311 Sasha Hom
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/311
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] 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. Sasha Hom lives an extraordinarily unconventional life. I'm so excited to introduce her to you. She is a writer, a goat farmer, a mother, and her new book Sidework is incredible. Today we talk about her experiences as a Korean adoptee adopted to a Chinese American couple in California.
Sasha tells us about her trips to Korea and China. We talk motherhood as adoptees and how important writing is in her life. Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our [00:01:00] Patreon adoptee community 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 and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Sasha Wol-soon Hom. Welcome.
Sasha Hom: Thank you for having me.
Haley Radke: I'm so excited to talk to you. I read your book a couple of times. I was just telling you before we started, I've read a whole bunch of pieces of your work that you've written over the years and I'm just like such a huge fan.
But before we get to that, would you mind by starting the way we usually do, Sasha, would you share some of your story with us?
Sasha Hom: Yeah, I would be happy to. So I was adopted from Korea as a young, [00:02:00] I guess as a baby, probably around eight months old, eight or nine months old. And my parents flew me out and I came like many Korean adoptees, this was in the seventies on a plane load of children.
And my parents, my adoptive parents are actually Chinese American, which is unusual in Korean adoption for especially of that time for another Asian American to adopt a Korean adoptee. So both of my parents were actually born and raised in Oakland. They come from families of five and six, and their parents were immigrants from China and for whatever reasons, they couldn't have their own biological child, so they went to Korean adoption. And that's how I got here. And then when I was about 12 years old, they decided they wanted to [00:03:00] adopt another child. So they went back to the social worker and wanted to adopt another child from Korea. Their reasoning at that time was we don't want Sasha to grow up, and be by herself.
We are getting older and we don't want a baby 'cause I, we can't really do diapers anymore and we don't want them to be too far apart in age. So they adopted an older child. My sister was four and a half when she came here and she spent her earlier years in the orphanage. And so we went over to Korea when she was 12.
This was like, I think it was in 1988. And I, I don't know if some people might know this, but in 1988 in Seoul there was like full on demonstrations happening, protesting for democracy. I think that was when dictator Park was still in power, although I could have my dates wrong. But [00:04:00] anyways, so when we got there, it was, there were demonstrations in full effect.
And I just remember as a child, every time we had to go in and out of our hotel, we had to cover our faces 'cause of the tear gas and it. Sometimes, it got quite those protests were pretty heated and I could watch from my hotel room, which was really high up and I could see everybody like running back and forth and that's what I included in that story sidewalks actually was that scene. But I remember it very vividly and that was like the backdrop of our experience of going to Korea to adopt another child.
Haley Radke: And was that your first time back to Korea?
Sasha Hom: Yeah, that was my first time back. And so it was my, also my first impression of Korea and as well as from my parents. And it was interesting. It, yeah, and I think for my parents [00:05:00] it was difficult in many ways. I think my mother attributed some of it to like oh, that's just how Koreans are. Like they're very, they're a physical culture and there's, that sort of thing.
Haley Radke: And this was likely their first visit if you came over on a plane by yourself?
Sasha Hom: Yes, that's correct.
Haley Radke: Oh goodness. That is quite a story, Sasha, that's very, I'm picturing 12-year-old you processing that. And so now as an adult, looking back on that, how did that impact your view of your home country?
Sasha Hom: It's interesting and I think that so much of how I process information and remember has to do with myself as a writer I think. So things that stay with me are, [00:06:00] certainly the feelings of being there, of like confusion, but also of there's this feeling that this is where I came from and yet I don't necessarily feel a familiarity with this place or this culture or this language, but I feel like I should feel those things.
And I, in some ways, I feel like I want to feel those things as well. I think that yearning also came from never feeling exactly like I fit in with my own family. And, I grew up in Berkeley, in California. In the Bay Area. So I grew up in a really diverse community. I was fortunate in that way.
My best friend was adopted, some of my other friends were adopted. So that was really, that was helpful. Like I, I meet a lot of adoptees who grew up and they're like the only Korean in sight or within a hundred mile radius, which is like my situation right [00:07:00] now 'cause I live in Vermont and I'm like, oh my God, how did I go from Berkeley to here? Talk about not feeling like I fit in.
Haley Radke: We have to find that out too.
Sasha Hom: So there was a lot of those sort of like mixed conflicting feelings. But I remember so clearly also this feeling of connection. And I write about that in the story, like seeing these like older women. Middle aged ajummas, like just how like familiar they were with each other and how like physical and boisterous and playful and just feeling oh, like that felt familiar and oh wow.
That's what I feel inside, but I don't always have the appropriate cultural context to express myself in that way. So I think that trip also there planted, there was planted the [00:08:00] seeds of some sort of connection and the potential for belonging that seeded future returns and searches.
Haley Radke: That's fascinating because what was in my head was, I was like, oh my gosh, this seed of fear planted when they sent you solo on a plane to America. And then you go back and I see that the tear gas, I see that as like a fear again, intermingled. And you're, you've got these mixed feelings of I'm curious. I should want this. And like it's just, yeah, God, that's complex. Let's go to your upbringing again. So you had Chinese American parents and that is really unusual. So many of the adoptees I've interviewed that are from Korea are adopted into white families. [00:09:00] So can you talk about that experience? And I imagine you, were grew up in their culture.
Sasha Hom: Yeah. And like their culture was very specific.
Haley Radke: Exactly.
Sasha Hom: And they were like, first generation Chinese Americans born in Oakland,
Haley Radke: Uhhuh,
Sasha Hom: who both grew up with quite a high amount of poverty initially, and chaos and dysfunction as well. And, but at the same time, growing up, their families were very close. I really appreciated that. So I had a lot of cousins, I had a lot of aunts and uncles. That changes as things often change when like the grandparents pass away. My parents eventually got divorced, but that was much later in my development. I guess I was more like closer to 20 at that time, or 19 or something. So I did grow up with two [00:10:00] parents, like a two parent household, and I was very close in retrospect, I say everything, of course in retrospect. So sometimes I like question myself, like, how am I remembering this? Is this like correct?
And there's a part of me that's always, I hear my parents in my head saying things to me and, oh, that's not true. Or, but in, in retrospect, I mean I was very close to my mother's side of the family and her parents. I didn't grow up with my father's parents. But I grew up with my mother's parents being a part of my life.
And my maternal grandfather, he actually took me with a group like on a tour back to China, to his village. So when I was 16, I went with a group of American born Chinese and Canadian born Chinese whose, who had ancestral ties to Southern China. And we all went back and [00:11:00] we went to our like grandparents villages or whatever.
So I got to have that experience of going with my grandfather and seeing what he came from. And he had this incredible story of leaving China and like basically, running away when he was like, fourth grade age or as a young boy, like naked 'cause his, he was in a situation of abuse, but starting with literally nothing.
Not even clothes or shoes. And then, that the story of, coming up and becoming wealthy and owning his own Chinese restaurant one day and, becoming very successful. So it was really great going back to his village and just seeing like the board, which was his bed, where he grew up, and just that whole experience.
But I had that very acute feeling of oh wow, like I come from a village too. I come from some beginnings, some story that I don't know that is probably just [00:12:00] as incredible and fascinating and complicated, but I don't have that access. And that for me, at 16 was another moment of, wow, I wanna know, but I don't know how to know.
And I think that also fostered the writer in me. I can know in my imagination. I can write scenes, I can explore that. I can write characters. But there's still that, not that knowing that. But you'll still never know.
Haley Radke: Yeah I was thinking, which piece is it that I read that you write these different possibilities of origins? Sorry, I have them all printed out. I killed a lot of trees for this reading. Oh yes. Origin Story One. Origin Story Two. A Guidebook, This Pen, that piece. Yes. I love that. But yet. [00:13:00] Do you try and search? Do you, did you ever go back to Korea again after that trip to pick up your new sister?
Sasha Hom: I did. I did go back. I went back in my twenties and I actually, I went on a trip with a friend and she is Vietnamese and she went back, she was going back to Vietnam for the first time in however many years, 10, 11 to go visit her family. And she invited me to go along and I said, sure, I'd love to. And that trip included a stopover somewhere.
And that stopover happened to be Seoul. So I went with her to Vietnam. And I saw her be reunited with her family and relearn her own country through what she was eating and having all these memories of that, and also all this grief because since she [00:14:00] immigrated to the United States, her mother had since passed away. So there was also this grief that came up. So I was having that experience vicariously through her. But what ultimately happened was I left early, I left Vietnam and I went to Korea and I started my own search. And as like in my twenties, I didn't have a lot of emotional skill. Like I didn't have a lot of self care and ways to support myself and even know when I needed support.
So it was a really, it was it was a rough trip. It was a little rough, but I was a little rougher then too. But I did connect with a, the GOAL, The Global Overseas Adoptee Link in Seoul, and they had just begun, that was 19, holy crap. I'm not gonna remember. 1998 or [00:15:00] nine. Yeah. Something like that.
And so I met all these like amazing adopted Korean people who were living in Seoul and like trying to advocate for the rights of adoptees who have returned to Seoul, who felt like, this is my culture, this is my country. I wanna know who I am and where I've come from, and I wanna be able to stay here for more than three months at a time and then have to go, or whatever it was.
So yeah, so that was, that felt very I don't know, what do you call it? When you're in a place at a certain time, that is, is feels historical, so yeah. So that was the first time I searched and I did what a lot of adoptees do. I went on television and I put an ad in the paper and I went to my agency to look at my files again, and ultimately nothing really turned up.
I did discover that the exact time of my birth, which I didn't know, and the [00:16:00] social worker kept saying, oh no, you know that, the time you were born, we gave that to your parents. And my parents had never received the time I was born. And it was a very specific time. It was like 10:06 PM and I called my adopted mother in the States and she was like, oh, great, now I can find your rising sign.
I'm like, okay, great mom. My astrological chart is finally complete. But to me, that signal that there was more information out there for one. And that there was misrepresentation happening, and this was before all that stuff came to light, really, like it was slowly dawning on me. And I was in this community of Korean adoptees there from all over the world who've come back to do the same search and.
There was like story after story, like one adoptee went to his agency to ask for help to find his birth family, and they said, we know nothing. And it was like at the exact same time, his birth [00:17:00] family had gone back to the agency to look for him and they told them the same thing. So there was all this stuff that just wasn't making sense to me, and ultimately I didn't find anything else out and I had to go back. I went back home.
Haley Radke: Did you have the abandonment story that so many do? Yeah.
Sasha Hom: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Isn't that interesting then that they know exactly what time you were born, right?
Sasha Hom: Yeah. Yeah. I was, yeah left on a doorstep in a basket or something with a note.
Haley Radke: Uhhuh. Wow. So did you ever want to keep, do you still want to keep searching? Did you ever find anything or do you put that away and think I guess that's, that. I don't know.
Sasha Hom: Yeah, interesting. I, so couple things before I like really address that one was that it [00:18:00] was on this podcast that I learned the term paper orphan from another guest and whose name I can't pull up right now, but I was like, oh wait a second. That's me. And so I did return again in my gosh, I was almost 30. No, I was in my thirties, in my early thirties. My husband was doing an Korean language program in Korea, and this was in 2008. And I did go back. I presented a paper at the GOAL's 10 year anniversary, and I had two children with me, a three and a half year old and a five month old.
And my husband was like in this program and it was in a university and I had to stay in the women's dorm, and he was in the men's dorm. And it was just like I didn't have, I hardly saw him at all. So I had to go and do that in Seoul the paper presentation with my kids and just take the [00:19:00] bus and it was wild.
But I did not intend to search. That was never my goal when I went out, when I returned that third time, but just in case I brought whatever paperwork I had. The dorm that I was staying in, the woman's dorm downstairs, there was a flower shop. And the flower shop people was this couple that they didn't have any kids and they, when they found out I was an adoptee, they were like, oh no, we're gonna find your family for you.
And by then the 10 years had passed. It was a totally different culture in Korea towards adoptees. Like when I first got there in 88 or whatever it was, they, people were like covering their face and running the other direction when they figured out that I was an adoptee or like screaming at me for not knowing my language or, it was just like this wide range of reactions.
And some of them were positive, but a lot of 'em weren't. But this couple took me under their wing and they [00:20:00] tried to find this place where I was supposedly abandoned and I had both of my children with me and we went and we drove all around the town of an Anyang but all the streets had been renamed.
So we, it took us a while to find the spot and I'm like, my, I had a 3-year-old, I think or almost four, and she was like refusing to sit in the car seat. So she's at the foot at my foot in the back of the car and I have this five month old and I'm like, I don't know if I even want to find the spot where I was abandoned.
But eventually we found it and it was so bizarre 'cause there was nothing there. It was just like a utility pole and a pile of trash on the ground. And there wasn't much else. And my daughter points to the pile of trash. And she goes, mama, is that where you were found? It's just oh Lord, I didn't know what to say. Maybe baby, [00:21:00] but I don't know, and do I wanna find more information? Yes, I do. I would love to know, but do I have the time or the capacity or the means to like do that search now I don't, I have four kids. I'm a goat farmer. I live off grid in a yurt in central Vermont, and I am busy as all hell, and I'm a writer and yeah I would love to do that search a little further. And I think my children a couple of, so my oldest. My oldest is 20, and then my next one is 17 after that. And I think that they have some curiosity about my past and my, my lineage. So maybe they'll take up that search. I have no idea.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for reminding us the difficulties of search, especially for folks who've been [00:22:00] trans nationally adopted. Us domestics, take it for granted. We can spit in a tube or get our paperwork some much more easily. Okay. Before we go to the yurt and the goats, because please, like I don't worry, I'm not gonna miss that.
I just have one more question about your adoptive parents. So were you ever, does, is mis raced a thing? Were you ever thought to be Chinese? Yes. You're nodding.
Sasha Hom: Yeah, like all the time.
Haley Radke: Okay.
Sasha Hom: I think, and I also feel fortunate that I found out I was adopted at a fairly young age. I found out in preschool, and I found out because my friend told me and I didn't know what it meant. And somehow, like her mother told her and she told me my, so my parents didn't tell me. And so I had to ask them what it meant. And then, and that's how I found out. So I [00:23:00] think, that was helpful. But people would always say, I look like my father and I, it's sure, whatever. And maybe I do, and when I went to China, people always thought I was Chinese and my grandfather would actually correct them sometimes.
Explain that no, I was adopted, I'm Korean. But I think, people always wanna say, oh no, she looks, she's Chinese. She looks classical Chinese. But I think there's a little bit of that too in communities where one community wants to claim you. Yeah. And so the feeling of who I really am felt like a secret, like I could pass, so therefore it's easier to pass. Like why explain who I really am. So yeah, that was an interesting effect, I think of that.
Haley Radke: You didn't have to announce, you were adopted to explain your presence in the family or [00:24:00] anything like that. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Wow. Thank you. Okay, so you live an unconventional life, and how did you come to be goat farmers and nomads and I know that you were in California and the wildfires sent you to Vermont, essentially, but can you share a little bit about that part of your life with listeners?
Sasha Hom: Yeah, it's a long story, so I'll try to keep it brief, but it began when I had my first child and I think like a lot of mothers, I was going crazy and I just, I didn't understand like how people could be a stay at home mom and not have community and try to like actually make a living and be artists and make work.
It just, it made no sense. So I decided, hey, I [00:25:00] have a solution to this problem and I, instead of working 60 hours a week husband, we're gonna buy a van, we're gonna move into this van and we're gonna live out of it and be together all the time and be on the road and take our baby and figure it out. So we did that with my oldest and that sort of began like this sort of openness to unconventional living.
It didn't last super long 'cause we lost, we ran outta money as happens, and we ended up living on an island off the coast of Maine. But then also my oldest daughter had a lot of sensory processing issues, and at that time we were living in Davis, California in a suburb, and the recommendations were things like, oh, have her carry something heavy or like this joint compression stuff to get proprioceptive input into her body or wear a weighted blanket.
I, they had all these suggestions that felt, you have to [00:26:00] manufacture the effects of that on their body. But we noticed that when she was outside, like when we were in the woods and camping and she's climbing trees, or she's hiking and we're carrying backpacks or we're at the beach, she was fine.
I think after her first year of preschool, we took her, or maybe it was kindergarten, we went backpacking and it was like she literally walked seven miles at the slowest pace possible. It was like one foot in front of another, in front of another. Not the whole seven miles, but it was a good amount of time and it was like she needed to do that to process her first year of kindergarten.
And so we let her do it and my husband stayed with her 'cause I could not keep that pace. And I was like, I can't do this. But he can. And so I think that also reoriented us to the possibilities of the cliche of the healing power of nature, [00:27:00] which is no joke. This kid got something from being outdoors that helped her be in her body and be in her self. So we left Davis, my husband got a graduate, what do you call it? A dissertation fellowship. So they paid him to write his dissertation. So I'm like, okay, baby, that means we're gone. We don't have to be anywhere. So we moved back into the van and we looked for another place to live. And also I'd, I would say like economics has a lot to play in it, because we didn't have a lot of money.
We're not like, oh, let's go buy land and start a homestead. It was more like, we have to figure out how to do this. We have a couple canvas tents. We have our dog, our kids, our van, which brought us to an intentional community because we could live there fairly inexpensively and do unconventional things.
And that ended up being living in tents. [00:28:00] So we got like a big canvas tent and a teepee. And there was space in the woods that we could live and we figured it out that way and caught rainwater and cut all our own wood and we'd have to walk in. And we had, by then, at the end of that, we had four kids. So a lot of our kids grew up that way, just outside.
But yeah. And then the wildfires happened and there went that situation. And it was the fourth year in a row where we had to evacuate because of wildfires. Mostly because of smoke 'cause like when you're living in a tent, you, there's no protection. It's just you and the elements and the smoke.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Sasha Hom: So we would always evacuate and the last time in 2020 we were, we were in pandemic. I'd lost my job as a waitress because of the pandemic. So I was also on whatever they would give you. They were throwing me some money, but not [00:29:00] much. So we took that as an opportunity to be like, okay, let's figure this out again. Let's go somewhere where there's not wildfires. It's not quite as expensive and competitive.
And that's how we ended up in Vermont. It was just literally like driving and sending out emails and seeing what came back. And just Vermont, somebody answered an ad that my husband's cousin put out there or something, or not an ad, an email, and said that they had a place for us. So we bounced around Vermont a little bit and then we found a land co-op.
So we're on again, we're on cooperatively owned land and we were here for a while before they're like, okay, sure, go ahead, put up a yurt. And so that's what we did. But you can't live in Canvas tents in central Vermont, although I'm in one right now. So we live that, we live in them half the year. But then, so that's why we moved.
We upgraded to Yurts, [00:30:00] which is a significant upgrade.
Haley Radke: Just to keep a little warmer, okay. So unconventional life, not an exaggeration. I'm curious. You must hear this a lot. I could never do that. We could never do that. And what do you think people fear when they ask you that question?
Sasha Hom: I think that people say, I never wanna do that because they don't want to have to challenge or rethink what they are doing now. 'Cause it's a lot of work. And sometimes, we do get a lot of, not a ton, but we get a lot of reactions to how we live and how we are. And not a ton though, but I think the most common one is oh, like fascination. I wish I could do that.
Like how, like where do you go to the bathroom? Like how do you like that kind of thing, like how do [00:31:00] you like, get in touch with other people and.
Haley Radke: How are you doing a podcast?
Sasha Hom: Yeah.
Haley Radke: How did you write, how did you write a whole book and publish all these stories and articles.
Sasha Hom: Yeah. Yeah. Which is its own thing, right? And it's true. But I think, yeah, anytime you're doing something out of the box or out of the norm. I think it can be challenging for some people. I don't know why everybody has got their own reasons as to why, but I also try to, I don't tend to accept here, broadcast my lifestyle to others.
Haley Radke: So you have four kids and you, it sounds like you started this outdoor life, I'm gonna call it, to help your daughter. Can you talk about motherhood and especially as an adopted person? 'Cause it's different for us. I think it's different for us.[00:32:00]
Sasha Hom: Yeah, that's a great question and way of connecting it. I think that a lot of what came up, all this came up. Because we were putting our children's needs first in a different sort of way. Not oh, I'm gonna spend all my money so she can have classes at Kumon. Or something like tutoring. And it was more, how do you say it? I think that it was also taking into account like the family as like a holistic whole unit.
And I think that mothering, it kicked my butt, right? Like it kicked my butt when I had my first child. I remember looking at her when she was three days old, like the day that I was supposedly abandoned on the doorstep in the basket with the note, and just having that realization that, oh my God, this is what I was like when my mother left me.
[00:33:00] This is how she saw me last. And it was this realization of 'cause I spent a lot of time as a young adult feeling anger about being left. Like, how could she leave me? Or how could I have been like, rejected and feeling that abandonment and rejection. But in that moment with my daughter, my hormones are raging and everything, but as they are after birth I had this moment of wow, she must have loved me so much to be able to let me go like that and to have to go through all that pain herself.
So I think that was a moment where my narrative flipped a little for that story. But the other thing that happened was life wasn't about me anymore. It wasn't just about what I wanted, where I wanted to go, when I wanted to go, and that lack of mobility was hard 'cause I was a city girl. I would just go, jump in the car, [00:34:00] jump on the bus, jump on my bike, go wherever.
I was a dog walker, that's anyways too. So I was like all over town with, a gang of dogs and in the hills and then all of a sudden I couldn't do that. And that was really difficult. And I think I realized that, okay, if there's gonna be movement, it's as a group, it's all of us together.
It's like the dogs, my daughter, my husband. And I think there's just something in me that is tuned towards movement. I have a hard time staying put and, that has more to do with me but that was one way in which. We as a family, me as myself, evolved as a family into something that was more workable for everybody, you and babies love movement.
Haley Radke: Frankly, that's sometimes the only way they can fall asleep, right? You're replicating the movement of what they felt in [00:35:00] utero, you said something a little earlier in our conversation that perhaps your oldest children, they might be the ones to take up the search, and it reminds me that the adoption severance is not just for our gen, but the ones that follow and that gap in knowledge can pass on as well. Do you ever think about that? Do your, do you have your daughters ever talked about going to Korea or doing any of that exploration?
Sasha Hom: Yeah I think my 17-year-old has been more interested about Korea. Maybe my 20-year-old too. She has a friend who is from Korea who has invited her and my 17-year-old, to go back and offered a place to stay and stuff like that. So I think that they're entertaining that and I think that they will, I think that there will be some [00:36:00] kind of connection there for them. It's so hard to say, like our children will, I don't know. We all have to figure out like how we belong in this world and how we connect to what we connect to.
But it was interesting because I was reading this book recently called Tastes Like War by a Korean American sociologist, I can't remember her name right now. And. It was fascinating for me also just to learn more about Korea in the seventies and what was happening. But my daughter asked me what I was listening to, 'cause I was listening to it on, on, on tape.
And so she actually picked it up herself after she was visiting us. And she went back, she moved back to California and she read it as well, which I was like, oh, interesting. Yeah.
Haley Radke: So there's curiosity whether or not it's spoken or not.
Sasha Hom: Yeah.
Haley Radke: I just looked up Grace Cho. Is that the [00:37:00] one?
Sasha Hom: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Sasha Hom: Yes.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Sasha Hom: Yeah. And it is, and I think that our lifestyle, how it hits the children, it's, it in effects is different. My 20-year-old, she moved back to California as soon as she could. She didn't ever really accept Vermont as a place for her. And then my 17-year-old, she's home halftime, but she spends the other half, like in, in the city in Burlington. She's really like enjoying exploring city life, but I think that where she goes for nourishment is into the woods and back with the animals. Whereas my like 13-year-old, she had a moment where she's I can't go to school 'cause we homeschool. And she's she wanted to go and then she just had this realization of, I, I don't think I could be inside for eight hours a day. And she's in fact, I know I can't. And she also has some sensory issues and she's got her set of challenges [00:38:00] and she grew up outside. So she really has used the outdoors as a way of self-soothing and just feeling like this is where I belong in the world. If she has trouble, she'll go and sit under a tree or in a tree and we'll see what happens with my 10-year-old but he was the one who grew up until he was like five or six, never having spent like much time in a house. He had never lived with toilets or doors or stuff like that. Running water. My 13-year-old still, she struggles with doorknobs. She doesn't like it just don't make sense. And it depends on the style of doorknob too.
Haley Radke: There's a great scene in, in Inside Work about that. It's just so good. Okay. I don't wanna spoil it let's talk about writing before we, we do talk about recommended resources. How do you fit it all in? Where do you write? Literally, are you writing on paper? Are you writing on your [00:39:00] laptop? Where are you fitting this in? Because to live outside is so much extra work that someone like me, okay, am I getting my groceries delivered this week or am I gonna go pick 'em up at the store? No big deal.
Sasha Hom: So I'm very fortunate too. 'cause my husband is, I guess I, I wouldn't say I was fortunate. Maybe you know. Five years ago or something. But he is also a, an art, an artist. He's a composer, so he understands like the need for time and quiet and a place to work and which makes employment difficult. That's all I'm saying. Part about not being so fortunate is like we both don't really like to work nine to five jobs and we don't. So we share and have shared studio space for some time now, and I'll use it in the morning and he'll use it at night.
So when we were in California and I was [00:40:00] waitressing, I had some extra income so I could rent a place down the hill from where our site was. And it was like an old watchman shack at a mill. And so we would share that space and now we have two yurts, one that we live in and one that we work in. So that's our studio space.
So I go in there in the morning and I write in there. I'm up pretty early. However, when we evacuated, that was really challenging because we had the van and that was it. We had the little minivan and then we were staying with his parents for part of a time, although it was pandemic, so we couldn't go straight there.
So we were also staying like wherever we could figure it out. I couldn't, there was really hard to find time and space, and I was in an MFA program and I was just, writing Sidework. But, and so I would go in the car and then what we, what I figured out was that if I wake up at two in the [00:41:00] morning, it's quiet and I can write.
So I would, I started doing that. I would wake up at two and I would write until about seven, get my kids situated for breakfast, and then take a nap. And then take another nap and go to sleep at really early. And then I did that for quite a while. I wouldn't recommend it unless you had to.
Haley Radke: Do you need to write?
Sasha Hom: I tried to quit, I swear. I have tried to quit writing a couple times now, and one time when I tried to quit, I started twining rag rugs. So I was like, I'll be a rug maker. And so I was like stripping all like our old clothes and like making frames and making rag rugs essentially. And they were, really interesting, more like art pieces than rugs, although we use 'em for rugs too.
But then they all slowly morphed into these stories. So each rug, might be made out of like my [00:42:00] old daughter's sling. And then it would have this whole narrative that came along with it, and then I would start, then I'd have to write it down, or they'd turn into poems and I'm like, I can't quit.
I am physically, like consciously trying and giving myself some other like expression, and it just keeps coming back. So I was like, all right I give up. But I also feel like, if that's you, then you do you, and in a way it's, if that's also my form of expression, but also something that I am able to do and I can, I'm fairly okay at, I feel like in some ways it's a gift to be given and shared. Like a gift is a responsibility. And so I gave up and stopped, like criticizing myself being like, oh, it's like self-indulgent, or, oh, it's this or that, and realizing, no, it's not like you have to thrive to be able to give. And regardless if you [00:43:00] know you're doing well, you're touching people, you're showing people, especially your children.
So like when I decided to go back to an MFA program again, I was like, oh, I shouldn't do this. Oh my, I'm gonna leave my children like 10 days for 10 days twice. What's it? Twice a year? 'cause it was a low residency. My son was like two, I think he was even still nursing. He was, if he was two.
Anyways. But I just, I was like, I just need to, I do this right now. And when my daughter found out, she was just, and I've said this before too it. It touched my heart. She was like, mom's going back to school, mom's going back to school. And she didn't go to school. She had no idea what she was saying, but she was so excited for me and proud, and I was like okay. I get it. I gotta do it for them.
Haley Radke: I love that. And you don't realize, but you're also doing it for us. You [00:44:00] meant like it's a gift for us. I read Sidework twice, and this is gonna sound simplistic, but it's so real and authentic and the person that you're describing to us just by how they're treating the server, in the story, it's so quick, it's so fast paced, it's so funny and sharp, and you're making all these societal critiques, and yet it's so easy to read and it just, I, God, genuinely loved it, truly.
Sasha Hom: Thank you.
Haley Radke: And then in, in preparing for this, I read your short story Sidewalks and it moved me so much. I thought, oh my gosh, is this my favorite short story I've read in the last couple years? Like I think it is.
Sasha Hom: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Yes. And now [00:45:00] getting to hear your story from your mouth. I see the pieces of you in Sidework and the pieces of you and Sidewalk and your story and how you blend those things. I really think listeners are gonna just love both of these things. We will link to them in the show notes, but Sidework especially. Congratulations. It's so wonderful.
Sasha Hom: Thank you.
Haley Radke: Yeah,
Sasha Hom: thank you. I really appreciate that.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Sasha Hom: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Is there anything you wanna talk, tell us about Sidework?
Sasha Hom: So I wrote that one. I started it when I was at my MFA program, so I was working on that too. And we were again like moving around and without a place and it was really enjoyable. The book, not the moving around without a place, but the book, it was, I just, and even to this day, like I do a lot of library presentations in Vermont that where I've, I had, I just decided I was gonna do a PowerPoint [00:46:00] for them.
I've never done PowerPoint in my life, so I decided to make this presentation in the book a PowerPoint. But it's been really fun 'cause I include a lot of photos, like old photos of like how we lived in California and in the tent and all my children, and it's like a, what do you call, like a personal narrative presentation of what was going on in my life when I wrote this, what my life looked like.
And as well as. I do readings, so I'll then I'll read excerpts and I'll link it also to like the craft decisions I'm making in the book and how those craft decisions also sprang from our lifestyle choices. And what was the, and there's it's this whole thing and it's been really fun, but it's like popping the hood on the book.
Haley Radke: Yes.
Sasha Hom: And showing you all the what's inside. And I've had readers who like do their library book clubs be like, oh my God. Like when I first read this, I [00:47:00] was like, what is this? Like how do you know? How do I read this? And then to hear me talk about it, they've had these kind of these feelings of, oh wow, that's I wanna read it again or so that, that's been really fun.
It's hard to sell a book from a small press and do all your own marketing.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Sasha Hom: And it's taken a back burner in my life, partly because we have, we raise meat goats and we we're trying to start this program like Heifer International, where individuals can buy meat from us and then we donate it to community organizations who then distribute the meat to people who are food scarce.
I have one organization who supports survivors of torture and trauma in their home countries, so we get it to a lot of refugees and immigrants, refugees especially, who will be losing food stamp benefits soon. So it's, that's what we do. [00:48:00] And we're in a drought in Vermont and we, the way we feed our goats is we rotationally graze 'em.
So we're moving paddocks every single day with electric fencing. So now I'm moving paddocks like twice a day or three times a day, like trying to get these goats food. But yeah. It's just, it's a lot.
Haley Radke: It's a lot. And you get a glimpse into Sasha's life, although it is fiction, but there's for sure pieces of you in this.
Sasha Hom: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Okay. So you and I discussed briefly on email what you wanted to recommend and tell adoptees before we wrap up the show.
Sasha Hom: That was a hard one because I feel like some of, like the support I get for myself as an adoptee and feelings of disconnect and that longing and not knowing [00:49:00] and that mystery, like the solace I get for that sometimes are in more conceptual ideas.
And I think the conceptual ideas that I mentioned, one, and I write about this in Sidework too a little bit, it made its way into that book, but is the idea, and I learned this a while ago as a mother, that when we conceive a child that child's DNA is in our bodies sometimes for decades, whether or not that child is still living even.
And so it was a moment of healing for me, but also to, because immediately I felt like a closeness with my own children and I've had miscarriages and stuff like that. So I also felt like the losses weren't lost, but also recognition that I'm not a loss. I am not lost, and I am not a loss. I am still there with [00:50:00] her and have been for decades.
And I think they've discovered all this like really crazy like science stuff too, in that experience where that the cells and the DNA of that child in the mother can sometimes even help the mother heal from X whatever she might be having. Those cells will go in there and heal her tumor or her cancer contribute in that way or cause autoimmune disease or cause you know so it's still a relationship.
There's still a connection. And then something else that I stumbled upon that gave me pause was this concept of, oh, the atoms that we are made of, every one of us we're born in the heart of a star. And then that star exploded and fell onto the earth. And that is how we, we were somehow like compiled from that dust.
You know [00:51:00] what the scientific accuracy, please go find out yourself because I am no scientist. I am a mother and a writer and a goat farmer, but not a scientist. But just that concept of origin, a shared origin story, but also a shared story of collective transcendence from those origins. And that's also something that I explore.
I just finished my second book that I'm. It's not published yet. It's not represented yet. It's still but I, it's something that I really took up was that idea of collective transcendence and bringing together a group of characters who have suffered through so much trauma and loss and just hardship, and then where they end up and how they keep going even together as this sort of motley group that is only connected in my book, at least by this, [00:52:00] by the fact that we're all at People's Park on the day of Eclipse.
So that's, that was like the premise of it. And then, and how that connects you and how so those are just concepts that I sometimes like to think of and in relationship to who I am as an adoptee and what that means to how that informs even being a human right.
Haley Radke: I love that.
Sasha Hom: So yeah,
Haley Radke: little things we can carry around with ourselves to think of as a comfort. They're not little things, big things. Sasha, where can we find Sidework and follow along to know when you have other work out in this world?
Sasha Hom: Oh, that's a good question. So Sidework is sold on my press's website, which is Black Lawrence Press, B-L-A-C-K, and Lawrence, [00:53:00] L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E. I think it's blacklawrencepress.com.
And also I'm on Instagram. It's either @sashaghom.
Haley Radke: It is sashaghom. Okay.
Sasha Hom: Thank you. Yeah I'm new to Instagram and I was just in Brooklyn for the Brooklyn Book Festival and I stayed with my dear friend who I hadn't seen for 18 years, Minh-Ha Pham, who is like this amazing academic at Pratt, and she had to teach me how to use Instagram.
Haley Radke: But if you wanna see a picture of Sasha's goats, they are on Instagram too.
Sasha Hom: So much goat porn. Oh my God.
Haley Radke: Amazing. What a delight to get to hear from you. I just, I really love your writing, truly just an honor to get to speak with you. Thank you.
Sasha Hom: Thank you. Yeah. What a pleasure it's been to be here and talk about these things and [00:54:00] yeah, it's, and just the fact that you do this podcast, it's just, it's amazing. So thank you.
Haley Radke: I was just reflecting after my conversation with Sasha about. Just how many incredible adoptee creatives there are in this world. And we bring you many authors, of course, of different genres, memoir, fiction, those kinds of things. In Sasha's case, she's writing fiction here with Sidework, but there is so much of her in it and her personal experiences and story that you can tell it's so her anyway, but it's fictional. It's of course, fictionalized character. But besides writers, I don't know if you remember way back in the day. I did a whole series [00:55:00] about adoptees and creativity, and I talked to artists and actors. We had a costume designer and folks who had written their own, one person shows to a whole production where someone could come and walk through their imagined childhood home with adoption artifacts throughout.
And we've been working at trying to tell people what the adoptee experience is like for years and years. Before I ever started a podcast. And I just think it's so incredible, and to me it's inspiring that Sasha could talk about making rag rugs, and as she's weaving them, there's this story because of [00:56:00] the fabric that she's chosen and how we can do that in our own lives.
I'm really thinking about this because I'm working on this other podcast and I'm sure we'll be sharing how you can support that. And soon, if we haven't already. It's coming. It's coming. I'm just, I'm working ahead while I'm recording this. I am thinking of this because I'm, we're telling stories of adoption so that the general public can understand its impact.
And I'm so grateful that so many of you have gone before me to share in your own special way and whether or not you're an artist. As you share your personal story with your, your friends or your close to you, the people that you feel safe with, it impacts their view of adoption and helps [00:57:00] them start to critique the adoption system.
And all of those moments matter and shift things. I really believe that. So I was digging for something in my app called Bear. I don't know if you've ever used that. It's like a notes app, but prettier. I started using it I think in 2017. And so I was just searching for a document, which ultimately was not there, but it brought up this letter that I had written in 2017 to someone who asked me about adopting, they were thinking of adopting, and I brought up the letter and I looked at it and it was long, and I was like, I can't believe I sent this letter.
It literally outlined all the same critiques I'm making today. [00:58:00] This many years later, and I just felt really proud of past Haley for saying those things out loud to someone privately. And now I'm gonna say those things out loud publicly and have been really, but publicly in a different way. I don't know. I'm just, I'm really thrilled that there is this work being made. Sasha's work is Sidework is about this character who works in a diner and the whole morning that's what it is. It's the morning of work and it's all the tasks that she needs to do. And all the people she serves and the people that she works with and their stories and little vignettes here and there.
It's really remarkable. And through that she critiques adoption. How about that? I [00:59:00] just think us adoptees are pretty special. Anyway, thanks for allowing me to carry on here with my little I was gonna say rant. It's not a rant, just the thoughtful vignette for you to chew on and decide. How are you gonna share your story?
And is it through a creative outlet? Is it through a conversation to a friend and sharing little pieces of yourself on social media or what? I don't know. I hope you do. Thank you so much for listening and for listening to adoptee voices in particular, and let's talk again soon.
