Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
For many adopted people, their authentic perspectives of adoption as a system are distinct from how they feel toward their adoptive parents and family. But the way that adoptees remember why and how they survived does not always align with the dominant cultural narratives and assumptions surrounding adoption. Many find themselves in the position of having to reinforce “positive” notions of adoption or remain silent, which reinforces unresolved feelings of displacement or loss. This paper focuses on what happens when transnationally adopted people resist those expectations and make themselves “un-silent” through discourses and performances that articulate a form of world-making otherwise suppressed, misrecognized, or ignored.