Adoptee Story: Naomi Sumner

November 4, 2019

Adoptee Story:

Naomi Sumner, born in Hong Kong, adopted to the UK

Intro: Sharing the adoptee story of Naomi Sumner, in her own words. Naomi was adopted from Hong Kong to the UK and she writes about the hardships that many transracial adoptees deal with when it comes to racial issues, adoptive families, or even parents, who are unaware of the transracial adoptee child’s need for social and cultural mirroring.

“NAOMI

I was the only non-White child in my class when I started school. My Mum remembers me saying around that time on quite a few occasions that I wanted “yellow hair.” At school a few of the other children would make comments about my nose being really flat and they’d push their noses down and squint their eyes and say to me, “This is what you look like.” When I think about it now, me saying I wanted yellow hair is me actually wanting to be white, to be blonde, to be like everyone else.

EXTRACT FROM SAME SAME DIFFERENT

Hi I’m Naomi a Manchester based playwright, theatre maker and adoptee. I was born Siu Yu Chan, way back in 1984 in Hong Kong. However, when I was fifteen months old I was adopted by a White British couple, given a new name and a totally different life. Being Chinese, I obviously look VERY different to my family, but I also FEEL different in terms of my character, personality and interests. I’ve often felt distanced from other family members and I wondered if this was a common experience for those who’ve been adopted, particularly transracial adoptees.

This led me to create my theatre play SAME SAME DIFFERENT which was commissioned by Eclipse Theatre in 2017 and toured to venues across the North of England in Spring 2019. The play was a verbatim play which means all the dialogue came from real people talking about their experiences as an adoptee, sharing what it’s like to grow up in a family or community who don’t look like you. Several people spoke about the challenges children of colour face growing up in a white world, unable to connect with their birth culture and regularly experiencing racism, even from other family members. This is something I can identify with as I grew up on military bases and in the countryside where there wasn’t a lot of ethnic diversity. Walking down the street I felt like a bit of an event or novelty!

SAME SAME DIFFERENT featured the voices of over 20 adoptees living all over the world. I asked the contributors if they thought nature or nurture most influences a person’s character and identity? This was a question that had been on my mind quite a lot over the previous few years.

What makes you, YOU?

And then there is another question people of colour living in White majority areas are used to being asked by strangers. “Where are you from?” I was asked this question TWICE on my wedding day, perhaps a result of choosing to wear a red cheong-sam rather than a white princess dress!

I also interviewed my adoptive parents as part of the research for the play and this was a lot more upsetting and frustrating than I anticipated. Until then I don’t think I had fully realized how unaware they were of the trauma related to adoption, the importance of racial mirrors and how much racism I had been exposed to throughout my life. Up to that point I’d always given them the benefit of the doubt, being a forces family we had very little choice about where we lived or the opportunity to engage with non-White families. However, it became clear that they’d never even considered the effect that had on me as a child or that there may be an alternative, even when my Dad left the army when I was fourteen. It was shocking to be faced with their level of ignorance.

My parents are very much of the mentality that, “Love is all you need,” and took a colour blind approach to everything – not helpful! During the interview my Mum also dropped the bombshell that my Birth Mother was an adoptee too although she remained living in Hong Kong as it was a domestic adoption so her parents were Chinese. It feels strange to have that thing in common with my Birth Mum and it makes her feel a bit more real to me than before. I wonder if we’ve felt similar emotions like being an outsider in our own families or if her experience is very different because she has the same ethnicity as her parents.

I feel like my parents still don’t understand the insidious nature of racism and all the different ways it can manifest itself so my advice to parents considering interracial adoption is to educate themselves and be aware of the challenges your child might face and talk to them about race. White parents adopting a child of colour need to understand that their child will experience and have to navigate the world differently to them. Racial mirrors and having meaningful connections with people from your birth culture are important too so before you adopt ask yourself if you can provide this for your child. I hate that my adoptive Mum put her needs and wants above those of a vulnerable child.”

Written by Naomi Sumner

Naomi was born in Hong Kong and adopted to UK

She is a playwright and theater maker

Her project SAME SAME DIFFERENT has toured the North of England

For more information about SAME SAME DIFFERENT and Naomi’s work as a theater maker visit www.brushstrokeorder.co.uk or follow @BSOwriters on Twitter.

Amanda Medina

I was adopted from Medellin, Colombia to Sweden in 1985. I was about a year and a half when I started my life as an adoptee, and it would take 32 years until I was ready to face what that means, what that has always meant, and what that will always mean.