So for months I’d wanted to go to “Encountering New Worlds of Adoption” the “2nd International Conference on Adoption and Culture” put on by ASAIK (Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity and Kinship), held at the University of Pittsburgh last weekend. I meant to go–it was a 4-day conference reasonably priced ($50) for students/unemployed, and Pittsburgh isn’t too far/expensive to go by Greyhound. However, I couldn’t really afford hotel rooms and didn’t know who to share with and Pittsburgh doesn’t have a hostel anymore and I didn’t try to find someone to stay with. I did get to do a few fun things in Chicago last weekend, though the weather wasn’t great. But ASAIK had such a terrific lineup: Susan Bordo (Unbearable Weight), Dorothy Roberts (Shattered Bonds, Killing the Black Body), many adoption memoirists…Some of the conference was a tad too academic-sounding for me, but I figured I’d at least get to meet some cool authors, bloggers, and activists.
Why do I care so much about this? I still haven’t even talked about it with people I know here. Well, I’m very sympathetic (but not yet publicly involved) with adoption as a political issue. And my family situation is so intriguing: there are three major types of adoption (not counting stepfamily adoption): domestic infant adoption, public/foster care adoption, and transnational adoption, and my brother’s situation was a bit of all three. (If you’re wondering how someone could be both domestic and transnational…you might figure it out. It’s also a transracial adoption.) Oh, and it wasn’t just “intriguing,” it was totally fucking tragic. Not that we aren’t a relatively happy and stable family; it’s that sometimes you learn that these things come at a price.
More on this later. I’m just writing this in lieu of a report back from the conference.
Posted by hazelj 
