Greetings Also-Known-As community!
We have kicked off 2024 with some wonderful events to date and have enjoyed getting to see so many of you tuning in whether locally in NYC or all across the globe.
Coming off of our Mental Health 101 event in late January, I have been sitting with some of the nuggets of wisdom and adoptee community resources shared by the 3 mental health professional panelists: Jessica Kim Gruber, Tate Benson and Cam Lee Small. If you weren’t able to attend, feel free to look through below:
As the lunar new year nears, I’m curious about all of the powerful forces and opportunities for change that the Year of the Dragon may bring for each of us. In the Holistic Spaces podcast, they share different predictions across zodiac signs. Lunar New Year is believed to have been observed dating back to the Shang Dynasty in the 14th century B.C.; and continues to be celebrated across East and South East Asian communities with different cultural traditions, odes to ancestors and heavenly deities. In gearing up to February 10, 2024, here are some NYC LNY events and ideas for lunar new year preparation.
I hope amidst the power of the dragon, you also might be able to find moments of pause and reflection. May this year bring you an abundance of health and happiness!
Lindsay Geier AKA 涂婷
Cultural Food Crawl: Saturday, February 24th
One of the best ways to learn about, or reconnect with, a culture is through it’s cuisine. Join us on Saturday, February 24th, from 12pm-2pm as we explore Pier57’s Global Food Market which covers food from China, Japan, India, Thailand, Mexico, Italy, and more. In honor of Lunar New Year, we will be handing out mooncakes
and small treats (on a first come, first serve basis). Let’s travel the world and bridge cultural gaps one bite at a time.
Who: Anyone!
When: Saturday, February 24 | 12pm to 2pm
Where: Market 57 at Pier 57 (25 11th Ave, New York, NY 10011)
Cost: Pay your way.
Graphic design by: Angela Antonio
Adoptees in the Era of Identity Politics by Dr. LiLi Johnson: Thursday, February 29th
Also-Known-As is thrilled to welcome back Dr. LiLi Johnson!
Where does “adoptee” fit in the politics of identity? And how have contemporary “identity politics” shaped how adoptees understand their own relationship to intersectional issues like racism, oppression, and privilege? This adoptee-only discussion will explore these questions and more. Together, we will situate the positionality of Asian adoptees within the historical and cultural contexts of identity politics and solidarity building.
Lili Johnson is a Chinese adoptee and an assistant professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and English at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her research focuses on Asian American family and kinship, racial formation and multiculturalism, and visual culture. Her book project titled Technologies of Kinship: Asian American Racial Formation and the Making of Family analyzes the role of different technologies, like photography and government bureaucracy, in Asian American family formation from the twentieth century to the present. She was previously an assistant professor of Asian American Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison and received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University.
Date: Thursday, February 29, 2024
Time: 7pm EST
Where: Virtual (Zoom)
Who: Adoptee-only
RSVP: Required. Click here.
2024 Also-Known-As Adoptee Excellence Scholarship
The 2024 Also-Known-As Adoptee Excellence Scholarship is now live!
One individual will be awarded a $1,000 scholarship to support their full-time study at an accredited institution.
International adoptees are invited to apply if they are U.S. citizens; age 25 or under; and plan to enroll full-time in 2024 at an accredited college, university or vocational-technical school in the U.S.
Financial need will be considered; this merit scholarship will be awarded in June 2024.
Click here for more information, FAQs & to apply.
Apply by April 26, 2024. Community News"Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants" by SunAh M. Laybourn
Order your copy today!
Since the early 1950s, over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted in the United States, primarily by white families. Yet, many of those adoptees are now vulnerable to deportation. How did adoptable orphans become deportable immigrants? Out of Place examines the process of exceptional belonging that made transnational adoptees desirable yet discardable and how adoptees assert their own belonging outside of these constraints.
SunAh Laybourn, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Memphis. She is an Affiliate Faculty Member for the Center for Workplace Diversity & Inclusion, Affiliate Faculty Member in the International and Global Studies Department, and an Academic Research Fellow of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change. She formerly served as co-lead facilitator for the National Civil Rights Museum’s Unpacking Racism for Action program. Her research examines questions of race, identity, and belonging.
The Starlings Collective Fellowship for BIPOC Adoptee Writers
The Starlings Collective Fellowship, launching in 2024, will be awarded to BIPOC adoptee writers. Each year, the fellowship will focus on a different genre, beginning with poetry. The fellowship is free to apply.
The fellowship will offer support and community, both creative and personal, to emerging BIPOC adoptee writers. Designed to elevate adoptee writers telling adoptee stories, this fellowship imagines a literary future in which BIPOC adoptees have the agency and autonomy to advance and deepen their own narratives.
Apply here by March 1, 2024.
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