317 Kailee Pedersen
/Transcript
Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/317
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 for adoptees, discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Today's guest is the multifaceted Kailee Pedersen, from software engineer to opera singer to novelist Kailee shares about being adopted from China, growing up in Nebraska, navigating racial isolation and the complexities of searching for family across borders and systems.
We also talk about her debut, Gothic horror novel Sacrificial Animals, how Family, legacy and Intergenerational Trauma show up on the page and her upcoming novel, the Minimalist, which [00:01:00] features adoptee characters. There is one brief mention of suicide in our conversation, so take care when listening. And before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adoptees on.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, everything we'll be talking about today will be on the website, adopteeon.com. Let's listen in.
I'm so pleased to welcome to Adoptees On Kailee Pedersen. Welcome, Kailee.
Kailee Pedersen: Hi Haley. Thank you so much for having me. I've been really excited for this conversation.
Haley Radke: I am so stoked. I don't think you know this about me, Kailee, but I'm a bit of a horror nut, and so I am eager to talk about your book. But first, would you please share with us a bit of your story?
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, [00:02:00] so in brief, I was adopted from Nanjing, China at the age of 1-year-old in 1996. And I grew up in a smattering of different states, but I would mostly say I am a Nebraskan. That's where my family has lived since the turn of the century. And I spent my whole high school years there with my parents.
My dad, who was a professor at the University of Nebraska and my mom, who also is from Lincoln, and then also spending summers on my family farm that belongs to the paternal side of the family. So my dad's family out in Fremont, so we'll probably get into this when we talk about the book, but that farm life has had a huge influence on my writing.
So I grew up in Nebraska and then after Nebraska, I went to college at Columbia University where I studied classics, so Latin and ancient Greek. I developed a real love for languages, literature, anything ancient history related, and I also started to become more serious as a writer. I had always wanted to be a writer, maybe since the age of 13, but in college I started to really pursue sending [00:03:00] my poetry out. I had my first publication at the age of around 19, I think I was a sophomore. And then I also started to think about writing a novel. Being a college student, I was really busy with my friends and like classes and stuff. Nothing really ever came to totally being the book that was, it was gonna be.
So I ended up graduating from college back in 2017. I stayed in New York City and I've been living here ever since. I absolutely love the city. In the last couple years since, or right after graduating from college for a few years, I basically just tried to, get a job and pay rent and just live my life.
And I started in around 2018, about a year after graduating, thinking about writing a novel again. So at that time I had this idea for a book that would be set in Nebraska, my home state that would really draw on my background as a queer, bisexual Chinese American adoptee. I grew up with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, so a very mixed culturally and interfaith family.
My second [00:04:00] novel, which we can also talk about a little bit, does deal with more of the Jewish elements. But my first novel is more of a, I would say, family drama horror set on the farm. And yeah, in 2018 I really had no clue what I was doing. I lived basically in a box with three other people and I just started typing the story one day and I kept at it.
And in 2020, I lost my job. COVID was happening. I was really trapped inside. I actually quit the book about halfway through and I just was so down. I thought no one would read it. It's never gonna be published. Like no one would be interested in this. A couple months later, I started to realize that was a bad idea.
I should get back to the book. I did end up finishing it. I had a really long journey, which we can touch more on, but just to gloss over it quickly, managed to get an agent with my manuscript. Then my wonderful agent managed to get me a book deal. The book came out in 2024 in hardcover and it's called Sacrificial Animals with St. Martin's Press. Recently, just this past August in 2025, it came out in paperback. And I'm [00:05:00] really grateful for the readers and the success it's had. It was named Best of the Year by a lot of the different publications for horror. So like New York Times Vulture Paste, Esquire. It was one of the New York Public Libraries best books of 2024.
A finalist for the Otherwise Award for Authors Innovating on Gender and Speculative Fiction and a finalist for a Nebraska Book award. Won the Nebraska Book Award, but fiction honor. So it was in the mix there. So I was able to go back, actually recently to my hometown, talk to the kids at my high school and then accept my award.
That was all really wonderful and now I'm here. My next novel comes out August, 2026. It's called The Minimalist, and I'm currently working on my third, and when I'm not doing writing, I'm still at my day job. I work as a software engineer at Netflix and I do a lot of opera singing in my local area, so I perform and sing in operas.
So that's basically all about me. As much as I can condense it.
Haley Radke: How well-rounded of you, Kailee. Oh my goodness. Congratulations on the success of Sacrificial Animals. I'm not surprised. It's a [00:06:00] wonderful book. Can you take me back to growing up in Nebraska as a Chinese person? I'm guessing Nebraska is pretty white. And how was that for you?
Kailee Pedersen: It was pretty difficult at times. I was living in Lincoln most of the time, and Lincoln has gotten more diverse, I think, since I was there. But at the time, there weren't a lot of resources for queer people. There weren't a lot of, I just didn't feel a lot of community. There weren't that many Asian people at my school.
I really didn't see anyone that reflected my identity that much. In fact, a couple of the other Asian girls that I knew also were adopted. So that was like a very interesting situation where. Instead of there being in maybe in more organic Asian American community, we did, we do have Vietnamese folks who are from Nebraska and also Japanese American folks in Nebraska as well.
So there are Asian American communities, but I just, wasn't connected to them and. Most the other girls I knew in high school. Yeah, were like adopted too, but we also never really connected with each [00:07:00] other. So ultimately I ended up feeling really isolated racially, I think a lot of adoptees I got raised with kind of a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective understanding of my racial identity.
Transracial adoptees specifically. I think that, a lot of adoptive parents who are a different race than their child, they mean well and I know that they. Love their child and want them to do well, but they just truly cannot understand what it's like to be a person of color.
And in that like gap of understanding, I think a lot gets missed and falls through. And that was very difficult for me to grow up and understand why frankly, some people in my family just don't seem to like me years later.
Haley Radke: Yikes. That's not. That not good?
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah. It's just one of those things where you start from this position of, I think ignorance and then you start to develop more of like a racial consciousness and then it's like a huge change and growing and learning about yourself.
But it also can be [00:08:00] very painful to unravel like the kind of colorblindness of the original position you found yourself in, which was like. You're a member of the family. Everyone's equal. We love you just as much as like a biological member of the family, but is that really true for everyone? I wouldn't quite say so.
Haley Radke: No, I totally agree. As a Chinese adoptee. Can you speak to, do you, first of all, do you know the impetus for your adoptive parents adopting from China specifically? And then, in recent years there's been a lot of change from the Chinese government and we had this time period where there was.
Over a hundred thousand Chinese adoptees coming to the US and abroad as well. But that has all changed. So can you speak to those things?
Kailee Pedersen: My understanding is that my parents were struggling to have biological children, like a lot of adoptive parents, and they sought to first adopt a child domestically, which didn't work out.[00:09:00]
Then I believe they were looking at another country, but ultimately settled on China due to the. I think expedience of the process on some level, and in that I'm sure there was a lot of essentially young female babies being exported from the country, and I was just one of the many in the nineties.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Have your views on what China did in that, have you explored that because there's been so much news, when China closed, essentially intercountry adoptee or intercountry adoption, those kinds of things. Did you explore that at all when some of the, those news stories were coming out?
Kailee Pedersen: I think it's hard for me to have a firm grasp on how I feel about China as like this faceless entity or country that I have never returned to. And in some sense, perhaps never will. And I know frankly that I'll not, I won't be buried there, which is a significant thing for me. So there's this sense that it's just this vague sending country or like place of origin for me that like exists almost in a fantasy outside of my [00:10:00] life.
I think for me, what I had to come more to terms with with was my attitude toward my birth parents. I spent a lot of time being very angry with them. I thought that they had abandoned me or that they didn't want me. And for me that was very challenging. But as I grew older and became of age where I could potentially have a child, I don't really want to, you start thinking about it sometimes I realized that most people, or 99% of people would not give up their child unless they were in a really desperate situation.
So I came to an understanding that perhaps it was out of their hands or a situation that was so bad that they had no other choice. We know now that like in some cases, the Chinese government would basically extort people or steal their babies, so it's possible I was human trafficked. So all these things really were flying around for me when more of the abuses of the industry were exposed.
And I was adopted through Holt International, which is one of the more controversial agencies, a very evangelical [00:11:00] Christian, and maybe not so ethical. So that has been a challenge for me. And then recently I learned the role of Madam Butterfly, which is an opera about a Japanese woman who dies by suicide.
And at the end of the opera, she is essentially emotionally coerced by her white former paramour, who was the father of her child, a American named Pinkerton, into giving him custody of their baby. So Pinkerton can take him back to America because Pinkerton has married a white woman. A real American wife and that she's not good enough for him.
But Butterfly has this whole aria at the end about how she, missed her baby and how she is sending him away to America because she truly thinks he'll have a better life there. And I think. By performing and singing that I somehow managed to connect with my understanding of my biological family, that maybe they were just in a really desperate situation like [00:12:00] Butterfly was, and that they had no choice.
Haley Radke: Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know that about that opera, that story. Did you ever want to search or know more, or was it more just. You have these feelings of anger that need to get resolved in some way 'cause that was unsettling to have lingering around.
Kailee Pedersen: I used to go back and forth. There were times where I was so angry. I was like they rejected me so I'll reject 'em. I like won't look for them at all kind of thing. As I got older, I started to feel like, I think I'm gonna regret it if I don't even try. So I have done like some stuff like DNA, uploading and getting in touch with the Nanchang Project. They've been helping me and I sent some of my documents to a police station in China.
I haven't done anything more advanced like hiring a searcher or anything. My DNA test. I'm not always sure how accurate these are indicated that I'm at least around 50% a Chinese minority called the Dai people. So that [00:13:00] also makes me wonder how effective or easy would be to search for someone who's not even part of the Han Majority in China.
If that's true of my background or are they even still in the country? A lot of the Dai people live at kind of the border of China and Vietnam, which makes sense 'cause I was found in a city that is only about a hundred miles north of the Vietnam border. So I would say yes, I am looking, but I also have accepted if it doesn't ever happen and there's no reunion. I think for me it's just more important to look for myself.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Last and we'll pivot promise. Is there. Something about going back there that I understand as a queer person, that also could be scary knowing the circumstances of the country and their viewpoints. Is that a barrier for you?
Kailee Pedersen: I don't think so much the queer element. I mean there are queer people who live in China now, and I'm not trying to downplay the oppression they [00:14:00] face, but I wouldn't necessarily feel like my life would be in danger as it might be in some countries. I think for me, the biggest thing about going back is just it costs a lot of money, frankly, and I just don't know what I would do there. Honestly. I would really wanna go back with some idea of what I wanted to achieve while there, rather than spending all the money to fly out there and get a hotel and everything. So since I don't really have a clear idea of what I'd wanna do, I think it could be a disappointing experience for me. So I would just rather figure things out where we are now.
Haley Radke: Thanks. You're saying the real things and these things are all barriers, especially for inter-country adoptees. And so I'm a domestic adoptee, and that comes with privileges of search looks different and all of those things.
Thank you for saying those things out loud. There are so many different barriers. I love that you talked about wanting to write since you were 13 and you made it happen, Kailee, [00:15:00] that's amazing. Like getting an agent and a book like out in the world, more than one is just like really tremendous.
Can you talk about writing. I know you write in different genres and poetry and you have a, you were journaling as a youngster. There's like a bunch of different forms of writing that you do. Do you ever write to process feelings as well? Is that something that you do?
Kailee Pedersen: When I was younger and in college, I published several creative nonfiction like lyric essays is the term basically like a memoir, but maybe with some poetry interwoven in or a little bit more artistic or free flowing than what you might expect from say like a pretty standard memoir.
And in a shorter format as well about my adoption or about my experiences being adopted. So there was some of that during that period, which I think was much more full of turmoil than my current state. I still do a lot of [00:16:00] poetry and some of my poems and my recent chapbook passed around, which came out in March of 2025 do deal with adoption, even obliquely. So there is some of that there, but a lot of them also deal with sexuality, queerness desire the body. So I wouldn't say I only write to process emotions, but they do just come through. It's really important for me that my work be as honest and raw and authentic as possible while still being an artistically beautiful work, I don't like to write works that I wrote, for profit or something. I really try to take risks, and also I need them to come from deeply within myself. Otherwise, how am I gonna survive the two to four year writing process where you're just struggling and typing if I don't truly care about the work?
So those all come through, I think in my work, they're all very real and true to me. And I would just say that I think that people respond to that, that they see that these are extremely real and intense emotions that I may be channeling, although [00:17:00] they don't always come through in a one-to-one way, where like the Asian female character behaves or is like me all the time.
It's more that they're scattered amongst the characters or the stories are still fictional, but they speak to the emotional truths within ourselves.
Haley Radke: Okay. I've been waiting to say this to you. In preparation for this interview, I did listen to a bunch of different conversations you've had which really focus in on horror and the book and the literary of it all. And I heard a man tell you that you wrote male characters. And I actually laughed out loud 'cause it was so funny, right? 'cause we, there's this critique that men get for writing women and like they can't do it. And so I was like, oh, this is funny that somebody said this out loud.
Flipping it. Can you talk about how it feels to write the male characters, but also like how it [00:18:00] feels as an adoptee or as a, an Asian American or woman or queer person, like how it feels to be written about in such a tropey way often, and how you're upending that with your work.
Kailee Pedersen: To answer the first question, I just try to treat all my characters with a lot of empathy and to really try to understand them on a deep psychological level, even if they are the type of person I would never be friends with, or if I find their behavior, their morality repulsive.
I think it's important not to demonize 'em. It's similar to the strategy I take when I have to do an opera role. A lot of opera characters I play are from like the 1800s. Or even earlier and they behave or act in ways that I think are nuts or modern people find really weird.
But I can't be standing over here being like that's wrong. I wouldn't do it. Like I have to portray the character as authentically as possible. So I have to try to find some avenue into their psyche. So when it comes to understanding across gender, I [00:19:00] just try to be empathetic and open to experiences I've heard of from my male friends or that I've observed personally, dynamics between men.
I think the power of observation and empathy is really important in writing because even if you write a character who's exactly like you, which I don't really know why you would do that, because I think one of the, part of the fun of fiction is. Putting on some other life and exploring that, you still have to put them through some sort of fictional event.
So it's things you haven't experienced. So you still have to imagine, even if it's not a gender, race or identity-based thing, you might have to imagine what it's like to be a plumber, a computer programmer, like some other occupation even. So for me, it's just a part of that exercise of like understanding for example, for the main character like Nick, who is he? What does he think about all the time? Why is he so obsessed with, X, Y, and Z? What are his hangups and fears and how does he feel in his body? How does he move through the day? What parts of his past maybe influence him as an adult? What can he not get rid of? What does he dream [00:20:00] about? What does he fear have nightmares about? These are just things that I think about. And eventually the character just comes together over the process of writing. And I think I feel more able to put them into this world and have them interact with these other characters.
And then in the, to your other question about being written about in ways that are maybe like negative or questionable or stereotyping. I just try to avoid media that does that. I don't really have the energy to engage with that stuff or really even critique or push back against it because I feel like that stuff is just gonna continue to be out there.
The magical orphan thing that happens in so many fantasy works and stuff, it's so prevalent. It just, when that happens, I usually just try to decide if I'm gonna get over it and move through it. If the rest of the work is worth it or if it's this is like too off putting for me. It's more that I think in my work I want to express something real and interesting and true to my own values and concerns in life.
And hopefully through that people can find some [00:21:00] form of representation that's authentic to them, even though a representation is such a heavy term and so loaded at times. But especially with this novel. And then with my second novel, I really tried to also dig around into. My own self and maybe find things that weren't so flattering even, and then just try to bring them out in the book, even if it wasn't something that people always feel comfortable talking about.
So you find like a lot of self-hatred. You find depression, you might find scenes in which characters are not kind to each other, and those are all impulses and I think feelings that maybe people have, but suppress. But I wanna bring that to the surface.
Haley Radke: I think you write really well and one thing I'm super excited that in the Minimalist your book that's coming out in August, 2026, you have an adoptee character.
And so whenever I see that in the world, an adoptee written by an adoptee, I'm so stoked 'cause I'm so sick of people using us as a lazy method of pushing [00:22:00] story forward. Oh. Your parents are missing, so you would do this. Like it just, no. So thank you. Like I love that. There's own voices and I know there's complexities with that too.
But adoptees, writing adoptee characters is just, I don't know, there's something extra special about it for me. 'cause I'm an adoptee and I cheer on adoptee authored work especially. So anyway, I'm glad that'll be out in the world soon.
Kailee Pedersen: I think it was very interesting for me to try to write from an adoptee perspective in the Minimalist, I actually, there are two adoptee characters and I,
I really wanted them to have very different takes on adoption and even come into conflict. One character chooses to search while the other character is actually extremely rude and dismissive about it. So I wanted to depict some of those tensions that can come up in the community itself as well, beyond just there's adoption and then there's adoption trauma, which is of course present in the narrative, but also this kind of multifaceted, like these two [00:23:00] characters, even though they were even at one point in a romantic relationship together they don't agree or don't have the same attitudes about their own adoption.
Haley Radke: Stoked. Stoked to read it. Okay, let's talk about Sacrificial Animals a little bit and you're telling the story of this family and there's two brothers and their dad's super abusive and I don't know if you wanna give us like a little overview of it, but I found it very interesting as a
adopted person reading it and this idea of family legacy. And who is your legacy when you think about it and, you talk about your family farm and it's your adopted family's lineage, right? And so that you're grafted into, and so can you set up like the premise of the book a little for us and then just this idea of family legacy.
Kailee Pedersen: [00:24:00] Yeah, of course. Sacrificial Animals is a Midwestern Gothic novel set on a thousand acre farm in rural Nebraska called Stags Crossing, which is owned by Carlisle Morrow, who is the single father of two boys, Joshua the eldest, and his clear favorite. And Nicholas, the younger brother and his father's not favorite.
Nick is the primary POV character, and we follow him from. In alternating chapters, starting with his childhood, then his adulthood all the way from like age 13, 14, to a man in his forties. So in his childhood, Nick undergoes let's say, a queer awakening. He starts to understand his sexuality a bit more and deals with the legacy of his abusive father.
And also at one point his father and Nick catch a fox on their farm that is eating the chickens. They aren't able to kill the fox, but they do find the foxes den and kill its baby foxes inside. So that is a sort of crime against nature that haunts the family throughout the novel. Now as an adult, Nick is in his forties.
His father calls him. They've been semi estranged [00:25:00] for a while now. And his father says that he's dying of cancer and wants Nick and his brother to come back to the farm to reconcile. This is unusual because prior to this, Joshua, the eldest boy, the most handsome man you know, in Nebraska for miles, the golden Child was disown for marrying an Asian woman named Amelia.
So Nick, Amelia, and Joshua are also back to the farm with Carlisle who is dying. And let's just say family tensions start to simmer. Dark secrets and the impact of certain actions from the past begin to emerge. And Nick gets entangled in something a lot darker and deeper than he expected.
Haley Radke: And how is it writing about family legacy? As an adopted person because we have multiple sets of ancestors, however you wanna look at it.
Kailee Pedersen: It's interesting because in the novel itself, the idea of [00:26:00] patrimony and legacy is repeatedly brought up yet interrogated. So rather than, let's say in the uncritical sense of a legacy where. Blood descent or legal descent dictates one's life or there is some kind of heritage or lineage that must be passed down. There is this question of how helpful is this? Because Carlisle is obsessed with his lineage to the point where he forbids his son from marrying interracially because she's gonna pollute the bloodline. So there's this idea that maybe patrimony inheritance isn't something so great.
And there's also the ways in which the brothers constantly have conflicts over this farm, which is massive and but also an albatross around their neck. It's not really something they really want to inherit, but they also seem to, to wanna inherit. They go back and forth. There's the way in which the farm is a site of trauma and of abuse for them, but also something they desperately want, just like their father's love.
And I think also there's a significant theme of the ways in which. Just because you're members of a family, and in this case between men, the ways in which [00:27:00] fathers, pass trauma to their sons, and the ways in which they may love their sons. I think this is a very core part of Carlisle's tragic character, that he truly loves his children, but he's so warped by his own upbringing and how his own father treated him, that his only way to interact with them is violence and cruelty. And as an old man, he calls them back and is like confused why they hate and fear him.
Haley Radke: There's so many good themes. Can you tell us why gothic, why horror? And talk a little bit about that. Because like I love it so much.
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah. I love the gothic genre too. I also love horror, although I'm all over the place.
I got a really late ADHD diagnosis and I think that explains why I wanna try a lot of different genres. My second novel is more of like a psychological drama with like dark, intense energy. If you've seen like Tar or maybe The Piano Teacher, it has those vibes of like classical music, but like psychological disintegration.
So I'm [00:28:00] still in that horror adjacent space. The third, which I'm currently working on, is a very bloody and brutal Western. So maybe not traditional horror, but still like in that space of emotional intensity. Violence, legacy, family. Again, these themes that constantly crop up in my work. So I would just say for me, horror wasn't something I went in thinking I would write in the sense that I sat down and was like, this is gonna be a horror novel.
I, I honestly, I am so embarrassed when people ask about my process. 'cause I literally just type stuff. I don't really have outlines or anything. I'm like, yolo for and it's yeah I really wish I was more organized and that I had more of a plan because I think I would write a lot faster and not get stuck so much.
But I just let the book be whatever it is. In this case it came out horry, literary, a mishmash of genres. And then with my second novel, I actually think trying to make it horror got me stuck at one point, I really added a lot of supernatural elements that I later ended up deleting and completely removing 'cause it didn't feel right for the book.
And I think I felt almost pressured to continue to [00:29:00] write for when I, what I really needed to do was to just let go and let the book be freaky on its own and its own kind of thing. So it wasn't really a conscious choice. It was just, I think as someone who, and maybe this is because of the CPTSD or the intense emotions from.
Mental illness, which is my experiences, I tend to gravitate toward very intense genres and subjects, and a lot of those genres and subjects tend to lean towards more of the dark side of literature.
Haley Radke: I'm curious, what drew you to studying the classics and remind me of the languages, 'cause Latin and ancient Greek, right?
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, I studied those in my undergrad.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Can you tell us about the draw of that 'cause that feels unusual and the draw to opera. Did you have any of that in childhood?
Kailee Pedersen: The Latin, ancient Greek not really. I did always love Greek mythology. So my first year at college, the first week of every [00:30:00] year you can, or every semester you can just enroll in classes, and then if you drop in the first week, you don't get charged for them.
So it's like a free for all where people just try to go to classes and see if they like them. And I thought at the time I was gonna major in English or something like that. And I also knew that English needed a language requirement, right? So I saw on the schedule that ancient Greek was available.
I thought that just sounded pretty cool. I was like, I'll just go to the first class and see what happens. Worst case, I hate it, drop out. And I met with this really wonderful teacher. She no longer teaches at Columbia. She is at a collegiate school teaching Greek and Latin there, and they're very lucky to have her Collomia Charles.
She was my freshman year Greek teacher, and she just helped me really fall in love with the language. So I feel very lucky over the years to have been supported by instructors and teachers who supported me as a writer, as an artist, et cetera. So I really just accidentally fell in a hole and then just never got out, and that was my major.
And I also felt it was good because it's a smaller department than the [00:31:00] English department. I felt like maybe I could get a little bit more personalized meetings with professors and just generally, I liked the community and I just wanted to stay. And a lot of my favorite authors are pretty heavily influenced by things like biblical sources or ancient Greek or Latin or Roman texts. So being able to read those in the original is really rewarding and fulfilling. In terms of opera also is a similar just accident thing. I did a lot of theater, like spoken theater, what we call straight plays with no singing.
I had no singing voice. I was very bad and I was like, oh, I need to get better at singing so I can audition for some musicals. So I started to take singing lessons and my teacher got me into opera and then I just stuck with opera instead of going to musicals ever. So I also fell into a pit and just never got out.
Haley Radke: I wonder if you've thought about this before. This idea for adopted people, especially when you're younger or you don't have your answers, any of those kinds of things. [00:32:00] And this idea of myth making, right? Like building, Betty Jean Lifton called it the ghost kingdom and then falling in love with like Greek mythology or like the in ancient mythologies. And do you ever think about how those intersect or do they for you.
Kailee Pedersen: Maybe a little bit. I think that there is something there about myth and timelessness that is really attractive to me. The ability to connect yourself to a heritage or history when you don't really have one or your heritage is what a heritage of thorn history of ash, right?
There's nothing there but brambles. So for me to be able to connect with that. And then also because of the Jewishness, there are some Jewish texts that are in ancient Greek that have been really interesting to read and learn about. I also think back to one of my earliest publications was an essay about Greek myth that I connected to my adoption, specifically the myth of Iphigenia.
I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but. Okay, so a kind of wishbone moment, I guess we'll talk about ancient Greek myth a little bit. [00:33:00] Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon, one of the generals in a war, and Agamemnon has made Artemis really angry, or it was Apollo, I can't totally remember. I think it was Artemis.
And as a result, his ships, which he needs to sail to go to battle are stuck in the harbor, and it's literally, the city is called Olis and there is a Greek epithet literally meaning ship delaying. Like they're like literally stuck in the city. And he finds out that if he sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, his ships will sail.
And depending on the myth, he either actually goes through with it or at the very last minute she is replaced by a doe at the altar. So he actually ends up sacrificing the doe instead. It's one of those where there's like a lot of variance, but this myth of the daughter being sacrificed or killed to achieve something, I guess was resonating for me in that moment. And that was what I included in my essay about my adoption.
Haley Radke: Whoa. That's deep. That's deep. That's like Abraham and Isaac.
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, there's a lot of [00:34:00] patrisside filicide themes that I think are from ancient texts, but also in my work. I mean there's like the Oresteia in which Elektra and Orestes kill Klytämnestra which is also an opera.
So these are themes that just resonate across so many different artistic legacies throughout history.
Haley Radke: I hope you just keep writing Kailee, because you've got a lot to tell us. Can you talk more about opera? And to me it's like it's voice reclamation. I don't wanna admit this. I'm going to, I didn't know opera was like un mic'ed.
Like I knew that, but I didn't, I didn't really know. And so this strength of voice is so impactful to think about and. I don't know. There's something about when we are relinquished for adoption at a really young age [00:35:00] and we have no way to communicate except for crying and as an adult to reclaim our voices in some way.
Is important and to talk about adoption, however you feel about adoption, whatever that is. I don't know. Maybe it's not that deep. I feel like it is. Can you talk about opera? And you said you didn't even know how to sing and so you learn how to sing and then it's not just that it's opera, like what is that for you?
Kailee Pedersen: You get years and years of training I was really bad for a really long time and I'm still improving. So it's not something where you're like, okay, two years in, you're like, great. But I, yeah I think it's really powerful to be able to produce certain sounds without a microphone. I think it's interesting because opera itself is really not, there are things that have changed, but you can sing pieces from the 1700s, so you might, you're partaking in a classical music tradition that has lasted a very long time.
I think for me, the draw of opera maybe isn't so [00:36:00] much reclaiming my voice or exerting control over my body, although those are certainly all things that I do when I perform. But I really like to play and to escape myself through like a fantasy of the imagination. So embodying another character, conveying some kind of meaning or emotion to the audience.
I really like that. I also really enjoy introducing people who have never gone to an opera before, to operas or to classical music. I just really love sharing music with people. I think that's really great and I like to try to get the next generation interested in classical music as well because I think it's important to continue to try to keep it alive.
And I like to perform queer and Jewish composers, especially because I really connect with their work. So those are all things that I think about and in my novel, there's a lot of my second novel, there is a lot of opera discussion because the main character is a classical composer, so there is a huge amount of the ways in which that intersects with her life.
And some readings of opera, like I mentioned, the Madama Butterfly reading of like adoption into that [00:37:00] opera. And then for me, also another opera that is almost never performed. It's called La Juive, it's a French Grand Opera by Fromental Halévy. It's, yeah, it's almost never performed 'cause it's super long and you need like a huge cast I think, and also like fancy backdrops and stuff.
And most people don't have that. But it's also not really performed, but it was in its day very popular. It was like a blockbuster film equivalent and it literally means the Jewess kind of a really outdated term for a Jewish woman and it's about this Jewish Goldsmith, Eléazar who finds a baby that's been not really abandoned, but is in like the burned out house, like in a town, and he rescues this baby and adopts her and named her Rachel.
But he never tells Rachel that she's adopted. And it turns out that Rachel's biological father is the cardinal de Brogni. Who is currently persecuting the Jews. So he has raised this girl who is a Christian by birth as his Jewish daughter, and [00:38:00] it's a soap opera. It ends horribly, tragically. And as an opera, a lot of people die.
I'm not totally sure if it's like a really liberating work or anything. And it's certainly not, modern in terms of our sensibilities about Jewishness, heritage, women, anything like that. But it is a really interesting work, I think, to think about. In terms of what they were trying to convey at that time in the 1800s and to think about it from my lens now.
Haley Radke: What do you feel like when you're performing in front of a audience?
Kailee Pedersen: I used to really struggle with stage fright. I think I have mostly gotten over that. So now I'm mostly excited just to sing and perform. I hope people get something outta the performance. I hope they enjoy what they hear and that if they are not opera fans already, it inspires 'em to look up more about opera and maybe explore the genre a bit.
I don't think opera is for everybody. I understand that people just don't like it, but I also think a lot of people just have never heard it. And I think more people could get into it if they knew the vast span of styles and music you could find with an opera. [00:39:00]
Haley Radke: You know my bio dad got super into opera in the last few years and he always goes to the Met when they stream it at movie theaters here.
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah.
Haley Radke: He goes every month. He loves it. Okay. Last thing, slightly personal before we do recommended resources. You mentioned in high school there these other adoptees, but that you didn't necessarily connect with them. How have you connected into the adoptee community in the last number of years?
Kailee Pedersen: I would say I have some friends from a Facebook group I used to be in. I now try to mostly stay off social media with the exception of promotional or like author related usage, just because it's really harmful to my mental health to be constantly online and doom scrolling. I really value that connection.
I have also been lucky enough to connect with some other adoptee authors like Lee Herrick, so they've been very kind to welcome me. [00:40:00] That's happened. Keeping in touch. I'm honestly a little bit of an introvert and the homebody, so I'm always happy to hear from folks. But I do admit I'm shy sometimes or like I get nervous reaching out, so I do sometimes wish I like knew more people.
Haley Radke: I was just in New York and there was some adoptee events and then I was like, oh, you live there. I didn't know. Otherwise I would've invited you to come.
Kailee Pedersen: Oh, thanks.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Okay. I loved Sacrificial Animals so much You're grasp of language is so amazing. It is so like visceral and evocative. And the prose is just like unmatched.
I the never ending dread that's just like going and the payoff, like we couldn't spoil anything in this conversation 'cause it just ruins it. No spoilers. The payoff and the, it's so good. Kailee. Well done. Loved it. Loved it. And [00:41:00] really looking forward to reading your chap book and the Minimalist that's coming out this year.
So well done. I'm so excited for people to get to know your work and read and I don't know, we might have to do a book club with you for the Minimalists since there's so much adoption in it.
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, I would love that. I am really excited to put adoptee work that is, as you say, own voices out into the world.
That's really drawn from being a queer Asian woman, but also the novel deals a lot with the identity of Jewishness and some of the complications that can come with that, especially in the world of classical music specifically, which is so dear and close to my heart, but also so complicated and so difficult sometimes to be an artist in. And while my next, after that doesn't totally deal with themes of adoption, I hope to revisit that at some point. I think I'm the type of person where it was so emotionally intense for me, to write a book that was so focused on the emotional impact of adoption that [00:42:00] I needed for my next book to be a bit of a break. You never know. I definitely would like to come back to that. For sure.
Haley Radke: So you went western.
Kailee Pedersen: Historical fiction yeah. Definitely still seeing those themes of family racial prejudice. It's about a Chinese American family in the frontier from 1860 to 1910, and like an intergenerational three generations of a Chinese American family type of like drama slash western type thing going on.
And then, yeah, I guess we'll see what the future holds maybe. Thinking maybe sci-fi and maybe like some cosmic horror, but like TBD, guess what I'm still on my day job, so unfortunately I'm writing quite slow. But, maybe one day I can take a little bit of a break or something.
Haley Radke: I feel like sacrificial animals sold. The fact they released it in paperback, who knows? You might get to be an author and part-time opera singer. That'd be pretty sweet.
Kailee Pedersen: That would be amazing. Yeah. If anybody wants to adapt it to film, call me.
Haley Radke: A Sacrificial Animals would be amazing. I was thinking about that. I was like, this would be a great movie. [00:43:00] Okay. What did you wanna recommend to us, Kailee?
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, so I've got here with me, Jane Jeong Trenka is the Language of Blood. It is a memoir published by Graywolf Press, about Trenka's experience as a transracial Korean American adoptee. I specifically recommended it because this was one of my first experiences reading a work that I felt reflected my experiences as an Asian woman in a white family.
Trenka also grew up in the Midwest, I believe in, I wanna say Minnesota, and I just found her writing to be extremely authentic and engaging. It's also interesting because it's not just a memoir that's like prose from the internal voice. She also interweaves a lot of different narrative strategies, like letters, even fictionalized scripts.
So there's a quality of collage to it or genre experimentation that I found really engaging. And I believe this might be, I don't wanna say it's the very first 'cause I have to look it up, but it might be one of the very early [00:44:00] adoption specific memoirs for transracial Asian Americans. I think it was one of the very few that was available when I was looking for one at the time.
Haley Radke: Yes. It's definitely one of the earliest I, yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned it. We haven't talked about it on the show for a long time. Thank you. Okay. Where can folks follow along, connect with you online and get notified of new work that you have in the world?
Kailee Pedersen: My main hub is my author website, kaileepedersen.com.
You can find links to all of my social media there. I would say I'm most active on probably my Instagram and sometimes my Blue Sky. But mostly Instagram if you wanna see pictures of the new book and things like that, or just see posts about my travels or fun things I'm doing with opera, I use it as both an author posting hub and also sometimes just posting about my hobbies.
And then, yeah, I definitely welcome, folks, if they are adopted and wanna reach out and say hi or have enjoyed my work, feel free to drop a dm. I'm sometimes not always super online due to the whole, taking [00:45:00] a detox occasionally, but I always try to get back to folks.
Haley Radke: I love that your and your covers are so good.
Kailee Pedersen: I, yeah. All credit to Olga Grlic at St. Martin's Press for the Sacrificial Animals cover. And then Rob Grom did the design for the Minimalist. They both did really amazing jobs.
Haley Radke: And what about Pastorale 'cause that is beautiful too.
Kailee Pedersen: Oh yeah. That is Rory. Oh gosh. I'm forgetting their last name. I think it was Rory Sparks.
They did that for Burnside Review Press.
Haley Radke: Beautiful. They're all beautiful. Thank you so much. It was so nice to get to know you a little better today. Thanks for sharing with us.
Kailee Pedersen: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Haley Radke: I love finding new authors. I was so excited. To read Kailee's first book and I'm so anticipating her next. I hope you enjoy reading fellow adoptee authored work as much as I do. We have some great book clubs for you this year. [00:46:00] If you wanna join us over on Patreon, we've got lots of stuff happening over there and I would love to have you join us. That is the way this show keeps existing in the world with your monthly partnership.
So you can go to adopteeson.com/community to find out more, and I'd love to have you join us for some of our zoom calls. We also do this awesome Ask an Adoptee Therapist event every month, which is so amazing and I'm so proud of it. It is the best of both worlds. It's full Adoptees On vibes. All the therapists are tremendous, and I don't know if you ever liked advice shows as much as I did. But it's all of that all put together, so you should check that out. We have all the live events listed on our calendar on the website, so you can check that out there. adopteeson.com, [00:47:00] and there's a link in the menu bar to our calendar. Okay, friend, thank you so much for listening and let's talk again soon.
