Grace Shu Gerloff is a third-year doctoral student at Michigan State University studying the Asian American diaspora. She's also a transracial adoptee.
For National Adoption Month, WKAR's Megan Schellong spoke to Gerloff about what it was like growing up in a multiracial family and how she's come to embrace her identity.
Interview Highlights
On her adoption story
I was born in 1996. Like a lot of Chinese adoptees, I don't know if my actual birthday is June 13, but that is what it says on my documents. I am from a part of China called Yiwu, which is in the Zhejiang province of China. And in 1997, when I was about 18 months old, actually, in November, I was adopted by both of my parents and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota for all of my life until I went to college.
On when she realized she’d been treated differently
I think it's definitely still happening quite a bit. I think it started a little bit in high school where it was something as simple as someone just offhandedly referring to me, maybe a group of folks, with the term "person of color," and I had never heard that term before. And I've never been someone to beat around the bush. So, I asked, “Hey, what does that mean?” And they said, “Oh, it just kind of refers to a nonwhite person.” You know, and people have really different definitions for what that means. But that's how it was explained to me.
On how she views herself in relation to Asian Americanness
So, I think it's just this kind of constant push-pull of trying to find acceptance within my own community, but also asking myself, “Is this even my community if I have to feel like I'm sort of trying to force my way in?" And there's a lot of fear with that, I think, of being accepted by non-adopted Asian Americans, because in my head, I still put them as, “those are the authentic Asians. Those are the real Asians,” and I'm just kind of cosplaying as Asian because I look like it or something like that. And so, yeah, there's a lot of fear there. As much as I say, like, I'm speaking out and finding my voice, and I really am trying to do that, that fear doesn't just go away with reading the right book or writing a paper or two for class or something like that.
Interview Transcript
Megan Schellong: This is Morning Edition on WKAR, I’m Megan Schellong.
National Adoption Month is a time to raise awareness for the thousands of children in foster care and to recognize the process of adoption and the impact it has had on people's lives.
Today, we meet Grace Gerloff. She’s a transracial adoptee and third-year doctoral student at Michigan State University studying the Asian American diaspora.
She joins me now to share her experience growing up in a multiracial family. So, can you start off by telling us a little bit about your adoption story and where it began?
Grace Shu Gerloff: Yeah, so, I was born in 1996. Like a lot of Chinese adoptees, I don't know if my actual birthday is June 13, but that is what it says on my documents. I am from a part of China called Yiwu, which is in the Zhejiang province of China. And in 1997, when I was about 18 months old, actually, in November, I was adopted by both of my parents and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota for all of my life until I went to college.
Schellong: Did you grow up knowing that you were adopted?
Gerloff: For me, growing up, especially the, kind of, first half of my childhood, I understood I was adopted, because I didn't look like my parents. And my parents were very transparent and really good about communicating my adoption story to me.
So, I understood I was adopted, but I just never really understood why I was sometimes treated differently than my friends or treated differently than my parents.
And it wasn't until I got older and started learning more about race and identity and what that meant in the context of the United States, that I started to question and started to get curious about not just my adoption, but who I was as a person and how that affected my life.
Schellong: Grace, take us a back a little and give us some context. What is transracial adoption? How would you define it to someone?
Gerloff: When a person of one race adopts a child of a different race than them, oftentimes in the context of adoption from Asia to the United States. This is referring to white parents adopting an Asian child, but of course, that can apply to any other kind of multiracial family.
Schellong: Do you identify as a transracial adoptee?
Gerloff: Absolutely, yeah. I think that it really has helped me understand that I'm not like other Asian Americans that aren't adopted. I'm not like Asians that were born in the United States either. But that is the closest thing I have right now to kind of capture these weird complex nuances of how I see my adoptee identity and my racial identity, sort of, folding into one being which is me.
Schellong: So, what would you say is the moment is where everything clicked, and you realized like, “Oh, this is why I'm treated differently.” When did you finally come to understand that?
Gerloff: I think it's definitely still happening quite a bit. I think it started a little bit in high school where it was something as simple as someone just offhandedly referring to me, maybe a group of folks, with the term "person of color," and I had never heard that term before.
And I've never been someone to beat around the bush. So, I asked, “Hey, what does that mean?” And they said, “Oh, it just kind of refers to a nonwhite person.” You know, and people have really different definitions for what that means. But that's how it was explained to me.
And that was, I remember, this first time I started placing myself into this category of nonwhite or this category of other. And I remembered realizing that that was something that was affecting these early experiences I had had like people asking, “Where are you from?”
And Minneapolis was not a sufficient answer for them.
Schellong: How did this sorting by other people influence, you know, your self-esteem? Your identity?
Gerloff: You know, for a long time, I never questioned it because so much of being an adoptee, at the very least for me and I've heard from others, is being pre-sorted already.
When we, you know, when we come over from wherever we're from to the United States, we're automatically marked as orphans, even if we weren't actually orphans, like people whose parents had died or something like that.
We’re marked as orphans. We get all of these scripts put on us of being, you know, in need of help.
So, I think that for a while, for a long time, even as I started getting more curious about my racial identity, I still was kind of alarmingly comfortable with other people telling me who I was, and how I should feel about it.
Schellong: Throughout all your studies what would you say is the biggest take away for your identity for yourself? How do you view yourself in relationship to Asian Americanness?
Gerloff: I mean, I think it is an ongoing process that keeps changing. I know, that's not a helpful answer.
But I think that, you know, I keep reevaluating it after the murders in Atlanta, you know, I'd been at a point where I was feeling like, okay, I really feel connected to the Asian American community.
I've been doing this work for a while, but then after the murders in Atlanta, I started re-questioning that again and started feeling this distance from the Asian American community.
I felt like I wasn't able to mourn in the same way a lot of my non-adopted Asian friends could. I didn't feel the same really emotional affective connection to the victims of those murders, because I just didn't have family members that looked like them or anything like that.
And because I'd spent so much of my life not seeing myself as Asian American, I think some of that started creeping in again.
And, you know, I was scared, and I was hurt and outraged, but I also was confused. And I also felt the second wave of loss, almost, in that I didn't feel like I was mourning in the right way, the right way any Asian American should. I felt very aware of my adoptee, kind of, outside identity from the Asian American community.
So, I think it's just this kind of constant push-pull of trying to find acceptance within my own community, but also asking myself, “Is this even my community if I have to feel like I'm sort of trying to force my way in?"
And there's a lot of fear with that, I think, of being accepted by non-adopted Asian Americans, because in my head, I still put them as, “Those are the authentic Asians, those are the real Asians,” and I'm just kind of cosplaying as Asian because I look like it, or something like that. And so, yeah, there's a lot of fear there. As much as I say, like, I'm speaking out and finding my voice, and I really am trying to do that, that fear doesn't just go away with reading the right book or writing a paper or two for class or something like that.
Schellong: Grace Shu Gerloff is a transracial adoptee and doctoral student at Michigan State University. Grace, thank you so much for joining me today.
Gerloff: Thank you so much, Megan.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.