeong Trenka, introduction to Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, ed. Cambridge: South End Press, 2006, 1.

[2] Oparah, Shin, and Trenka, introduction to Outsiders Within, 3.

[3] Tobias Hübinette, “From Orphan Trains to Babylifts: Colonial Trafficking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering,” in Outsiders Within, 147.

[4] Ron M., “From Victim to Survivor,” in Outsiders Within, 189.

[5] Rachel Quy Collier, “Performing Childhood,” in Outsiders Within, 212.

[6] Gregory Paul Choy and Catherine Ceniza Choy, “What Lies Beneath: Reframing Daughter from Danang,” in Outsiders Within, 223.

[7] Oparah, Shin, and Trenka, introduction to Outsiders Within, 12.

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