My First Year Of My Life

The story begins with a brief telling of the hardships the mother went through before immigrating to San Francisco from China in 1949, and her faith that anything could happen to anyone in America. It then recounts the mother’s obsession with child prodigies. She is fascinated when

On October 21, 2015 I and some friends attended an event sponsored jointly by the Humanities and English department. The title of this event; “Adoption Narratives of the Human”. Four women sat on the panel; Maggie Jones, Visiting Assistant Professor, Nonfiction Writing, University of Pittsburgh; Margaret Homans, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies, Yale University; Frayda Cohen, Senior Lecturer, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Pittsburgh; SooJin Pate, independent scholar and educator, Minneapolis, MN.

In modern society, it is difficult to imagine the amount of pain women go through when losing their child to adoption. However, when women's children are put into the adoption system, they have complete control of the situation. Shortly after World War II, the pregnancy rate in young women increased a dramatic amount. Different from mothers today, these young girls were not given the choice to keep their child nor did they have much say in the adoption process. In Ann Fesslers’ book The Girls Who Went Away, pathos, logos, and ethos were used to show the lack of control young pregnant women had in the 1960s.

My parents sent me to China soon after I was born to be in the care of my grandparents due to financial circumstances. For five years, I regarded my grandparents as my parental figures, and I always questioned why my “parents” were so old compared to my friends’ parents. I realized the truth the first time my mom called me and my grandparents told me who she was. After that phone call, my parents started to call me more frequently, and I always asked them questions about their life, as I was curious. Usually, I would forget these conversations, but sometimes, after a call, I wondered how different their lives were from mine’s; I imagined them as being wealthy and living in a big house. While I enjoyed talking to them, I never imagined the day that I would receive the shocking news that I was going to move to America to live with my

Imagine a couple flying millions of miles to adopt two children who have been abandoned by their parents. They gave me a second chance at a better life in the US. It all started in 2001, Saint Petersburg Russia, Carrie and Brendan flew over the seas. Traveled to a tiny town called Luga to pick up my brother and I. I was dressed in a child's dress and two hot pink bows. I was too young to remember most of these events but I’ve been told many times how it went. I was very curious when my parents came to meet me in the orphanage that I stayed in.

Mark comes home one day to see both of his parents sitting at the table staring at him. A sense of suspicion creeps into his mind. His dad sternly requests Mark to sit down. At that moment, Mark’s parents inform him that he is adopted. As Mark recollects the event in his mind years later, that was the point where his life changed forever. Children around the world experience the life changing event and nothing prepared them for it, but it can be avoided through open adoption. The subject of adoption continues to be a problematic topic, but for the betterment of the people involved, open adoption brings the child a sense of wholeness, more information on the child’s background, and lessens the grief of the birth mother.

June May is a 36-year-old woman of Chinese decent. She grew up in San Francisco, California and has never known what it is to be Chinese. She has denied any sympathy to the culture and it has a lot to do with the relationship she had with her now gone mother. Her mother believed that “Once you are born Chinese, you cannot help but feel and think Chinese.” She also told June May, “Someday you will see, it’s in your blood waiting to be let go.” June May simply did not understand what her mother meant when she said, “I saw myself transforming like a werewolf, a mutant tag of DNA suddenly triggered, replicating itself insidiously into a syndrome, a cluster of telltale Chinese behaviors, all those things my mother did to embarrass me-haggling with store owners, pecking her mouth with a toothpick in public, being color-blind to the fact that lemon yellow and pale pink are not good combinations for winter.” This shows that June May’s perception on what it is to be Chinese is greatly isolated to the things she saw her mother do. She has never been submerged in the Chinese culture and does not understand how she could become Chinese. More importantly, she does not understand the true desire of her mother’s heart in reuniting

My view on adoption changed, it went from hatred to love. That whole outlook turned around. People that know I am adopted, but do not know me, ask what it is like growing up as an adoptee. I now find that people want to listen and are very interested by my story and now that I got my feeling sorted through I like to talk about it, unlike before, when I would avoid the subject or just say “it is fine”. As I look at my story and tell it I hope by sharing it as an adoptee, people can see how great open - adoption is, and are aware of how we think. It may take time for us to realize a lot of things but with the help from the one true God to help you get on track, but through him all things are possible. I have so many people that care about me! But most of all, what I tell myself is, “I was special enough that my adoptive parents chose me, not someone

Mary Braxton a 38-year-old married woman who has four children and lives in Megget, South Carolina went to China five times. She is a member at “Bring Me Hope” a nonprofit company in California that helps orphans in China with adoption and places the orphans in summer camps. The company is not a religious group it only made to help thousands of needy-orphaned children in China. Mary became troubled about the orphans in China when she and her husband-to-be watched a documentary called “The Dying Rooms”. When she was almost thirty, she searched adoptions in China and learned about “Bring Me Hope” and soon in 2011; she was going to travel to China. Therefore, Mary relies on donations to help fund her trip to China. So far, she has made

I will never have my father’s smile or my mother’s eyes. My skin tone will also never match their pale skin even though I am their daughter. Although my siblings and I are all adopted from China, growing up in this unique family dynamic played an integral role in my development. I have grown to realize my ethnicity and upbringing are not labels used by my peers to define me. My background has helped me push through social barriers to build friendships. It challenged me to impel beyond the world’s “black and white” boundaries to see a society that thrives on diversity. My multicultural background equipped me with experiences that gave me a new perspective on privilege and responsibility, preparing me to overcome obstacles in the global industry

This novel shows through personal testimonies what the adoption process is like, and how emotionally moving it can be. In part one, The Decision, Dr. Aronson explains some of the main reasons why people adopt. The most commonly assumed reason why someone adopts according to Dr. Aronson is infertility. This is understandable because a woman, or a couple may want to have children, but they cannot have their own biological children. Adoption is a way for those individuals to start their own families. Secondly, Dr. Aronson states that young couples may want to simply save orphans as opposed to having their own biological children, which leads to another reason why people adopt. If a person sees a news story about a disease that is affecting children in a particular area, then they may feel emotionally inclined to adopt. Sometimes, working abroad can strike the desire to adopt, as well as the loss of a loved one, or becoming empty nesters (Dr. Aronson, 2013, pgs. 7-8). All of those are valid reasons for why individuals decide that they want to adopt, and the various personal stories in this section, demonstrate those reasons. For example, Dr. Aronson includes a testimony from Maggie Greenwald, a New York filmmaker who tells her story of why her and her husband chose to adopt. Maggie states that she found love at an older age: late thirties- early forties. Since she found love at an older age, she had difficulties conceiving. She reflects on

“In all the stories, whether narrated by the Chinese-born mothers or the American-born daughters, assertion of self are shaped by the cultural context surrounding them,” as stated by Patricia, traditions depict the fundamental

“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.

George Carlin is quoted to say, “The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends.” The birth of a child should bring enormous joy in a family, especially the mother of that precious child. Even before the conception of that child, a name has already been picked for him or her due to the contentment of waiting on the arrival of her beloved bundle of joy.In the article “In much of the world, the survival of newborns cannot be taken for granted” published by the Washington Post on February 23rd, 2015,Michael Gerson emphasizes greatly on pathos to draw his readers’ attention when summarizing his experience, witnessing the agony of a newborn gasping for one last breath at a health center in DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania when he and a group organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies were given permission to see the newborn child after a Cesarean section. The anecdote Gerson revealed about what he experienced in Tanzania is very effective in terms of combining the three modes of persuasion: Pathos, Ethos, and Logos.

My mom gave birth to me in a in a small town in Great Britain on February seventieth, seventeen fifty five. My mother, Martha Washington and father, George Washington gave me the name Donovan Washington. Donovan means strong warrior and that is what my dad wanted me to be one day. I started school during seventeen sixty, and on my first day of school, I met the most astonishing, charming, and breath taking girl in the whole universe. From the first glance I had at Bonnie Taylor I knew I was going to marry her one day. Growing up Bonnie and I were always best friends. Bonnie and I did every little thing together. Bonnie was not like any of the other girls she was different in ways I can’t explain. Finally at age fourteen I built up the courage to ask her to be my girlfriend. Everyone has always told us that it was our destiny to be together, and I always knew she was the one. We have been in love for fifteen years now, and we have been dating for six years I am going to ask Bonnie to marry me. I got on one knee and said “Bonnie Rose Taylor we have known and been in love with each other for fifteen years now, I feel like it is time to ask you to be my wife” She happily said yes! Now that we are engaged to be married, we must tell everyone, and start planning the wedding of our dreams. We told everyone in town, but no one was taken by surprise everyone was aware that this was going to happen sooner or later. Bonnie and I decided on a date April twentieth seventeen seventy five.