Adoption vs. Appropriation: Writing as an Asian Adoptee

I recently workshopped a story about a girl born in China who is adopted into a white American family. This story was about growing up Asian-American, and what that was like without having elders who could tell me what that means. It followed my protagonist through birth and childhood, culminating in a moment of anxiety and guilt over checking the “Asian” box in the demographics section of her college application. And, because I am a speculative writer, the protagonist was a shapeshifter, literally able to be as white or Asian as she pleased.

This story was my first attempt to capture what it was like to grow up Asian-American in a white family. I knew it had flaws when I submitted it, and I expected the majority of the feedback I received. I had been tinkering with this piece up until the very last minute, adding new sections and adjusting older ones accordingly. The pacing was still uneven. My last-minute revisions were spawning new inconsistencies that would have to be dealt with later. The speculative elements might confuse those unfamiliar with genre fiction.

But there were surprises, too. Writing kids’ voices is difficult, and I wasn’t quite capturing the younger perspectives as well as I had hoped. The recently added scenes were received more favorably than several of the older ones.

The biggest surprise came in the form of a suggestion that multiple people brought up: that I should lean into the speculative element more and weave it more deeply into my protagonist’s background. They said I should research Chinese folklore and mythology to find takes of shapeshifters and use them as the shapeshifters of this piece. I understood where this feedback came from, to incorporate not just the more researched version, but to root my protagonist’s abilities in her heritage, despite how far removed she becomes from it.

When I heard this piece of feedback, I immediately thought of the fox spirits, shapeshifters who appear all over East Asian folklore. I imagined revising my story to incorporate these creatures, but then I found myself hesitating.

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Much like the protagonist of my story, my sense of identity as an Asian-American has been shaky and slow to develop. I was adopted and brought to America before I was even a year old. I grew up in America on Grimms’ fairy tales and Disney movies. The history I learned was the sanitized, kid-friendly version, where the Pilgrims and Indians all shared the first Thanksgiving as a celebration of cooperation and community, and it was America’s destiny to reach from coast to coast. The family stories my parents handed down were of a Scotch-Irish family with a farm in Pennsylvania that predates the Declaration of Independence and an immigrant heritage that traces back to Sicily. I cherish memories of evening stories about when my grandparents were young in rural Pennsylvania and my father and I have strung deaths and marriages and births back to our ancestors in Italy so we could claim citizenship by descent. Whiteness may not be part of my identity, but it has always been part of my heritage.

My parents did what they could to teach me about my Chinese heritage, too. They taught me about the Chinese zodiac and that the boar was my sign. They learned the folk stories about the Moon Lady and the Jade Rabbit and shared them alongside Cinderella and The Frog Prince. They bought me placemats with the zodiac so I could memorize their order and silk clothes made in traditional Chinese styles. They did their best to teach me how to use chopsticks, though they barely knew themselves. I’m grateful that they tried, even if I didn’t always appreciate it then.

Despite these efforts, I could never shake the feeling that I was learning trivia, fun facts about some far-off place I’d never see. All I had were a handful of stories and a selection of silk clothes I seldom wore. When I went to Lunar New Year festivals, I was surrounded by people who looked like me and spoke a language I couldn’t understand. I felt like a tourist, there to learn alongside all the other non-Asians about a community we weren’t a part of.

Uncertainty always hovers nearby as I navigate what being Asian means for me. When a white person assumes I speak Mandarin, I have the satisfaction of straightforward outrage at being othered. But when an Asian person assumes I speak Mandarin, I must see their disappointment and confusion when I say I can’t. Should I feel guilty that I haven’t tried to learn it? Or indignant that they would expect me to try? Surely, I don’t owe them this merely because our ancestors shared a continent—but do I owe it to myself?

I wonder sometimes how many of us actually grapple with these questions. I know Asian adoptees who are content to be labeled as “basically white,” while others seek boba and pho and devour K-pop and anime. Whether they chose Asian, white, or somewhere in between, my friends seem content and comfortable with the people they’ve chosen to be. Why is that not enough for me?

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I first learned about cultural appropriation on Tumblr. I spent the latter half of my teens there, joyfully doomscrolling through Marvel and Doctor Who fan art. I was there for the fandom, but through them I stumbled into a crash course in social justice. Threads about media representation in our favorite movies and memes on political correctness taught me ideas I had never encountered in textbooks.

I already knew that Chinese checkers was invented in Germany and fortune cookies were invented in California, and thanks to these internet communities, I now had a name for it. I scrolled through discussions and GIFs about it. There were, of course, nuances and variations in how people understood it, like if there were degrees of severity and where to distinguish between appropriation and adaptation. Overall, however, everyone agreed that appropriation was bad.

By this definition, adding fox spirits to my story would certainly be taking them for my own use. The first time I learned about the fox spirits was when I read the story “Good Hunting” by Ken Liu. This story follows a hunter and a fox spirit as colonization destroys their way of life, and they must learn to adapt. A while later, I read the children’s novel Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee, a delightful space opera in a universe filled with fox spirits and other creatures of Korean folklore.

I delighted in discovering these pieces of a mythology I knew little about, just as I devoured Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythology as a kid. However, researching these tales still felt like shopping around for tools to add to my own storytelling toolbox. I don’t want to be another fantasy writer cherry-picking pieces of other cultures for my own benefit.

This brought me back to the question of ownership, and whether I have any right to claim these stories as my own. Yes, I was born in China, but I’m in my mid-twenties, only just now seeking these stories that supposedly were part of my heritage. Why had I refused to seek out these stories before? Maybe I felt I had to prove I belonged to my white parents. Maybe I was trying to alienate myself from Asians before they could alienate me. Maybe I was simply a kid more interested in inventing than excavating myself. Whatever the case, what right did I have to use these stories that I had turned away from for so long?

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Stories have always been how I discover the world, and there’s so much that I’m finally realizing I do want to discover. In the process of writing this essay, I Googled fox spirits out of curiosity, and learned a lot. I learned that the fox spirits are called the huli jing, that they appear in Chinese and Japanese stories as well as Korean ones, and that different versions run the gamut from benevolent to malevolent. Wikipedia may not be the most reliable source, but browsing their entry on the huli jing helped me learn about several texts that I have added to my reading list. My e-reader now holds public domain translations of Classic of the Mountain and the Sea, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, and The Chinese Fairy Book; and I’m on the hunt for more recent translations. Maybe I wasn’t ready to dig into this part of my heritage before, but I am ready now and there is so much to learn.

Even so, there will be no fox spirits in my own stories for now. The point of my story is to tie the protagonist’s shapeshifting to her fluidity as an Asian adoptee. Tying it to her Chinese heritage would defeat the point, for her power comes from belonging to both and neither. The magic of being adopted is that her history and heritage are blank spaces, possibilities forever shifting. She can be whoever she wants, whenever she wants, because she’s only as bound to a single identity as she chooses. If that wasn’t coming through in the draft I workshopped, then I still have work to do and revisions to make.

I am at a point in my writing journey where my writing is no longer just for me. I write to share my ideas and experiences. Maybe people will read my stories and find solidarity with how I feel. Maybe they will find conclusions where I’m still finding confusion. Maybe all they’ll find is entertainment to fill the time as they relax. When I write, I hope to help readers find something they need.

I am not yet ready to share the fox spirits and the stories they come from. I am still at a stage in this new journey where I am collecting these stories. Maybe one day I will feel ready to share and weave these stories into my own work. But until then, I’m going to hoard them until they feel like they are mine. Maybe I’ll even find something I need for myself in the process.