learning to disclose a journey of transracial adoption

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A story of a mother & daughter's love, a story of race & adoption

autoethnographers/authors

Joni Schwartz is Professor of Humanities at the City University of New York, a critical researcher, social activist scholar, mother, and grandmother. She is the coeditor of Race, Education, and Reintegrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens: Counterstories & Counterspaces, author of twenty-four scholarly publications, and producer of two documentaries.

Collaborative autoethnography analyzes personal experiences in the context of the surrounding culture.  As collaborative autoethnography, Learning to Disclose is autobiographic, ethnographic, and interactive.  Autoethnography is a critical research method with the “auto” meaning the self, “ethno” meaning culture, and “graphy” meaning writ

Collaborative autoethnography analyzes personal experiences in the context of the surrounding culture.  As collaborative autoethnography, Learning to Disclose is autobiographic, ethnographic, and interactive.  Autoethnography is a critical research method with the “auto” meaning the self, “ethno” meaning culture, and “graphy” meaning writing; it uses personal experiences to critically examine sociohistorical grand narratives and discourses in which we find ourselves embedded. This is something that autobiography and memoir often does not do. We write dialogue using social imagination to understand our lives through the global, national, and local histories of the places and spaces we lived, worked, traveled, and called home. (Mills,   2000) 

Rebecca Schwartz holds a BS in communications and a MS in international affairs from New York University. Her work as a humanitarian encompassed implementing emergency response programs in developing countries in partnership with USAID, the European Union and the United Nations. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at LaGuardia Community College.

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Learning to Disclose

A Journey of Transracial Adoption

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Table Of Contents

• About the Author
• About the Book
• This eBook can be cited
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Carrefour, Haiti
• Chapter 2 Flatlands, Brooklyn
• Chapter 3 Minnetonka, Minnesota
• Chapter 4 Czech Republic
• Chapter 5 Vienna, Austria
• Chapter 6 Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Chapter 7 Gulu, Uganda
• Chapter 8 Bunia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Chapter 9 Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
• Chapter 10 The Yellow Dress

← viii | ix →

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1.1 Christian Haitian Outreach orphanage (CHO)

Figure 1.2 Rebecca at CHO before adoption

Figure 1.3 Eleanor “Mom” Workman –founder CHO

Figure 2.1 Matthew, Rebecca, Nathan—siblings

Figure 4.1 Rebecca and Grandma Hlavacek

Figure 6.1 Return to Haiti-Samaritan’s Purse

Figure 7.1 Rebecca and Joni writing in Uganda

Figure 9.1 Graduation NYU—Mom and Dad

Figure 10.1 First week home

Figure 10.2 Growing up with brothers

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Together, we want to acknowledge Rebecca’s father, Paul, her brothers and Joni’s sons, Nathan and Matthew as well as their wives Sarah and Sabrina. Although they may appear only sporadically in this book, their love, spirit, and soul are everywhere in who we are and who we have become.

To family members, who answered our queries about the Minnetonka chapter, Joni’s sister and Rebecca’s aunt, Elsie Machtemes and to Joni’s brother and Rebecca’s uncle, Denny Hlavacek who we asked to recall a few memories – thank you. To family members, Kathy Oliphant, Director of Teaching and Learning at Waconia Public Schools who provided background on education in Minnesota, and to Clark Machtemes, a Minnesota musician and artist, who gave us direction for research; you are both always willing to support and help; it means a lot. Thanks to the Excelsior Historical Society especially Steve Kobs who verified with archival materials W.E.B. Dubois’s summer on Lake Minnetonka and directed us to playwright Kim Hines who wrote, Summer in the Shadows, about Dubois in Minnesota. Kim, thank you for taking the time to talk, answer questions, pick your brain, and read your writing; it made a difference both personally and in the writing.

← xi | xii →

The Czech chapter was aided by the insights and conversation with Mark Bruner, a career missionary to Slovakia and the Czech Republic and a dear friend. To our friends in Uganda, thank you, Irene, for taking such good care of us in Gulu. Your food, attention, kindness, and work made space for thinking, feeling and writing. Kirunda Muzamiru the best safari guide in Uganda by far; your friendship and expertise mean the world to us. To Grace Amiya, your tailoring class at Gulu Women Prison is not only an act of love but a creative inspiration.

A special thanks to the original members of our Tuesday evening Restoration Writing Group in Bed Sty; John Proctor, Sylvester (Sonny) Jackson, Carolina Soto, Jackie Cangro, Marvin Wade, and Michael Colbert for giving us a community of writers to belong to. The 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Global Cities August Seminar at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York: Tuli Chatterji, Sorin Cucu, Rondee Gaines, Anita Baksh, Rebecca Tally, Sonia Rodriguez, Olga Aksakalova, Allia Abdullah-Matta, Laura Tanenbaum, Nichole Shippen, Karen Miller, and Chris Schmidt read and gave us specific feedback early on. Your suggested readings and keen criticism was invaluable.

Cathy Powell without your editing and organizing skills this book would not be. You keep us in order. Thank you, dear friend. The cover design is by Emily Gallagher and Robert Pollock who embraced our story as we embraced them.

To friends and mentors who journeyed with Rebecca during critical transitionary periods in Haiti, Congo and Uganda and continue to be strong moral and emotional support: Pierre and Carolyn Julien; Viviane Fils Aime; and Jiesha Perkins; Jen Silen, and Myonawai Artis, and Crystal Burrey.

Joni wants to thank Marvin Wade, Dario Pena, P. Harris and R. Watson who read chapters at the Queensboro Writing Group and made her believe that this story could have meaning across the human experience. Thanks to all the Queensboro Correctional Facility writing group members who carefully read drafts, gave encouragement, made suggestions, and embraced our stories.

To Joni’s lifelong friends Sara Jorgensen Levy and Avril (Birdie) DeJesus who read chapters in the Bremen, Maine cabin in the woods in front of the fireplace and with a bottle of wine. The more we drank the better the manuscript seemed. And to my dear friends, Damaris Miranda and Valerie Noel, who journeyed with us in the beginning; they know how to be a friend. To Andrea Emmanuel and Kurt Sealey for loving books and writing as I do and sharing this experience with me. Thank you, John Chaney, for your love, your support, your gentleness—for being there and being you—you are a great gift from God. And to our cat, History, who kept me company during copyediting.

← xii | xiii →

ABBREVIATIONS

CHO Christian Haitian Outreach orphanage

NGO Non-governmental organization

CRT Critical Race Theory

← xiii | xiv →

← xiv | 1 →

INTRODUCTION

This is soul work. A mother and daughter collaborative autoethnography engaging the social imagination and the emotional journey of learning to disclose. It is reflection on the places and histories that shaped us through transracial adoption.

If readers are looking for a memoir or a straightforward adoption story, this book is not it. Neither is it a research text on transracial adoption nor an autobiography. It is not a diary, a happy ever after story of how God worked in our lives, or a White savior story. And it is not the whole story.

Collaborative autoethnography analyzes personal experiences in the context of the surrounding culture. As collaborative autoethnography, Learning to Disclose is autobiographic, ethnographic, and interactive. Autoethnography is a critical research method with the “auto” meaning the self, “ethno” meaning culture, and “graphy” meaning writing; it uses personal experiences to critically examine sociohistorical grand narratives and discourses in which we find ourselves embedded. This is something that autobiography and memoir often does not do. We write dialogue using social imagination to understand our lives through the global, national, and local histories of the places and spaces we lived, worked, traveled, and called home. (Mills, 2000)

Biographical notes

Joni Schwartz (Author) Rebecca Schwartz (Author)

Joni Schwartz is Professor of Humanities at LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York, a critical researcher, social activist scholar, mother, and grandmother. She is the co-editor of Race, Education, and Reintegrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens: Counterstories & Counterspaces, author of twenty-four scholarly publications, and producer of two documentaries. Rebecca Schwartz holds a BS in communications and a MS in international affairs from New York University. Her work as a humanitarian encompassed implementing emergency response programs in developing countries. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at LaGuardia Community College.

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Learning to Disclose: A Journey of Transracial Adoption Hardcover – Nov. 17 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

Joni and Rebecca Schwartz in their collaborative autoethnography, Learning to Disclose: A Journey of Transracial Adoption , are doing soul work. This adult white mother and black daughter reflect and dialogue around the places and histories that shaped their relationship. Through three voices: the voice of critical history, the daughter and the mother, the co-authors excavate the past to see if and how it lives in their present. In an intriguing mix of critical history of places like Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Gulu, Uganda as well as lesser-known narratives of W.E.B. Dubois, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Shirley Chisholm, the co-authors tell their own personal and moving stories of becoming mother and daughter engaging such topics as racial identity, disclosure, racial appropriation, colonialism, and the complex history of transracial adoption.

For anyone interested in racial identity in the complex world of blended families and adult mother and daughter relationships, this is a must read. This book is ideal for all humanities and social science courses across disciplines from sociology, education, qualitative research, and social work to race and communication studies. In this era of strained and confusing racial dialogue, this book is refreshing in its honesty, moving in its personal narratives, and instructive in its engagement in how the historical lives in the social imagination of our present lives and relationships.

• ISBN-10 1433183951
• ISBN-13 978-1433183959
• Edition 1st
• Publisher Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date Nov. 17 2020
• Language English
• Dimensions 15.24 x 1.63 x 22.86 cm
• Print length 180 pages
• See all details

Product description

About the author.

Joni Schwartz is Professor of Humanities at LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York, a critical researcher, social activist scholar, mother, and grandmother. She is the co-editor of Race, Education, and Reintegrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens: Counterstories & Counterspaces, author of twenty-four scholarly publications, and producer of two documentaries.

Rebecca Schwartz holds a BS in communications and a MS in international affairs from New York University. Her work as a humanitarian encompassed implementing emergency response programs in developing countries. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at LaGuardia Community College.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers; 1st edition (Nov. 17 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 180 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1433183951
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1433183959
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 349 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.24 x 1.63 x 22.86 cm

About the author

Joni schwartz.

Joni Schwartz-Chaney is a Professor of Humanities at the City University of New York, LaGuardia Community College & John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is a researcher, author, teacher focusing on race, communication, education and faith as they intersect. Dr. J is a proud mother and grandmother of six grandchildren. She is married to John R. Chaney, her writing colleague, for Gifts from the Dark: Learning from the Incarceration Experience, and Race, Education & Re-Integrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Learning to Disclose Hardcover – November 17, 2020

Purchase options and add-ons.

Joni and Rebecca Schwartz in their collaborative autoethnography, Learning to Disclose: A Journey of Transracial Adoption , are doing soul work. This adult white mother and black daughter reflect and dialogue around the places and histories that shaped their relationship. Through three voices: the voice of critical history, the daughter and the mother, the co-authors excavate the past to see if and how it lives in their present. In an intriguing mix of critical history of places like Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Gulu, Uganda as well as lesser-known narratives of W.E.B. Dubois, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and Shirley Chisholm, the co-authors tell their own personal and moving stories of becoming mother and daughter engaging such topics as racial identity, disclosure, racial appropriation, colonialism, and the complex history of transracial adoption.

For anyone interested in racial identity in the complex world of blended families and adult mother and daughter relationships, this is a must read. This book is ideal for all humanities and social science courses across disciplines from sociology, education, qualitative research, and social work to race and communication studies. In this era of strained and confusing racial dialogue, this book is refreshing in its honesty, moving in its personal narratives, and instructive in its engagement in how the historical lives in the social imagination of our present lives and relationships.

• Print length 180 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Peter Lang
• Publication date November 17, 2020
• Dimensions 6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1433183951
• ISBN-13 978-1433183959
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Joni Schwartz is Professor of Humanities at LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York, a critical researcher, social activist scholar, mother, and grandmother. She is the co-editor of Race, Education, and Reintegrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens: Counterstories & Counterspaces, author of twenty-four scholarly publications, and producer of two documentaries.

Rebecca Schwartz holds a BS in communications and a MS in international affairs from New York University. Her work as a humanitarian encompassed implementing emergency response programs in developing countries. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at LaGuardia Community College.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Peter Lang; New edition (November 17, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 180 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1433183951
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1433183959
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.3 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.64 x 9 inches
• #6,102 in Adoption (Books)
• #7,235 in Sociology of Marriage & Family (Books)
• #43,440 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

About the author

Joni schwartz.

Joni Schwartz-Chaney is a Professor of Humanities at the City University of New York, LaGuardia Community College & John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is a researcher, author, teacher focusing on race, communication, education and faith as they intersect. Dr. J is a proud mother and grandmother of six grandchildren. She is married to John R. Chaney, her writing colleague, for Gifts from the Dark: Learning from the Incarceration Experience, and Race, Education & Re-Integrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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Learning to Disclose: A Journey of Transracial Adoption Teaching Resource

This textbook guide for the book Learning to Disclose: A Journey of Transracial Adoption by Joni Schwartz & Rebecca Schwartz, November 2020 published by the Peter Lang Group. This teaching aid accompanies the text. This teaching aid was created by Alejandro Toro as part of an LIB 220, Spring 1 research course project. It is submitted with his written permission

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Rarely has the legal world considered how and where adult adoptees fit in the dialogue about transracial adoption. Researchers and adoptive parents have dominated the field with their own agendas about the children who are treated simultaneously as consumer goods and children. Often the question has been how to stop international adoption or how to continue it more ethically. As children grow up and have to wrestle with questions of belonging and race, racial identity becomes increasingly salient for transracial adoptees and can result in higher rates of depression, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. Despite studies showing the detrimental effects of poor racial identity development for Asian adoptees, there may be little possibility of a legal intervention for this critical developmental process. It is time for the legal world and the Asian American community to grapple with the question of racial identity development, whether we truly value racial identity as a possible source of healing for transracial adoptees, and how effective the legal tools available are in delivering resources for racial identity development. In imagining how a legal solution could be crafted to take into account the social and cultural nuances of racial identity development, I look to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth raised by heterosexual parents and white LGBT families who adopt Asian children. Although race and orientation are not fungible, there are similarities in the groups' experiences that suggest the intersection of LGBT and Asian adoptees may be a model in building understanding of adoptees' desire for a valued racial identity.

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In the community of adoption and throughout its related literature, the needs and experiences of “invisible” or non-adopted children in transracial families have been largely overlooked. This study attempts to address that void by documenting the meaning and influences of transracial adoption in the lives of twelve non-adopted white adults who grew up with a transracially adopted brother or sister. The research used discourse analysis to document the narrative identities of the non-adopted siblings as they were enacted during interviews about transracial adoption. Five composite narrative identities are discussed, with distinctions made between those that were characterized as transracialized or un-transracialized. Transracialization is presented as a participant’s active engagement with discourses of race and adoption in ways that may result in “post- white” identities in non-adopted siblings. Transracialization is discussed in terms of its benefit to members of adoptive families and the professionals who serve them, including social workers, psychotherapists, and educators. Implications for the community of adoption and the field of education are offered, along with recommendations for future research.

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The gap between the number of children of color in care and the recruitment of minority foster and adoptive homes has triggered growing support for transracial adoption, culminating in the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and the Interethnic Adoption Provisions (IEP) legislation. Although MEPA and IEP focus on eliminating barriers to transracial placements, they do not address support for families that choose to adopt transracially. A lack of professional literature exists in this area. This study explores a number of trans-racial placements and adoptions, with the goal of identifying, from the perspective of the families interviewed, potential services that would enhance such placements and adoptions.

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