Resources
The MWM team put together a list of resources for identity discovery and information.
If you have any additional resources please contact us.
Organizations
Black Table Arts
Black Table Arts uses creativity to unearth other worlds. Through gatherings, art and sci-fi social work we seek to conjure other worlds through black art by connecting community and cultivating volume in black life.
Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS)
Critical Mixed Race studies is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustice rooted in systems of racialization.
Free Black Dirt
WE'RE A MINNEAPOLIS-BASED ARTIST COLLECTIVE BRIDGING THE CULTURAL AND THE MAGICAL. Free Black Dirt is an artistic partnership formed by Minneapolis based collaborators Junauda Petrus and Erin Sharkey. Committed to creating original theatre and performance, hosting innovative events, organizing local artists, and promoting and supporting the emerging artists’ community in the Twin Cities, Free Black Dirt seeks to spark and engage in critical conversations.
Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN)
KAAN is an all-volunteer organization, fiscally-sponsored through The Foundation for Enhancing Communities. It was founded in 1998 to connect and serve the adoption community. The annual KAAN conference moves to locations across the country, engaging the local community as well as our core of repeat attendees. With the primary objective of providing affordable, meaningful resources and information, the conference unites us all in a space of respect and commitment to growth.
Our mission is to improve the lives of Korean-born adoptees by connecting the community and providing opportunities for dialogue, education, and support.
La Semana
Parents of Latin American Children
La Semana is a week-long culture day-camp for children in elementary through high school adopted from Latin America and their family members. Different from traditional summer camps, La Semana is designed to promote self-esteem and foster an understanding of Latin American culture and history. The children learn Latin American crafts and dances, try Latin American foods, hear Latin American music and are exposed to written and spoken Spanish. The children also take a class that focuses on age-appropriate topics related to adoption.
Network of politicized adoptees
NPA’s mission is to strengthen, cultivate, and improve the lives of adoptees by building community power. Through solution-focused action, we advance adoptee justice by telling our own stories and collectively working towards systemic change within adoption.
Race, indigeneity, Gender, and sexuality studies college of liberal arts, university of minnesota
Established in 2015, the Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Initiative (RIGS) was created to support innovative research, teaching, and community-building for scholars engaged with issues of race, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality. RIGS is dedicated to bringing faculty and students together to pursue lines of inquiry that challenge systems of power and inequality, assert human dignity, and imagine social transformation.
Literature + Poetry
Chang, Tina
W.W. Norton, 2019
Hybrida: Poems
Chung, Nicole
Catapult, 2018
All You Can Ever Know
Durrow, Heidi
Algonquin Books, 2011
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Fajardo-Anstine, Kali
One World, 2019
Sabrina & Corina
Lee, Julayne
Rare Bird Books, 2018
Not My White Savior
Ng, Celeste
Penguin Press, 2017
Little Fires Everywhere
Ng, Celeste
Penguin Books, 2015
Everything I Never Told You
Nissel, Angela
Villard, 2006
Mixed: My life in black and white
Shin, Sun Yung
Coffee House Press, 2016
Unbearable Splendor
Shin, Sun Yung
Coffee House Press, 2012
Rough and Savage
Shin, Sun Yung
Coffee House Press, 2006
Skirt Full of Black
Smith, Zadie
Penguin Books, 2016
Swing Time
Smith, Zadie
Penguin Books, 2006
On Beauty
Smith, Zadie
Vintage, 2001
White Teeth
Mixed Media
Adoptees On
Host: Haley Radke
“Adoptees On is a gathering of incredible adopted people willing to share their intimately personal stories with you about the impact adoption has had on our lives. Listen in and you will discover that you are not alone on this journey.”
Code Switch
Host: Journalists on NPR
“Code Switch is a team of seven NPR journalists who cover race, ethnicity and culture. Our work appears on-air and online, across NPR's shows and digital outlets...
As you've probably heard, the U.S. is in the midst of a big demographic shift. Over the next few decades, people of color will come to compose a majority of the country's population, a transition that's already happened among the nation's youngest residents. Already, race, ethnicity and culture play a starring role in some of the biggest stories unfolding in the news, and that role will only increase as this demographic shift continues. We want to cover these matters with the depth, nuance, intelligence and comprehensiveness they deserve.”
Militantly Mixed
Host: Sharmane, aka MixedGirlManed
“Militantly Mixed is a podcast about race and identity from the Mixed-Race perspective. Every week, host Sharmane aka MixedGirlMane, speaks with Mixed Folk from around the globe about what it is like maneuvering the world as a Mixed-Race person.”
Mixed race radio
Host: Tiffany Reid
“Discussing Mixed Race Identity in America today through book & movie reviews and interviews with mixed people. A Social Commentary on Biracial Life.”
Other: mixed Race in america
Host: Alex Laughlin on The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/other-mixed-race-in-america/?utm_term=.48408537c1ea
“This podcast explores the inner workings of the mythic American melting pot; what happens when your parents come from two different countries, cultures, or races. It’s the kindergarten-level foreign language you can speak to your aunts, the taste for “foreign” flavors you’ve known since childhood, and the distinct feeling of otherness projected onto your face because you look just a little bit “different.”“
Adopted: We Can Do Better (2008)
Director: Barb Lee
“I’m fascinated with family and how its many concentric circles define who we are. Like most adopted people, I have as many meanings attached to the word family, as I have emotions and as a storyteller, I feel compelled to explore them all.
Delving deep into the unique complexities of adopted families is the heart beat of Adopted. These families open up their homes and get real. What they show us is intimate, difficult and truthful. What’s happening in these families is subtle and easy to miss on the first viewing, so watch closely. What international adoption does to everyone it touches is humbling, enlightening and life altering. Are you sure you’re ready for this kind of family?”
Closure (2013)
Director: Bryan Tucker
“A documentary about a transracial adoptee who finds her birth mother, and meets the rest of a family who didn't know she existed, including her birth father. A story about identity, the complexities of trans-racial adoption, and most importantly, closure.”
Funding opportunities
Gift of Identity
Type: Adoptee Travel Scholarship
Our mission is to build a fund so that ALL international adoptees have a chance to visit their birth country and explore their beginnings—accompanied by family who loves them, and supported in a way that is emotionally healthy.
The Gift of Identity Fund, Ltd. provides funding to international adoptees visiting their birth country with the goal of helping them understand their identity, heritage, and culture while traveling via The Ties Program, a family based heritage program.
Many organizations provide funding to families who would like to adopt a child, but cannot afford the expense.
Until now, there has been no funding for international adoptees who need to visit their birth country to feel whole, but cannot afford the expense. You can make a huge impact in the life of a child. You can give the gift of identity.
Additional Resources
Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN)
“Our mission is to improve the lives of Korean-born adoptees by connecting the community and providing opportunities for dialogue, education, and support.”
Love Imagined
“Sherry Quan Lee approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic.”
Mixed Dreams
“towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement”
Red Thread Broken
“Exposing the red thread myth in relation to adoption”
Mental Health Resources
Nonfiction books
Anzaldúa, Gloria
Aunt Lute Books, 3rd ed., 2007.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Brown, Adrienne Maree
Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
Chang, Sharon H.
Rising Song Press, 2018
Hapa-Tales and Other Lies: A Mixed-Race Memoir
Dunbar-Oritz, Roxanne
Beacon Press, 2015
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Funderburg, Lise
Harper Perennial, 1995
Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity
Hartman, Saidiya
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Trade
Kendi, Ibram X.
Bold Type Books, 2017.
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Quan Lee, Sherry
Modern History Press, 2014
Love Imagined: A Mixed Race Memoir
Lorde, Audre
Crossing Press, 2007
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Lowe, Lisa
Durham: Duke University Press, 2015
The Intimacies of Four Continents
Oluo, Ijeoma
Seal Press, 2018
So You Want to Talk About Race
Pate, Alexs and Pamela Fletcher and J. Otis Powell, eds.
Minnesota Historical Society Press: 2015
Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota
Nelson, Kim Park
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016
Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism
Root, Maria P.P., ed.
SAGE Publications, 1995
The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier
Shin, Sun Yung, ed.
Minnesota Historical Society Press: 2016
A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota
Trenka, Jane Jeong and Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin, eds.
South End Press, 2006
Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Peer articles
EMERGING FEMINISMS, (F)Act of Blackness: The Politics of Mixed Race Identity.” The Feminist Wire, 2016.
Article written by Jazlyn Andrews for The Feminist Wire.
Love Imagined: Sherry
“Sherry Quan Lee approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic. Lee is a Community Instructor at Metropolitan State University (Intro to Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing), and has taught at Intermedia Arts, and the Loft Literary Center.”
Mixed American Life
“Fight racism and bias by always questioning race.
We curate and share photos, articles and videos on the topics of mixed culture, mixed heritage and mixed identity; whether mixed by proximity, relationships, or adoption. We also post unique articles by various bloggers, and we especially like to discuss intersectionality.
All this blends with our mission of reducing xenophobia and hate which we blog about at Community Village, which then lead to starting the blog OppressionMonitor to expose those against peace, multiculturalism and pluralism.”
The Tragic Mulatto Myth.
Pilgrim, David. Ferris State University, 2000
“Bill of Rights for Mixed People” and “The Multiracial Oath of Responsibility.”
Root, Maria P.P.
Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies
“(JCMRS) is a peer-reviewed online interdisciplinary journal dedicated to Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS). JCMRS functions as an open-access forum for critical mixed race studies and will be available without cost to anyone with access to the Internet. JCMRS is sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Department of Sociology and is hosted on the eScholarship Repository, which is part of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library.”
Children's library
Picture Book
Chang, Aree
Henry Holt and Co., 2018
Mixed: A Colorful Story
Picture Book
Clarke, Maxine Beneba
Candlewick Press, 2018
The Patchwork Bike
Middle Grades
Bowles, David
Cinco Puntos Press, 2018
They Call me Guero
Middle Grades
Callender, Kheryn
Scholastic Press, 2018
Hurricane Child
Middle Grades
Chan, Crystal
Antheneum, 2014
Bird
Middle Grades
Yang, Kelly
Arthur A. Levine Books, 2018
Front Desk
Young Adult
Acevedo, Elizabeth
HarperTeen, 2018
The Poet X
Young Adult
Perkins, Mitali
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017
You Bring the Distant Near
Young Adult
Zoboi, Ibi
Balzer + Bray, 2019.
Pride. Balzer + Bray, 2018
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America
