We paint adopters as heroes, but in reality, there is nothing heroic about taking somebody else's kid. There are so many ways to support such families!

Today, Matthew Anthony joins us on the show to explore transnational/racial adoption. Matthew Anthony, formerly known as Matthew Charles, is a Black transnational/racial adoptee, a survivor of a cult, writer, poet, author of You Can Not Burn The Sun (2020), and host of little did u know - a podcast that seeks to reveal the precarity of transnational/racial adoption and dream of an Abolitionist future by centering Adoptees and Professionals. He currently lives in Baltimore and is eagerly plotting his escape from this capitalist hellhole.

In the session, Mathew shares his rough experience as a transnational/racial adoptee in a white evangelical family, the legality of adoption, his poem about Moses & how it’s relevant to every adoptee's life, as well as how to save a black child's life. Besides, we delve into creating a safe space for our future descendants through art and raising the adoptees' voices no matter how many relationships we lose! 

Timestamps:

[00:57] About Mathew Anthony
[03:47] What it means to be a transnational/transracial adoptee in the US
[09:17] The legality of the adoption
[17:52] Matthew’s caregivers & why they didn’t feel the need to protect him
[25:06] Matthew’s poem on Moses & how it relates to his life as an adoptee
[36:17] Difference between white & black art
[40:08] Creating a safe space for all marginalized kids & future descendants
[53:43] Ethiopia closing adoption & protecting their children
[54:50] Anthony’s most shocking moment in life as an adoptee that shifted his
perspective on everything
[01:00:00] Jo's story on losing most of her relationships for defending adoptees

Let’s Connect!

To access more of Matthew's writing, become a free or paid subscriber at
https://creativekindred.substack.com/

Patty Krawec is an Anishinaabe and Ukrainian writer and speaker from Lac Seul First Nation. She serves on the board of the Fort Erie Native Friendship Center and is active with the Strong Water Singers. She is the cohost of the popular Medicine for the Resistance podcast and host of the online book club Ambe: A Year of Indigenous Reading. Her work has been published in Sojourners and Canadian Living. Krawec is a member of Chippawa Presbyterian Church and lives in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

In the show today, Jo and Patty explore what it means to become kin. They talk about returning to ancestral lands and what that actually means. The American story is all about displacement, so what does it mean to all coexist together? Listen to this episode for exploration on that and so much more with Patty.

In This Episode

• 4:58 - How to be good kin to each other
• 7:13 - Three different perspectives on kinship
• 15:10 - Unforgetting history
• 28:17 - The first step towards becoming kin
• 35:38 - Books vs the lived experience
• 45:45 - Retaining connection to ancestral lands

Connect with Patty

Rhea Humann is a certified herbalist and small business owner based in Portland, OR. They own and operate an online apothecary called the Persistent Pestle where they craft herbal remedies for everyday ailments and take consultation clients who work one-on-one with them to create holistic health kits that are tailor-made to each person’s unique situation. They are passionate about science-based herbal medicine and spreading well-studied information in practical, hands-on ways.  They also have a Patreon called Of The Hearth where she teaches about earth-based spirituality and other alternative healing modalities. 

Jo and Rhea talk about the healing practices that are commonly demonized by the evangelical church. This episode is about finding joy, health, and spirituality on your own terms. Jo and Rhea each share how they blended the spirituality of their ancestors with the Christian traditions they grew up practicing. 

Kat Armas is a Cuban American writer and podcaster from Miami, FL. She holds a dual MDiv and MAT from Fuller Theological Seminary where she was awarded the Frederick Buechner Award for Excellence in Writing and is currently pursuing a ThM at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

Her first book, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us About Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength, sits at the intersection of women, decolonialism, the Bible, and Cuban identity. She also explores these topics and more on her podcast, The Protagonistas, which centers the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other women of color in theological spaces.

Kat is currently living in Nashville with her spouse and new baby while working on her second book, Sacred Belonging: A 40-day Devotional on the Liberating Heart of Scripture.

Jo and Kat talk about Abuelita faith, and muse about their common roots as Latin American women in the USA. Listen to connect with a faith that can’t be read about in a book, a faith that is rooted deeply in identity and ancestry.

In This Episode

• 3:19 - Connecting with Abuelita faith to live authentically instead of performing
• 14:38 - Intellectual wisdom vs embodied wisdom
• 18:57 - Taking comfort in the fact that your soul will always return to its true home
• 25:52 - The sacred act of survival
• 39:07 - Embracing your imperfection and knowing that you are infinitely loved

Robyn has always been a reluctant leader knowing that collaboration and togetherness are a way forward, but society doesn’t always value this. Robyn grew up in the piney woods of Longview, TX where they were born in the mid-70s, and then moved to San Antonio, TX for several years where they attended junior high and high school. Robyn was involved in Texas baptist churches during young adulthood and sensed a calling to be more involved in the work and life of the church, but because of the theology of the Southern Baptist Church, they were denied time and time again. In response to the exclusionary reaction they encountered, they began reading theology during this time and became mesmerized by all that they were reading.

After suffering a brain aneurysm at the age of 16 the summer before their senior year in high school and surviving two full craniotomies as an emergency intervention, Robyn finished high school on time and headed off to college in West Texas on a music scholarship. After falling in love with the big questions of life and lofty ideas and never putting down theology books, Robyn gave up their music scholarship to study philosophy and theology, transferred to Hardin-Simmons University, and became a student at Logsdon School of Theology. There they found kindred spirits with two faculty members and began their journey to becoming a theologian and ethicist.

In This Episode

• 2:49 - What is supremacy culture and why does it need to be composted?
• 7:22 - Expanding language to express the full extent of supremacy culture
• 8:46 - Why do we need to compost supremacy culture as opposed to destroying it?
• 20:54 - Learning from nature on how to build equitable systems in society
• 30:25 - The true spirit of togetherness and nourishing relationships
• 36:28 - Activism through becoming embodied

Today we have a really special episode. Jo is sharing some of the conversations she has with her children every day. It’s important to listen to children because they are one of the people groups that we listen to the least. Children are incredibly wise, and there is so much that can be gained from taking time to hear what they have to say.

So on the episode today, Jo features conversations with her three oldest children, Antonella, Emiliana, and Maximilian

. And we end with the affirmations that they do as a family on a daily basis.

Jo answers questions from listeners on season 1 of The Living Room Podcast. 

Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (she/they) is a Korean adoptee who was born in Seoul, South Korea but was adopted into a white, Christian evangelical family in a predominantly white community outside of Detroit, Michigan. Joon Ae is a writer, Tin House scholar, community organizer, and parent to 3 kids, 3 poorly-trained dogs, and 2 very odd cats. She sits on the board of Income Movement, a national organization pushing for Basic Income, and is a co-founder of Yeondae, a social justice collective of Korean adoptees in Portland, OR. She and her partner run a small commercial real estate brokerage, which focuses solely on small, local businesses, and she is finishing a novel. As an adoptee activist, Joon Ae’s goal is to visibilize adoptee experiences and help call attention to the multi-billion dollar adoption industrial complex, especially as it relates to the coercion of vulnerable birthing people and babies who are trafficked into wealthy white households from the disenfranchised Black and brown families. Adoption is a poorly-covered topic, dominated by mainstream narratives, and she believes it needs to be more reflective of the hard realities of adoption trauma.

There are a lot of opinions about what should be done about unwanted pregnancies, but one group is frequently left out of the conversation: adoptees. Just about all the information about adoption completely centers on adopted parents and treats adopted children as a commodity. So on the podcast today, we sit down with an adoptee and we get her perspective on her adoption and we talk about why adoption might not be the answer for most family planning situations.

In This Episode

• 9:17 - What everyone should know about adoption
• 14:15 - The situations where adoption is appropriate and times where it is not
• 17:10 - Why is it so hard to have an honest conversation about adoption?
• 27:00 - Important adoption history you need to know about
• 35:12 - What current parents of adopted children should know
• 40:17 - Compassion for the birth parents in the adoption discussion
• 45:00 - Your adopted children won’t get you out of anti-racism work

Web Resources

• Harlow's Monkey - Comprehensive website by Dr. JaeRan Kim, a transracial Korean adoptee and adoption scholar. The website includes links to resources for adoptees and adoptive parents and also provides great resources for the history of adoption (in general + transracial and transnational adoption)
• National Association of Black Social Workers 
  • Statement on Transracial Adoption
  • Kinship Care Position Statement 
  • Adoption Placement Guiding Principles (see p. 4)

Books

• Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and The New Gospel of Adoption  by Kathryn Joyce
• Adopted Territory (2010) by Eleana J. Kim
• Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (2020) edited by Trenka, Oparah, and Shin
• What White Parents Should Know About Transracial Adoption by Melissa Guida-Richards
• The Primal Wound (2003) by Nancy Verrier

Adoptee Consultants

• Adoption Mosaic - Astrid Castro
• Therapy Redeemed - Cameron Lee
• Hannah Jackson Matthews
• Wreckage and Wonder - Torie DiMartile
• Amanda Woolston
• Black Girl White Family - Amanda McKinstry
• The Adopted Life - Angela Tucker

Adoptees on Instagram

• @the_ex_adoptee
• @theEmpressHan
• @linaleadswithlove
• @karpoozy
• @karenwangareleonard
• @lauraisalot
• @fereraswan
• @carolinejsumlin
• @theblackadoptea
• @teachandtransform

Camille Hernandez is a theopoet, community organizer, and podcaster who was raised in Southern California and sculpted in the Bay Area and New York City. As a Black woman and Filipina, she proudly stands in the fullness of her complicated and interwoven racial identity. Camille writes poetry and essays that blend mythology and mental health to expand the ways we pursue our collective liberation. She is passionate about pursuing a vision of liberation that is born out of both indigenous practices and the abolitionist imagination. She is committed to BIPOC folks rejecting rugged individualism in order to return to the collectivist reality that our ancestors pursued before the colonial empire reached us. It is her joy to help people develop practices to reduce harm and invite flourishing; and it is her life’s work to amplify the leadership of BIPOC, queer, and nonbinary folks. She’s the host of the O Heaux-ly Night advent podcast devotional (2021) and co-host of the Abolition as Resurrection Lenten podcast devotional (March 2022).   

Today’s interview is an in-depth discussion without a pre-determined agenda. Jo and Camille cover a rich variety of topics from motherhood, embarrassing yourself to fight for liberation, female friendships, faith, and so much more.

In this Episode 

• 7:05 - Why liberation requires being comfortable with embarrassment
• 17:57 - Motherhood and how it can be a way to root deeper into yourself
• 24:27 - Problems with current content creators in the liberation space
• 30:28 - Imagination and the crucial role it plays in the abolition
• 55:33 - Finding liberation in sloppy situations

In this episode, Jo is joined by her dad, Willie Varela. Jo became a Christian because she was following in her dad’s footsteps, so on the show today, we talk about Jo’s deconstruction process from her dad’s perspective. Willie talks about how he navigated the questions that came up and the father-daughter relationship amidst a foundational change in the belief system.

This episode is great for anyone who is going through a deconstruction process and splitting from the belief system that is held by their family of origin. It also might be helpful for anyone who has a loved one who is going through a deconstruction process.