The transnational, transracial adoption of children provides the opportunity to explore how race binds and differentiates kinship and national belonging, especially when considered in relation to options for adopting both at home and abroad. More specifically, the reasons white parents give for choosing to adopt from China reveal how the normative white, American family is constructed through discourses of foreign and domestic, Asian and black. I explore three themes that contribute to the relative desirability of adopting Chinese children: they are seemingly unfettered by attachments, racially “flexible,” and readily constructed as rescuable. In these discourses that bring Chinese children home, blackness serves as a mediating backdrop — a domestic “white noise.” But China — US adoption unsettles as much as it reproduces racial stratifications; ongoing encounters with intimate relations of difference push at the boundaries of white privilege and weak multiculturalism.
Anagnost, Ann1999 “Scenes of Misrecognition: Maternal Citizenship in the Age of Transnational Adoption.” Positions: East Asia CulturesCritique8:390—421.
2.
Ancheta, Angelo N.1998Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
3.
Appadurai, Arjun1986 “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value .” Pp. 3—63 in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by A. Appadurai.New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
4.
Balibar, Etienne1988 “ Racism and Nationalism.” Pp. 37—67 in Race, Nation, and Class: Ambiguous Identities, by E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein.London: Verso. 1990 “ Paradoxes of Universality .” Pp. 283—294 in Anatomy of Racism, edited by David. T.Goldberg. Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press.
5.
Berebitsky, Julie2000Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851—1950. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
6.
Briggs, Laura2003 “Mother, Child, Race, Nation: The Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption.” Gender & History15:179—200.
7.
Burawoy, Michael2000 “Introduction: Reaching for the Global.” Pp. 1—40 in Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World, by M. Burawoy et al. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
8.
Cheng, Anne Anlin2001The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
9.
Dorow, Sara2002 “`China R Us?': Care, Consumption, and Transnationally Adopted Children.” Pp. 149—168 in Symbolic Childhood, edited by D. Cook.New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers. 2006Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship. New York, NY: New York University Press.
10.
Eng, David L.2003 “Transnational Adoption and Queer Diasporas.” Social Text21:1—37.
11.
Frankenberg, Ruth1993White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
12.
Goldberg, David T.1993 “Modernity, Race, and Morality.” Pp. 14—40 in Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, by D.T. Goldberg.Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
13.
Gordon, Avery1997Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
14.
Hemenway, Robin2004 “`The Circle of We': The Strange History of American Adoption.” American Quarterly56:183—192.
15.
Hoffman-Riem, Christa1990The Adopted Child: Family Life with Double Parenthood . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
16.
Johnson, Kay2004Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China. St. Paul, MN: Yeong & Yeong Book Company.
17.
Kemp, Susan P. AND Jami M. Bodonyi2000 “Infants Who Stay in Foster Care: Child Characteristics and Permanency Outcomes of Legally Free Children First Placed as Infants.” Child & Family Social Work5:95—106.
18.
Lowe, Lisa1996Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
19.
Luke, Carmen AND Allan Luke1998 “Interracial Families: Difference within Difference .” Ethnic and Racial Studies21:728—753.
20.
Manzo, Kathryn A.1996Creating Boundaries: The Politics of Race and Nation . Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers .
21.
Mcclintock, Anne1995Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York, NY: Routledge .
22.
Modell, Judith S.1994Kinship with Strangers: Adoption and Interpretations of Kinship in American Culture. Berkeley, CA: UC Press.
23.
Okihiro, Gary Y.2001Common Ground: Reimagining American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
24.
Omi, Michael1996 “Racialization in the Post-Civil Rights Era .” Pp. 178—186 in Mapping Multiculturalism, edited by A. Gordon and C. Newfield.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
25.
Omi, Michael AND Howard Winant1994Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York, NY: Routledge .
26.
Ortiz, Ana Teresa AND Laura Briggs2003 “The Culture of Poverty, Crack Babies, and Welfare Cheats: The Making of the `Healthy White Baby Crisis.'” Social Text21(3):39—57.
27.
Ouellette, Francoise-Romaine AND Héléne Belleau2001Family and Social Integration of Children Adopted Internationally: A Review of the Literature. Montreal: INRS-Urbanisation, Culture et Société.
28.
Patton, Sandra2000Birth Marks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America . New York, NY: New York University Press.
29.
Prashad, Vijay2003 “Bruce Lee and the Anti-imperialism of Kung Fu: A Polycultural Adventure.” Positions: East Asia CulturesCritique11:51—82.
30.
Register, Cheri1991 “Are Those Kids Yours?”: American Families with Children Adopted from Other Countries. New York, NY : The Free Press.
31.
Said, Edward1979Orientalism. London: Penguin.
32.
Shiu, Anthony2001 “Flexible Production: International Adoption, Race, Whiteness.” Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies6(1—2). Retrieved December 27, 2004 ( http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1—2/shiu.htm).
33.
Stoler, Ann Laura1995Race and the Education of Desire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1997. “ Racial Histories and their Regimes of Truth.” Political Power and Social Theory11:183—206.
34.
Williams, Brackette F.1996 “Introduction: Mannish Women and Gender After the Act .” Pp. 1—36 in Women Out of Place: The Gender of Agency and the Race of Nationality, edited by B.F. Williams.New York, NY: Routledge.
35.
Yngvesson, Barbara2000 “` Un Niño de Cualquier Color': Race and Nation in Intercountry Adoption.” Pp. 169—204 in Globalizing Institutions: Case Studies in Regulation and Innovation , edited by J. Jenson and B. De Sousa Santos.Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
36.
Zelizer, Viviana A.1985Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. New York, NY: Basic Books.
