The BIPOC Adoptees Docuseries GoFundMe
This is a grassroots docuseries featuring BIPOC Adoptee voices. It will draw attention to a community whose voices are historically silenced and lie at the nexus of two impactful identities: an adopted person and BIPOC.
Learn more about this project at our GoFundMe.
The Adoptee voice is critical to understanding the complexity of adoption and its inherent trauma. The series will elevate Adoptee stories from around the world providing context to adoption’s global impact. We will explore themes such as identity, race, grief and loss, culture, microaggressions, mental health, the history of adoption systems, parenting, isolation, and community. The adult BIPOC Adoptees featured in this docuseries, speak their truth, not for the spotlight, but with the hope that a raised awareness might lead to community healing.
The adoption industry pushes a narrative that promotes saviorism and racial disparity. The practices used for placing children have been relatively unchanged for the past century and many families have suffered because of lack of support and awareness on what it means to raise an adopted child. It is incredibly common for adoptees to hear “You’re so lucky” or “imagine your life without adoption” or “Your parents must be saints for adopting you”. The expectation that adoptees should only be grateful for their experiences leaves little space for a nuanced discussion of adoption’s complexities and problems. There is a lack of safe spaces for Adoptees to tell their stories without repercussion and being perceived as angry or ungrateful. Community and honest conversations are critical to the healing of adoptees and their families. While the number of people impacted by adoption is hard to calculate, Adam Pertman, President of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency (NCAP), would argue that family, friends, and communities are affected, and that leads to nearly everyone being affected in one way or another. This project is long overdue and we are excited to have you join us.
This project is led by adult BIPOC Adoptees and will feature the perspectives of adoptees ranging from 18 to 80 years old. We are shifting the narrative and bringing attention to this underrepresented community. We are committed to telling honest stories and providing well-researched content for this docuseries. Our stories will be told in documentary style storytelling combined with animation and graphic illustration. We are collaborating with adoption culture and industry experts to ensure participants feel respected, well-represented, and safe to tell their stories. Citing and drawing from adoptee-centered research is part of the learning and validation we will be incorporating into this project as well.
Our docuseries will reflect the lifelong process that adoption creates. The first seven episodes in this docuseries will explore Identity, Adoption Systems (past to present), Parenting, Reunion, Mental Health, and Power of Community. Bringing these “unpopular” experiences into the light is important for the healing of adoptees and for the future of building families. To have an effective reach, our goal is to stream on services like Netflix and Amazon or television networks like OPB and TLC. There is a need and market to explore the effects of adoption worldwide and this docuseries will deliver that platform.
Sharing our stories will provide a collective voice and platform to those Adoptees who are just beginning to explore their identity and find shared experiences amongst the Adoptee community.