Pre-registration required: https://zoom.us/.../tJMqdu-qrDkqGtOuFWyaSXAuqybMcwGyQUX2
Podcasts are the best way today to directly hear from a multitude of adoptee voices and opinions. Join us for a discussion with the hosts of three groundbreaking adoptee-led podcasts, as they talk about what drives them to spend hours each week on these labors of love. Why did they start and how has their show evolved? What were the most memorable moments? What have they learned about themselves?
When: Tuesday, October 13, 2020 6:00 PM 7:30 PM
Where: Via Zoom, pre-registration required: https://zoom.us/.../tJMqdu-qrDkqGtOuFWyaSXAuqybMcwGyQUX2
This event will be a "fishbowl"-style discussion in order to allow it to be open to the public while remaining adoptee-focused. We invite and welcome adoptees, parents, friends, and all interested parties to view, while only questions from adoptees will be taken during the Q&A.
Kaomi Goetz is a Korean adoptee and an on-air TV journalist with Twin Cities PBS. In 2018, she was selected as a Policy Fellow for the 2018-19 academic year at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs. In 2016-7 she was a Fulbright senior scholar on a journalism grant where she began Adapted Podcast in Seoul, South Korea. The podcast is now in its fourth season and has been downloaded nearly 70,000 times. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Saint Olaf College. In her free time, she studies Korean and Japanese. Adapted Podcast explores the experiences of Korean adoptees, from post-reunion stories to living in Korea as adults and on the topics of identity and belonging. Since the 1950s, about 200,000 Korean were sent overseas for adoption to about a dozen countries. These common threads and shared experiences are powerful. The stories are also all individual lights that break away to define their own futures. Through sharing, I hope there can be healing and greater empathy for adoptees and all who care about us.
Aimee was adopted from Tongling, Anhui, China in 1995. She grew up outside Philly and went to college in New England. She works in New Haven, CT as a Site Director for a non-profit literacy resource center in the city and spends her free time relaxing with her cat, playing video games, and making music.
Maia was adopted from Hefei, Anhui, China in 2000. She grew up in Canada, and currently attends the University of Toronto as an undergrad in Environmental Biology.
Together with Alia, they co-host Somewhere Between, a podcast made by Asian adoptees for Asian adoptees. Our podcast strives to create a platform dedicated to sharing the stories and experiences of Asian adoptees all over the world. Being an international and transracial adoptee can be tough, and at times very isolating, but we hope that through this podcast we can help to support you on your journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
Damon L. Davis is the host and producer of the Who Am I Really? podcast, where adoptees tell their own stories of adoption and share their experiences attempting reunion with their birth families. He has interviewed over 130 adoptees from diverse adoption experiences: homogenous families, inter-racial adoptions, intracountry adoptions, mixed faith families, adoptees of mixed race/ethnicity, and many more. In his autobiography Who Am I Really? - An Adoptee Memoir, Damon shares his journey to becoming an adoptive parent and his emotions over the birth of his natural son, Seth. Damon opens up about the heartbreak of grappling with his adoptive mother's mental illness while balancing the joy of locating his biological mother with the help of his social worker and his biological father via DNA testing.