256 Kira Omans
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/256
Haley Radke: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On, the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. We are so thrilled to talk with actor, audiobook narrator and adoptee advocate, Kira Omans today. Kira shares how looking deeply at adoption over the past decade has changed her perspective. We talk about what it's like to audition as an adoptee and to embody a new character and identity during a performance.
Of course we get to chat about adoptee representation in Hollywood and the media, including how watching just one documentary upended what Kira thought was her origin story. Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world.
We wrap up with some recommended resources for you and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today or on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in. I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees on Kira Omans.
Hi Kira.
Kira Omans: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited. I know you're not a podcaster, but you are a technically skilled audiobook narrator, so your setup is, I'm like, yay!
Kira Omans: Thank you. I try my best.
Haley Radke: I'm a sound nerd. Geeking out over it. That's all. Anyway.
Kira Omans: Oh, good. I love yours, so we're even.
Haley Radke: I'm so glad to finally speak to you. Do you wanna, do you mind sharing a little bit of your story with us?
Kira Omans: Sure. I was adopted from Zhongshan, China when I was 10 months old. I don't really know very much at all about the circumstances of my birth or my birth parents. All I know is that I was left on the site of a bridge at a couple of months old, brought to a hospital, and then brought to the orphanage, and I was adopted around the time of the one child policy. Then I was brought to the United States.
I grew up in Alexandria, just outside of Washington, D.C. I have a brother who is adopted from Korea and a sister who's my parents' biological child, and I went to a predominantly white Catholic, elementary and middle school. Which I think really affected me growing up. I had a lot of instances of bullying and felt a lot of racial isolation and a lack of identity, and I was very much the type of kid in school who didn't speak.
So if anyone from my elementary or middle school knew what I was doing right now, I feel like they wouldn't believe you. Very much changed and in high school, I went to a public high school that was much more diverse and really found my voice doing theater, and I think that really helped me gain a lot of confidence.
I was valedictorian of my high school and got my BFA in acting and a minor in communication. And went on to do the Pacific Miss Asian American Pageant, which was my first and only pageant. I won in 2015, which really launched me into adoptee advocacy. When they were asking what kind of platform you had, what you wanted to speak about, I really wanted to explore that side of my identity.
So that was when I really started to get involved in the adoptee community. And it was so good for me, especially growing up and not really having a lot of adoptee friends or my brother was in the same boat as I did and he had an even rougher experience at the elementary and middle school that I went to. So it was just a time of evolution for both of us. I really feel.
I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago and now I'm a full-time voice actor and I also do TV and film. I narrate audiobooks full-time, and that has just been such a dream. I really love doing that for work.
As far as adoptee advocacy, I have written a few articles, been on some other podcasts, and last year did some collabs with both Hate Is A Virus and Adoptees for Justice. If you're familiar with those groups, they're fantastic.
Haley Radke: And, yeah just a snippet. Just a snippet. Okay. Yes. How did getting into theater like feel for you? You said you were really quiet as a child and like and now you're like literally using your voice and your work every day. How has that been for you, discovering that and just really cultivating that passion?
Kira Omans: I had such a fantastic theater teacher in high school, and I credit so much of who I am today to him because he really helped me come out of my shell, feel like I had something to say. Just because before in my elementary and middle school, I was so different from everyone. I felt so isolated. I felt like I didn't belong. And so I would just keep to myself so that I didn't get bullied. I didn't get made fun of in any way.
And I think it wasn't until I found theater and, I feel a lot of people who get into theater will feel this way, but who people who felt different, feeling like your differences are an asset. That having something unique about you is a positive thing. And so I think that ideal is really what helped me cultivate this passion and feel like, oh, it's good to have a unique identity. And that was the first time that was ever frame like framed for me like that.
I know my parents tried, but when you're a kid, you're, you only listen to so much of what your parents say. You only internalize so much of it, especially when the world is showing you something else. And showing you that being Asian in a school of predominantly white kids is a very bad thing and you're not gonna fit in.
So I think that being in theater and getting to experiment with all these different roles, was so much fun for me and really helped me be imaginative and helped me just find what I was interested in and what I was passionate about.
Haley Radke: I've talked to a lot of adoptees who are adopted transracially in to white families. Do you feel like you had internalized racism?
Kira Omans: Oh, absolutely. Especially around middle school. So I grew up doing Chinese dance and going to Chinese school. It was very important to my parents that I had that access to my culture. And around that time I didn't want anything to do with it. I was being made fun of for being Chinese, and I just wanted to distance myself from my culture.
I would laugh at Chinese jokes. I would do anything to distance myself. And so working through that has been its own process. I think that when I went to high school and made more Asian friends and felt like, oh, again, this isn't a bad thing. This isn't a weakness of mine.
That was when I really started to feel so much guilt for that and for trying to hide who I was and for trying to negate my experience as an Asian American woman. And so yes, I definitely had a lot of internalized racism and that's been something that I've still been processing. Because like in our society, there's so many, there's so many things that are built on white supremacy that, especially as an Asian woman, how the model minority myth plays into that and how Asian Americans are seen as more white adjacent anyway, and as Asian adoptees, even more so, processing that and seeing how those things don't serve Asian American people. It's a lot. But working through it. Okay.
Haley Radke: How old were you in 2015 when you competed in that pageant?
Kira Omans: Oh my goodness. 19, 20. Okay. I think I won it when I was 20. I think the application process started, I think the first round I was 19, but when I won it, I was 20.
Haley Radke: So was that one of the first experiences you had being a, around a lot of Asian people?
Kira Omans: Yes. That was really, I dive into the deep end, I feel, in terms of being immersed in the Asian American community in the DC area. Because I did Chinese dance and I love those girls and we went to cultural events and everything.
But as far as socially immersing myself in the community and meeting all of the different communities within that was a whole new experience. And I was the only adoptee who had ever participated in that pageant and I was the first adoptee to win it. I don't think that there have been any adoptees after me, and that pageant is so much a celebration of what it means to be an Asian American woman.
And so all of these women who were mostly from immigrant families had all of this experience with their culture. And me, I had to forge that experience on my own because I wasn't just raised around it. It was really interesting seeing the dynamics between the communities because there's so much cultural pride in whichever ethnicity you are.
So I had the PR director of the pageant tell me he wished I was Vietnamese because he was Vietnamese so that he could back me more in the pageant. And I was like, oh, that's different. Being Asian American was such a thing for me. And then being Chinese American, like having a subset of that was just a whole new experience.
Haley Radke: I guess I am, okay, I'm gonna ask you the question now, that I feel like-- you said that this pageant was one of the things that kind of launched you into adoptee advocacy. And as I have seen you in the community over the years, I have seen this gradual shift, as outside observer of your perspective of adoption. And so I'm wondering what your sort of public platform was at that time, around age 20? And now what it has morphed into as you're approaching those thirties?
Kira Omans: That's such a good question and something I've been wanting to talk about for a little while. When I first did the pageant, I was so pro adoption because it had worked out for me. And I love my family. That hasn't changed.
But my relationship to adoption has very much changed as I've immersed myself in the community, as I've tried to learn more people's stories and just read more and listen more. Like your podcast has been such a great resource for me. And just as I started to have a more well-rounded view of adoption, the more I was stepping outside my own bubble and seeing, oh, this isn't an objectively good thing.
It can have good, it can have good parts. For me, like it worked out like on paper. I have a very successful adoption story, but it's still not perfect. And it wasn't until recent years that I really started to come to terms with how adoption affected my life.
Where I've been so achievement oriented and still continue to be, and I'm trying to work through that, but have been so achievement oriented my entire life. And for every achievement I got, I felt like that was a sign that there was nothing wrong with me. That everything was fine. That... could someone who wasn't well adapted be doing these things?
And the answer is yes. Yes. There were things that I hadn't processed. There were so many things that I hadn't worked through that informed my opinion of why adoption was so good.
And so I think over the years, again, as I've learned from other people in the community, my opinion has evolved. That's not what I think anymore. Just in the simplest of terms.
Haley Radke: And I've shared before, my views have changed over time. And let's have grace for our past selves. I'm gonna stick on there one more question.
Kira Omans: Yeah.
Haley Radke: How does it feel to have some of those pro adoption messages still out there attached with your name as you have progressed in your views? And I'm saying that with this idea of, I see so many adoptees who are like excited about sharing parts of their story and things online. All of it positive and it becomes the fodder for a prospective adoptive parents to be like, oh yeah, you're saying something that may be negative, but look at all these positive things, right?
And so I have felt a sense of guilt over some of my past work. And I wonder if you carry that, how you're able to balance that grace for we didn't know it back then. Any thoughts around that, kira?
Kira Omans: Yeah, I have removed some.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Kira Omans: [I think] all of them, but I, yeah. I completely relate to those feelings of guilt of spreading this message that is the dominant message. And like you said, fueling that fodder for prospective parents, because nowadays that's not what I want people to take away from my work.
Like you said, giving our past selves grace. I do think about adoptees that are in a place like that and have a lot of empathy for them and how their journeys might be progressing. And just because I know that I wish someone treated me with a little more grace during that time. When I came out with certain messages, I got attacked online and that only made me want to retreat that made me want to stop doing this. That made me want to disconnect from the adoptee community entirely and feel like, oh, I'm not even welcome in this space. Which is one of the first spaces that I felt like I truly belonged.
And so my hope is that adoptees who see where I was at and have seen my evolution over the years can have hope and grace for adoptees who might be in a similar position to where I first started. Know that they might not think that forever, and approaching them with empathy might be more successful than chasing them out of a Facebook group, as I've seen before, or things like that where I just hope as a community we can all be more welcoming and aim to educate as opposed to isolate. Because that's my primary goal in advocacy now, is just to increase education surrounding adoption and give people a far more well-rounded view of the adoptee experience because it's not all adoption is love. There is a lot of trauma wrapped up in it.
Even for people like me who again have a very successful adoption story on paper, I still struggle with a lot of issues that I was not comfortable discussing before and issues that I suppressed. And it's only been very recently when I first started going to therapy that I started to realize so many things were linked back to my adoption that I just had never addressed.
And it has been such a healing journey for me to be able to process those. And I just hope that other adoptees are given the grace to do the same.
Haley Radke: I appreciate that. I have seen some of your writing and blog posts through the years. And one of them that I was rereading to prepare for today, you share about anxiety and panic attacks. And I'm wondering if you're comfortable talking about that at all.
I think anxiety is one of those things that can be undiagnosed. Like people sort of are like, I'm just a worrier, or, and it can become really debilitating. So are you willing to share a little bit about that?
Kira Omans: Yes, absolutely. I have always had separation anxiety, even as a child. And I think that my parents dismissed it as very much like, she just doesn't wanna go to school or she just doesn't want to go to swim lessons. But my parents would be right there at swim lessons and I would be sobbing. I just, I had such a hard time going to school. I didn't want to leave my parents.
My mom said that even when I was a baby, after I got over the initial fear of them that I would follow her to the bathroom. Like she couldn't leave me anywhere. If she put me down and walked across the room, I would start screaming. And as an adult, that still manifests itself. When I would go to college. I went to college 30 minutes away from where I lived. 30 minutes away from my parents, and I was having panic attacks every night and just so much separation anxiety. Moving to Los Angeles was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm very grateful to my husband for helping me through all those things.
But sometimes when he goes to work, I'll have an anxiety... or I'll just freak out. And I thought that was just like, oh, I just really love my family. I just really loved my husband. I love my loved ones. And so that's why that's there.
And it wasn't until I went to therapy where we started to discuss relinquishment trauma and how that can manifest itself in adoptees that I was like, oh, my system was taught from a very young age that being abandoned is bad. It like, it is very strange to even think about that and how that was such a shock to my system. And that how, even if I don't remember it, it's still there. And that was just a mind-blowing revelation to me. That trauma is stored in the body.
I was just taught my whole life and reinforced by other people that, oh, you're so lucky you don't remember anything. Because that means it doesn't affect you. Or that like you're so lucky you don't remember your time in the orphanage. You don't remember your parents abandoning you by the side of the bridge. All of that stuff still lives in me, and that was during a very formative period of my life.
And when I was just experiencing the world and how everything around me was changing. The language changed. The atmosphere changed, the people changed. Everything was changing. For the first year of my life, it was so tumultuous. And just because I don't remember that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't have lifelong effects. And again, it wasn't until I started going to therapy that I had that revelation, that I started to think about things very differently and that I started to address my anxiety at all. Because I thought it was so normal. And again, it was just very dismissed.
Haley Radke: I really appreciate you sharing that, Kira, cuz I, I know there's a lot of fellow adoptees that struggle with separation anxiety and I'm sure it's oh my God, this is weird, right? But to know you're not alone. No, it's not.
Kira Omans: Yes.
Haley Radke: So many of us struggle with that.
Kira Omans: Yes. And there's a reason for it. It's not that. I was told that I was being dramatic as a kid a lot. And as a teenager sometimes I was. But not everything. And I think that growing up with that mindset of 'I'm being dramatic,' I learned to minimize my problems.
And so knowing that I'm not alone, knowing there are other adoptees who experience that. Having a therapist who understands relinquishment trauma and is able to help me help even help me label that. Because that was such a scary word for me is trauma. I was just like, I don't have trauma. I'm fine. And because I felt that having trauma meant there was something inherently wrong with me as opposed to something happened to me that doesn't have to affect my future, but that I have inside me and that I needed to learn to deal with so that it wasn't ruining aspects of my life.
And yeah, very hard realization, but so much better to know that you're not alone. And I think that's just the number one thing I say to adoptees in general is you're not alone. And having that sense of community and having other adoptees that understand how you're feeling can be such a healing, such a healing thing.
Haley Radke: Okay, so how do you do auditions though? Because that sounds like the worst. Please judge me for my skills and then reject me most of the time and sometimes accept me. What?
Kira Omans: So over the years, I have gotten really good at getting excited for auditions, doing my best, having fun with the role, and then as soon as I submit it, forget about it. And just think about the audition as like an opportunity to show casting directors what I can do. All of that good stuff. And I will be honest with you, being an actor is so much easier than being in a pageant. That's why I only did the one. That was so difficult, and I'll tell you why.
As an actor, you're just playing a character like your take on the character. You might not look how they want that character to look. You might be too tall. You might not look the way they want you to look as compared to the other actors who have already been cast. That happened to me once where I was on the other side of the table and they had already cast me as a lead and I had to do chemistry reads with my romantic interest character, and the actor who was by far the best, who I by far had the most chemistry with, the production company said, oh no, he looks too old standing next to you.
And I was like, what? What? He is by far, objectively the best for the role. The director agreed. It was crazy, and honestly, that experience, while it made me sad, made me feel so much better about all my previous auditions that I didn't get because I was like, oh, they could have found something so arbitrary to not give me that roll over.
And whereas in a pageant, you're getting up there and being yourself. So it's not even, you're being a character in a pageant. You're being yourself. You're going up there trying to be the best version of yourself, and they decide that one woman's version of being herself is better than your version of being yourself. So it's very brutal in that way.
That's not how everyone thinks about it. But at the time, that's how I thought about it and I haven't forgotten that. So being an actor is way, way easier and less personal than being in a pageant to me.
Haley Radke: Okay. I have interviewed a couple of other adoptee actors and or talked with them in whatever circumstances. And I always think I'm like, you can't objectively know this because you're not in other actors' minds, but do you think you can be a better actor or like you're more skilled for it because you've had to adapt to a brand new family? Whereas most of those people just got their own family?
Kira Omans: I'm, I've never even thought about it like that. I don't disagree. I do know that movies and stories played such a huge role in my childhood. And I was a child who was very immersed in my ghost kingdom. Which was a new term for me that I learned recently about how like adoptees can create a hypothetical world where we are living with our birth relatives.
And as a child, that was like, that was so appealing to me. And I don't think I ever really lost all of that, like the imaginative aspect of it. And I think that some of those things are why I can be a better performer. Living in another world is something that I really enjoyed as a child. And something that I think has really stuck with me and part of me thinks that I created the life I did for myself so I can continue doing that. Which is a different matter entirely.
I just, especially all of the movies growing up and so many children's movies are about orphans and adoptees.
Haley Radke: Kira, I literally underline this from your dear adoption piece. "I blame Disney for glorifying abandonment."
Kira Omans: I still do. That part hasn't changed over the years. I, just Anastasia and Hercules and Rapunzel and Cinderella, and Snow White we're also orphans. I think that having that tragic backstory was so glorified, even from such a young age. And then we grow up and there are still these stories about how reuniting with your birth family is the only thing that's going to make you whole. That's the character arc. And just how adoptees always have such a promising future and they just, it just dramatized what I thought my life was going to be like as a kid. Where I thought oh, that's my story. So I'm going to have this grand adventure. And life seemed so disappointing in comparison when I actually started to live it.
Haley Radke: Let's talk about what you are seeing in the media now as far as adoptee representation.
Kira Omans: There is this fantastic post by Charlotte Carbone that I read, I think it was a year ago. Do you know her?
Haley Radke: Charlotte's our graphic designer.
Kira Omans: Wait, oh my goodness. How did I not know that? She's fantastic.
Haley Radke: I know.
Kira Omans: Am a huge fan of her. I've only connected with her online, but she did a great post about adoptees in media. And so I first started even thinking about it because of her post. And how adoptees and former foster youths are portrayed as having this traumatic and abusive past and being mentally ill in movies like Malignant and Orphan and other more adult centered movies.
And again, this is like right from Charlotte's Post that I'm speaking. Give her proper credit. And then in comedies and family oriented movies, adoptees are often portrayed as being prodigies like in Queens Gambit being gifted, spunky and misunderstood, like in Meet The Robinsons and Annie and Matilda.
And so these tropes are so dangerous in creating that one-sided story of adoptees. And there are movies and TV shows that have more nuanced discussions of adoptees and are more from adoptee viewpoints. Whereas a lot of the stories right now are from adoptive parent perspectives, like Instant Familyu and The Blind Side.
Those very much affect the public's perception of adoption and portrays adoptive parents as objectively good and birth parents as bad. And again, reinforces the savior complex. There are a lot of things that I'm seeing in adoptee media that I wish different things for.
Like adoption jokes and how you're adopted is still such a commonly accepted joke, I guess right now. I guess we're still working through that as a society. But how it just ostracizes the adoptee how you're adopted equals you're not one of us. Like they're different and that is what that means. Even if the character's not adopted, people will make jokes like that. I don't understand it.
But these dominant stories really affect the lives and the wellbeing of adoptees and birth parents as well. Just how birth parents are always the villain, I feel, or how overly dramatized those stories are and can give children and adults just such a drastically, like single-minded, like limited understanding of what the adoption experience is really like.
Haley Radke: I remember when This Is Us came out and I was watching the first season and like very hesitantly because, I don't know where this is going and right away. Right when poor Randall is a replacement for the third baby, dead baby, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't.
Kira Omans: Yeah.
Haley Radke: And I remember the discourse online was just so much like sympathy for the adoptive mother, that I just was like, I just can't, I can't do it. And I have heard from plenty of people that overall they really appreciated Randall's storyline and different parts of the adoptee experience being really realistic. And come to find out there was adoptees giving feedback on that, so that's exciting.
Kira Omans: Oh, exactly. I completely understand your trepidation though, because, while those situations exist, they're also the only ones that are represented I feel in TV and movies. Because they're more dramatic or because these stories writers tend to gravitate what's going to tell a better story as opposed to what's real.
And so when it starts out that way, which so many movies do, they tend to choose something like that and don't handle it as well and don't tell it from the adoptees perspective. That's when things can get really tricky and really difficult to watch and absorb as an adoptee. So totally understand where you were coming from.
Haley Radke: You have a really thoughtful critique of Instant Family on your YouTube channel, and I really appreciated it. Like you went through all the points. And as an actor, you're looking at it and you're like, I get the storyline arc. And you're critiquing it with also the eyes of someone who tries to make good stories that people wanna watch and will feel engaged in. And I think that's really helpful to add to the conversation.
So what are some of the things you're hoping to see as an actor? Would you ever wanna play as an adoptee, as a role? Have you ever...?
Kira Omans: I have. And this is unreleased, but I was in a series that was about an Asian adoptee that was adopted into a southern black family. And the series was about her experience going to an HBCU. And that was such a challenging role because, and it hasn't been released, I'm not sure where it is right now. Things tend to happen, but that was so interesting to play that kind of role because I was adopted into a white family. And so my parallels with this character were not really similar.
I had experienced a lot of the same emotions, but growing up in a black community was a whole new experience and something that production and the director and the writer really tried to help immerse me in so that I could play that truthfully. But it was very difficult.
I am not sure if I'd want to play an adoptee again. I think it would depend on the story, and that story was very much about cultures clashing and cultural appropriation. What is okay? Like those kinds of themes, which I definitely relate to. I think that in the future I would really have to look at a script, see how adoptees are being treated. Is, just observe the language surrounding how people speak about adoption.
Is this informed? Are they open to suggestions? Because when I played that role, I don't think that I was as well versed in the community and in the message that I truly wanted to share. And I don't think that it was a bad show, but I think that it did simplify things a little bit. Which is one of my complaints about adoptee storylines in movies and TV is that it's glossed over or it's simplified.
And one thing, I didn't enjoy Instant Family as a film entirely. I know a lot of people feel differently, but while I personally didn't enjoy it, one thing that I appreciated that they did is that they did acknowledge some of the complexities that they weren't entirely going to go into, but they did acknowledge that they were there.
And that's something that I wish more films would do. Because as much as I wish that they would delve into the complexities-- and I hope to see more of that, that there is more representation of a well-rounded adoptee experience and birth parent experience, and how that can really affect a person. Not all movies, especially children's movies are going to do that. And so even if you don't, I think it's really important that writers and studios do their research and at least acknowledge things, that they may not go into but acknowledge that there are other experiences and that there's a lot of nuance to being an adoptee.
Haley Radke: Speaking of appropriation, I think that there will be people listening who have two different opinions on this and may perhaps you and I will as well. But when Blue Bayou came out, there was like this great excitement, oh my gosh, there's gonna be this adoptee story coming out. And then immediately flipped into we must boycott Blue Bayou because it is appropriating a fellow adoptee story, Adam Crapser. And I'll link to, I'll link to an article that kind of reports on this if folks wanna read more about it. But even Adoptees for Justice you mentioned them earlier in our ,conversation, they put out a statement about it.
Kira Omans: Yeah.
Haley Radke: So I ended up not watching it.
Kira Omans: I didn't watch it either.
Haley Radke: Okay. Okay.
Kira Omans: I didn't, I was seeing both sides, and I was glad that all of that came out before I saw it because I never want an adoptee's story to be appropriated. I never want an adoptee's story to be used in a way that they did not approve of or that they're not comfortable with. And Justin Sean, the director of that film, I had been to a premier of one of his other films and he, as a director, tends to-- and this is something I really appreciate about him, but he tends to tell stories of marginalized voices within the Asian American community.
So the film that I saw was about an impoverished family in Koreatown, which is so contrary to the stereotypes of Asian Americans today. That we're all rich and because of Crazy Rich Asians and Bling Empire. And so he was trying to combat that. And I think in Blue Bayou, he was also trying to take a marginalized community within the Asian American community. I think the intentions were there.
I was not involved in the film. I know that there are adoptees who say that Adam's story was not the only one that he drew things from. It's a really complicated situation. And especially as someone who works in the film industry, my impulse is to say representation is good representation. Just any portrayal of our story to get out there that's more nuanced is good. And that's not always true.
And I think that I was really torn on this one just because of Blue Bayou, I felt like there was far more discourse about adoptees without citizenship. Which to me, very good thing. Super important to me to fight for adoptee rights.
But at the same time, I don't want that to be at the expense of an adoptee. I don't want that to be at the expense of the community at large. And so I was very torn on that. I didn't release a public statement because I could see both sides and wasn't really sure how I felt at the time. It's just difficult. These things are complicated.
Haley Radke: So complicated. I appreciate you sharing your perspective on that. Cause it's sort of where I was like, oh my gosh. We do want more adoptee representation. That's what we say. And like you said, it highlights this very critical issue that people don't know that some adoptees still don't have citizenship in the country they were taken to. What. To this day, if you're listening to this when it's just being aired to this day. That has still not been passed.
Kira Omans: No. It passed the house. It didn't pass the Senate last year, which was really disappointing. But yeah, like you're saying, both of those things can be true at once.
We live in a very complicated world. It's not black and white. Both of those issues are very prevalent.
Haley Radke: I'm gonna skip ahead slightly cuz I'm, the thing I want to recommend, one of the things is the movie Return to Seoul. And it was co-written with an adopted person and it's the adoptees story, obviously dramatized, for screen.
Kira Omans: Of course.
Haley Radke: But it's her experience and. I don't know. I felt like it was one of the most realistic portrayals. Some, okay. I'm not gonna spoil any part of the story for anyone, so don't worry. There's some things that are not realistic. But when it comes to the search and reunion portions of the story, I felt they were really realistic and I was thinking of Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related, Jenny Heijun Will's memoir, there was like reminiscent of that. There was some things that reminded me of Alice Steven's novel, Famous Adopted People, for the adoptee who's acting out in a variety of ways. And so I was like, oh, this feels really resonant for me, for Korean adoptees. I'm not a Korean adoptee, but it felt, it felt like really that. It was so beautifully shot and everything like just as a movie. So I don't know. Have you had a chance to see Return to Seoul?
Kira Omans: I haven't yet, but so many Korean adoptees have recommended it to me, and I just need to be in an emotional place where I can handle that because, now, I have such high expectations, but I, everyone I've spoken to has such nice things to say about it.
And that's so promising. I'm so excited that movies like that are being made . We need to continue to support that. I say as someone who hasn't seen it yet but I'm just so excited.
Haley Radke: Yeah. I wanted to share that because I thought it was such in contrast to Blue Bayou, right? Because this is like just taking the stories of, and I don't know, I don't know the behind the scenes of Blue Bayou. But see an adoptee like actually co-write it and help with the representation, everything. I just was really thrilled about that.
The other thing I want to recommend is, of course, that folks go and check out some of your writing and follow you on social to see what you're up to. I love that you're an advocate for our community and I really deeply appreciate how you have allowed yourself to share deeply from your heart about how things have changed.
Like I appreciated you sharing that with us today on our recording, but modeling that for us online. I think there's a lot of folks in our community that get embarrassed about previous things they may have shared and disappear cuz they or have they've been bullied off the internet by people who are not kind. So I think that you've done such a great job of modeling that for us and so I really hope that people will follow your advocacy.
Kira Omans: I appreciate that. Thank you.
Haley Radke: And I also want people to be paying attention for your highlighting Asian American issues with systemic racism. You've had a huge voice in that. Especially through the pandemic and beyond. I think that's really important for us as a community to be aware of as well. There's a lot of white adoptees that need to learn some things, and so you've been taking us on that journey too.
Kira Omans: Good. I hope people find it helpful and I appreciate that.
Haley Radke: What do you wanna recommend, Kira?
Kira Omans: I would like to recommend a documentary called One Child Nation. It is directed by Nan Fu Wang, and it is such an excellent resource, not just for Chinese adoptees, but I think for really anyone who wants to better understand what can lead to some massive waves of adoption and really understand the people who are most affected by it.
Obviously I was raised with a very westernized view of the world. And this documentary really gave me individuals to connect with to better understand how such a policy can happen. It really opened my eyes to the historical context of my story. Whereas it was all very personal before my world was, my understanding of that was very limited.
It really filled in a lot of the edges of what was previously just completely shrouded in mystery for me, and gave me a little more insight onto what could have been the circumstances of my birth. Again, I'm not sure. I don't really have any information at all, but I think that it was such a raw exploration of the cultural values that can allow something like that to happen.
I had even saved a quote from it that China started a war against population growth, but it became a war against its own people. And I think that very much sums up a lot of the documentary. And it's a tough watch. I know you can testify but it was really valuable.
Haley Radke: I've watched it to prepare for our conversation and I did not know the journey I was gonna go on. It starts out with the filmmaker acknowledging that when her child was born seven weeks early and she was separated from them briefly, that was traumatic for her. And I was like, okay. Good. Okay. We got an idea that separating from babies is traumatic. That's good start.
And then I did not know, I did not wanna know what it was in for. I found -- I left extra time in our conversation for this cuz I wanted to talk about it with you.
Kira Omans: Yes.
Haley Radke: Like when you share your story with us at the beginning and you gave us some facts from your adoption documentation about where you were found, after you watched this, did it impact what you thought was the veracity of that information?
Kira Omans: Oh, yes. I called everything into question after I watched that documentary. I wondered if my birthday was real. I wondered if I just realized that I actually don't know anything for certain. I filled out my Freedom of Information Act papers. I got my FOIA documents after that because I was like, what do we actually have?
And like my parents have always been very transparent with me. They've never hidden anything from me. They've always told me everything that they know, but they don't know a lot. And so when I got those papers back, I saw that one of the translations was just written on a scrap of paper, like in my FOIA documents, is this scan of this handwritten translation of I was found by the side of a bridge. There is no known information about her birth parents, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, oh my goodness. What? I even sent the original Chinese document to one of my friends who speaks and writes, Mandarin. And I was like, is this actually what it says? And there were some discrepancies. And it's just, it was a whole thing.
I, after watching that documentary, I had so many mixed feelings on it. And, it really also affected how I thought about my relationship to doing a birth search or even doing a Homeland Journey. Because I just started to feel so resentful after I saw that, and not towards my birth parents, but towards just China, the vague sense of it, because I love so many things about my culture.
I love doing Chinese dance. I love Chinese food. I love going to cultural events and celebrating the holidays. But after watching that documentary, it became very difficult for me to separate the things that I loved about my culture and the values of the country that, that allowed such a horrible policy to be enacted and how that wreaked havoc on its own people. And I just began to wonder, why would I want to return to a country that valued my life so little? Like why would I want to find my biological parents who might be complicit in the infaticide that happened?
Did my birth parents actually abandon me because of what society wants me to believe, of because they wanted me to have a better life, or were they one of the parents who left their baby girls to die in gutters? And it was a really, obviously, very difficult experience to have. And I still harbor some of those feelings. I, I don't feel them quite as strongly, but that's why I think that a birth search and a homeland journey are such serious, complicated things. And that adoptees have such different relationships with that. There's some adoptees who are in reunion and are like very happy about that. There are some adoptees who are in Reunion and aren't happy about that.
Then there are adoptees who don't want to do the birth search or don't want to do a homeland journey, and that's where I'm at right now. And people don't understand that because they think that, again, fed from the media, that finding your birth parents and reconnecting with your homeland is the only thing that's going to make you whole.
And like we said earlier, who knows where I'm going to be in the next 10 years, but I feel like it's a very individual journey. And so watching that documentary, I know that was a lot, but watching that documentary brought so many complicated feelings out.
Haley Radke: I'm so glad you said those things because I felt upended after watching it. And let's give 10 trigger warnings. Do you know what I mean? There is so much horrific content including image, visual images. But just speaking to people who were just doing, just following orders was just shocking. And I could see if you were adopted from China, that could really do some damage if you're not in a good head space and have supports in place to watch that.
So I kinda wanna talk to you about it more, but I'm gonna, I feel like I will spoil too many things if I go into it further. But I'm really glad you recommended it and I'm not sorry I watched it. My worldview got changed cuz I had no idea of a lot of that.
Kira Omans: Like you said, 10 trigger warnings.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Kira Omans: It is a really difficult watch. I think the trailer does a decent job of summing up, like not, it doesn't truly go into everything, but gives you a general feel for what it's going to be like. And I would even say be careful before you watch the trailer just because it alludes to a lot of the atrocities that are explored in the documentary. And I even feel like I was in a good emotional place to be able to watch it before I saw it, and it still really affected me.
So definitely proceed with caution. Have a support system lined up before you go to see it.
Haley Radke: Yes. Yes. Before you plus press play on that. Wow.
Kira Omans: Yeah. Or if you do.
Haley Radke: If you do. If you do, yeah.
Kira Omans: Yes. It is it's very complicated.
Haley Radke: And we don't wanna shy away from hard things or be ignorant of our own history. But only do it if you're in a good space. Okay. I don't know that I've ever given such massive trigger warning for a recommended resource, but I still do. I second your recommendation there. Kira, thank you so much for taking us through your story and talking to us about adoptees in the media.
Where can we connect with you online and follow your future projects?
Kira Omans: You can look at my website or you can follow me on Instagram, which is just at my name, just at KiraOmans, and I post everything on my Instagram and sometimes on my Facebook. But Instagram is definitely the place where I would recommend you connect with me.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Kira happened to be one of these people that I felt like we were old friends connecting. So we actually went on to talk for much longer past our recording time and, rookie podcast or mistake, I didn't record any of that because usually it's just private. But we did discuss further One Child Nation, and I wish I had that to share with you because I'll try and summarize it just very briefly, a couple of my thoughts.
One of our fears in talking about the documentary is of course, that adoption, a saviorism aspect, shows up with adoptive parents, mostly white, leading that charge. And I think on Adoptees On, we do a pretty good job here of always including the nuance when talking about adoption. I think it goes without saying, but obviously I don't think that all the way, cuz I'm gonna say it. But I just wanna be clear. In no way are we endorsing the systematic removal of infants and children from their home country. Period.
So I just wanna be clear on that. And I think there is a real opportunity for us to talk more and more about adoption and how it's represented in the media. I'm really thankful for conversations like this where we can really go there and dive deep. And we're gonna continue to do that here.
So if you have recommendations of things you want us to watch and talk about and discuss with other thoughtful, creative adoptees. Let us know in the Instagram comments. That's the best way to suggest things to us. And we'd be happy to talk more about recommended resources that you have to suggest, but also unpacking some of the messed up content we have taken in over the years.
If you are a Patreon supporter, you know that I have a weekly off-script podcast where I talk with friends that are adoptees as well. And I have a few regular co-hosts and special guest co-hosts every once in a while. And we are gonna be doing a little bit of that this summer. We've already prepared for you a two-part adoptees off-script episode.
We're talking about the TV show, Friends, which is something we were steeped in. If you're in my age range, I'm turning 40 this year. How many times have I said that now? It's coming up. If you were, are in my age range, Friends, with this massive, huge TV show, huge hit. Everybody was watching it. Everybody was talking about it.
And the way they present adoption in that whole storyline is so problematic. And as the audience we're cheering for the adoptive parents. We DGAF about the mother and it's just, that's what we were steeped in. So especially if you're new around here and you're hearing us talk about adoption and the how nuanced and complicated, and there's trauma in adoption? And you heard Kira expres s this whole shift in perspective that she had over 10 years.
Like, of course we thought adoption was amazing and this like savior narrative, like absolutely was true because we were getting that from our adoptive parents. Whether they said it out loud or not. A lot of us, not all. And all the TV shows and movies and all the books, all everything that we were consuming in pop culture was telling us adoption is the best thing ever.
And it's- what a relief to finally be unpacking some of that and critiquing it publicly so more people can critique it. And we can add to that conversation and be more balanced about it. So anyway, that's just like a few thoughts I had I wanted to share.
But I hope that you if you enjoy Adoptees On and you like, really want to keep diving into community and what it means to be an adoptee activist and be engaged with adoptee news and all those things join us on Patreon. We're always talking about that stuff behind the paywall, where it feels safer sometimes.
I'm really so proud of the things we have planned. We've already started doing the Ask An Adoptee Therapist monthly event, and those are gonna be recorded and you can listen to them later if you can't come live. We have our book clubs and all kinds of things going through the summer and I'm mentioning summer because we always take a summer break here.
We only have a few episodes left in June, and then we'll be back in mid-September. So if you are gonna miss me there's so many episodes you can binge while we're on our break here on the main feed. But if you also wanna hear more from us and for me, you can go to adopteeson.com/community and join our Patreon and hang out with me at the Live Zoom events.
Listen to so many back episodes of Adoptee's Off Script, and join us for some of those really valuable nuanced conversations about just like Kira and I talked about today, adoption in the media and what we've been steeped in. So thank you for listening. Let's talk again next Friday.
