Shedding Whiteness
by Jon Straker – Korean adoptee, artist, friend Originally published in Gazillion Voices Magazine, 2015. I’m so excited to promote my friend Jon’s work in this post. We went to […]
Category Archives: Reflections
To Adoptees from “Shithole Countries” and Elsewhere
When I was young and I would get into arguments with my mom, I would oftentimes shout out, “You don’t love me!” Of course, I knew this wasn’t true. My mother […]
一家一子政策 (One Child Policy)
This is a very condensed summarization in Mandarin of a research paper I wrote a few years ago and also posted on this blog, China’s One Child Policy: Past, Present, […]
Finding Home
Originally published in Gazillion Voices Magazine, 2014: Home. It’s a word that brings a smile to many and is supposed to offer a sense of warmth and comfort. But identifying […]
Exploring Orientalism in The Nutcracker
As the holiday season draws to a close, I have been reflecting on one of my favorite Christmas traditions. For nearly twenty years, my mother and I have seen Tchaikovsky’s […]
Lessons from KAAN 2017
As the plane landed, my friend and I grabbed our bags and quickly boarded the car waiting for us at the Pittsburgh airport. We maneuvered through the city traffic and […]
Remembering with No Memories
My fingers glazed over little ceramic bowls, colorful vases, beautiful hand-carved wood boxes, and other products deemed mother-worthy by the store in celebration of Mother’s Day. I walked over to […]
The Yearning
This piece was originally published in an anthology titled Home. … It was late February, and I stood perched at my kitchen window, welcoming the sun-streaked curtains, the slightly rising temperatures, […]
Praise for Mattel
I can often be critical of large companies and systems and the implications of their monetary goals on disenfranchised individuals, but I thought that I would start 2017 out on […]
Within My Skin
Originally published in Gazillion Voices Magazine, 2014 […]
Red Thread Broken 