“Flash Fiction: ‘A Meditation on Voices Lost or Stolen Only to be Bought and Sold Like Chinese Babies’ –page 8” read the Table of Contents. I have heard some pretty weird things about adoption, but this has to be one of the most blatantly callous.
The piece was in an independently published magazine I picked up from the rack at our local pool. The story had nothing to do with adoption. It didn’t even mention Chinese babies anywhere in the story, only in the title. The piece was a science-fiction story in which people’s voices could fall out, be tricked or knocked out of someone, or sold. Some people sold voices on the black market.
The main character’s voice has been stolen from him, used by others, and regained by him several times. He is indignant at the idea that he would sell his voice for only a few thousand voices.
I think the author’s point is expressed by the narrator’s statement, “This is the voice I was born with, and we can’t all run around trading voices all the time. Can you I imagine…the utter lack of trust that humanity would have for itself? You know, there was a time when you could get burned at the stake for wearing someone else’s voice around.”
So, why in the world did the author need to use the reference to Chinese babies to make his point? I think the increasing numbers of Chinese adoptees in the U.S. have led some people to assume that the sheer numbers mean something sinister is going on. (There are government policies and social practices in sending countries that are sinister, leading to child abandonment, but here I’m talking about the idea of adoption being a matter of buying and selling.)
I will definitely be contacting the editor of this publication as well as the author. Since it’s self-published and in its first year of print, I’ve decided to give them a second chance by not publishing the publication’s name here.
I want the author and editor to think of two things. First, how would an international adoptee feel upon seeing this headline? Secondly, think of the ripple effect. An adoptee may never see the headline him/herself, but someone who sees it may make a joke about it, someone who hears the joke will believe it is true of adoption, that person will tell their neighbor, who then asks her sister-in-law, in the presence of the latter’s newly adopted child, how much the child cost and if she was cheaper because she was a girl. (Yes, adoptees hear these things! For some reason, people who ask adoptive parents these things seem to assume that the children are invisible!)
Headlines such as these are callous, implying that babies are property, that Chinese babies are not valued as much as other babies, that adoptive parents are selfish and unethical, and that sending countries are exploitative and adoption workers only in the “business” for their own gain. They contribute to a culture that devalues adoption and makes life harder for adoptive families and children.
Please see these related blogs:
Chinese Birthparents Found: More to Come?
Dealing With The Public Perception
Can We Ever Just Appear Without Being Explained?