S1E44 Unraveling Susan & Marci

S1 E44 – Unraveling Susan & Marci This episode is about living between worlds and eventually discovering that identity does not have to fit neatly into a single category. We can be fully connected to more than one culture, build families through both genetics and choice, and create a sense of home around the people who truly see us. Susan and Marci both grew up in white adoptive families, visibly different from the people raising them and separated from cultures they were somehow expected to understand. Susan, an American Indian transracial adoptee, was removed from her family at 18 months. Marci was born in South Korea and adopted into a deeply religious family in Upstate New York. Both learned early that even when their families did not acknowledge race, the outside world did. They were left to navigate racism, cultural disconnection, and the pressure to be grateful while searching for a place where they could feel fully at home.

SHOW NOTES

In this deeply thoughtful conversation, Kara, Susan, and Marci discuss:

Saviorism and the expectations placed on adopted childrenWhy “not seeing color” leaves transracial adoptees unprepared and unprotectedExperiencing racism that their raising parents could not, or would not, recognizeCultural memory, code-switching, and knowing the rules of one world while looking like you belong to anotherTraveling to Korea and returning to the reservation in search of connectionFeeling like an imposter within your own racial or cultural communitySusan’s unexpected path to finding the siblings who had been searching for herMarci’s acceptance that she may never find her Korean familyThe history and systemic forces behind Korean intercountry adoption and American Indian child removalThe lifelong need for genetic, ancestral, and medical informationLetting go of expectations and defining family, identity, and belonging for yourself

Susan and Marci speak candidly about what transracial adoption can sever—not only family relationships, but language, culture, social memory, and the instinctive ways people learn how to move through the world. They also challenge the idea that adoptees must prove they are “authentic” enough to belong anywhere.

Susan is the author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption. Susan, Marci, and Kara are also contributors to Relative Strangers, an anthology edited by B.K. Jackson.

Everyone has the right to know the truth about where they come from. Unraveling Me speaks to those people impacted by