Where are you really from?
(In progress)

“The stork has finally landed,” announced a voice over the intercom as the plane carrying adoptees including seven-week-old Rebecca Adams, weighing seven pounds, nine ounces, touched down at John F. Kennedy airport in New York City. In an airport that is typically a kinetic artery for tourists and business travelers alike, the anticipation was palpable as they awaited the pairing of babies with their adoptive parents.

It was May 21, 1993 and this was the culmination of Rosemary Adams’ and Daniel Adams’ nine-month process of adopting their daughter from South Korea, made possible by New Beginnings international adoption agency in Long Island.

“Just to see her and finally have her in my arms was just one of the most wonderful things in our life,” said Rosemary. “It was no different to me than my other children. It just was a love that we had just from when we found out that we were going to get her and seeing pictures of her.” The Adams have three additional daughters who are biological, Jessica, Lindsay and Makenzi.

Each time a child was presented to their new parents, a cacophony of applause filled the waiting area and a new family was born or an existing one had grown.

“The whole event was just surreal,” said Daniel. “To go to an international airport and have people, especially an airport in New York City and have people who you would expect to be wanting to run off and get on with their lives and everything, actually stand around and wait and watch to see who the children's parents were going to be and then the applause that they gave everybody when the children were presented to the parents, it was an amazing experience, it really was.”

After their first daughter, Jessica was born in April of 1987, Rosemary and Daniel attempted to have a second child unsuccessfully for six years before being turned on to adoption by a family friend who also adopted from South Korea.

They began the highly regulated process which included having their home inspected, being fingerprinted by multiple government agencies, completing questionnaires, and submitting references around June of 1992. As part of this process their adoption agency provided parenting studies during which the prospective parents learned about common experiences among adopted Korean children and were prepared for what to expect as new parents to these children.

Part of this preparation included meeting older adoptees who explained some of the prejudices they had faced growing up in their new country.

“It made me want to be more defensive of the child, hearing some of the prejudices that they were exposed to during the course of their growing up here in the country,” said Daniel. “We just wanted the best for the child we were adopting and we didn't want them to have to incur any of those prejudices when they were still so young and couldn't understand them.”

For the Adams family, the education in Korean culture continued after Rebecca was a part of their family. Early on, they attended Aga-Pa Day, a Korean cultural event with all four of their daughters at the Rochester United Korean Methodist Church in Penfield, NY. The event, founded in 1973, which includes entertainment with traditional songs and dances, Korean cuisine as well as education about the culture, history and language, became an annual tradition until Rebecca’s senior year in high school.

“I think of our family as an international family because of adopting Rebecca and because of the immersion in the Korean culture that our whole family went through,” said Daniel. “It was just a very enlightening experience. I have to thank my wife for wanting to do this because it's not an experience I would have wanted to miss out on.”

Unsurprisingly, Rebecca’s experience of coming of age as an Asian child in a largely homogenous white community in Hilton, NY was more complicated. Her three sisters who possess many of the traits of conventional American female beauty left her longing to embody the same features.

“I know at some points growing up, I really wanted to look like my sisters because all my sisters are beautiful,” said Rebecca. “They look like your typical, beautiful American girl - blonde hair, blue eyes, tall, skinny, that sort of thing, so I really just wanted to fit in with them.”

As she began to experiment with makeup, Rebecca explained that she developed an insecurity about her eyes. Because of her eye shape and her monolid, a common feature among people of East Asian heritage, she had to utilize different makeup styles than her white friends, and lacked Asian role models in pop-culture to inform how she embraced her own characteristics.

“I didn’t want my eye shape. I hated my eye shape just because of how much people would make fun of me for it,” said Rebecca. "You didn’t really see a lot of people that looked like me. I had Michelle Kuan, Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan, but he was a male, not a lot of people on TV or in the movies that looked like me."

A pivotal experience for Rebecca happened around March of 2016 when she and her mother watched the documentary, Twinsters on Netflix. “I would say that was probably the first time I was ever truly able to relate to someone,” said Rebecca. In April Rebecca booked a trip to South Korea through the International Korean Adoptee Association Network (IKAA), for a gathering of other adoptees from other countries as well as America.

That summer, at the end of July, Rebecca and her mother were on a plane to South Korea. Once among Korean citizens, Rebecca, an adoptee who felt she was not truly an American, felt as if she was not truly Korean either, which was compounded by Koreans’ ability to make the distinction between her as an adoptee and themselves. However, speaking with other adoptees was therapeutic and an important step towards reconciling her identity.

“It kind of made me want to embrace more of my Korean culture,” said Rebecca. “It really made me want to dig a little bit deeper into things. It really helped me realize a lot that I think I was struggling with internally that I didn't even recognize. Just talking to other people, it made you realize, I'm not the only one who struggles with this."

A tattoo that Rebecca has which combines the Rochester, NY flower symbol with a hibiscus, the national flower of Korea and the phrase, “You all laugh because I am different, I laugh because you are all the same,” signifies a transitionary period in Rebecca’s life on her way to mollifying the inner tumult that characterized much of her adolescent and teenage years.

“I think as I went through a lot of this journey that's why I decided to put those two flowers together,” said Rebecca. “Because it's both of my identities finally coming together and me finally more confident being able to (say), I am both and not wanting to be just one or the other. I can be both.”