Mixed emotions
J.
At last, a book has been written to help adopted adolescents from other
countries explore their blended cultural identities.
When Mary Cummings and Tom Breitenbucher were preparing to adopt a baby
from China 11 years ago, they named her Ada before they met her.
Cummings never dreamed that decision would be the impetus for "Three
Names of Me." Her new book, which is receiving wide praise for its
poetic text and soft illustrations (by Lin Wang), is aimed at girls
ages 8-13 who were born in China and adopted in the U.S.
"Tom and I loved the idea of adopting a baby from China. It's a
fascinating part of the world, a great civilization," says Cummings,
who holds a master's degree in Asian art history from the University of
Michigan. She has led art tours to China, Japan and India and wrote a
book about the Buddha. After earning a master's in arts administration,
she worked at several museums, including the Minnesota Museum of Art.
She's now education director at the Minneapolis-based Loft literary
center.
Cummings and Breitenbucher knew they wanted to adopt a Chinese child
after attending an open house at the Children's Home Society of St.
Paul in the early 1990s.
"Two families had returned from China with these wonderfully healthy,
smiley, round little babies," Cummings recalls. "We thought, 'This is
it. This is the connection.' There is a rightness you sense when things
fall into place."
After Cummings and Breitenbucher applied for adoption, it took several
years before they received the first grainy picture of their newborn
daughter, who was living in a Chinese orphanage.
They knew they wanted to name her Ada, in honor of a woman who was
Breitenbucher's mentor as a psychologist, but they wanted to be sure
the name had no bad connotations in Chinese.
So when Cummings took a class in Chinese, she asked the teacher.
LOVE ARRIVED
'The teacher wanted to see the referral picture of the baby," Cummings
recalls. "Then she said, very somber, 'This is a very good name for
your child. It means love ar-rived.' That was an astonishing
coincidence. It gave me chills."
Ada - ai da in Chinese - is 12 years old now, and she still likes
to look at her baby pictures and hear stories about what happened when
her mother brought her from China when she was almost 8 months old.
She enjoys the stories about how she wore a little outfit with an elf
cap and the expression on her face when her tiny foot was dipped in red
ink to be stamped on a certificate. She learned that she was fed a
mixture of formula and mushy rice that was challenging for her mom to
cook in their hotel room.
Ada thrived in her parents' home on St. Paul's West Side. When she was
in third grade, her class studied immigration.
"Ada came home one day and rather stoutly declared, 'I am an
immigrant,' " Cummings recalls. "I thought, 'She sure is.' I thought
I'd write something that helps express this for her and, potentially,
for other kids."
More than 50,000 Chinese children have been adopted in the Unted States
since the early 1990s, and there are many books aimed at the younger
ones. But few books help adolescents explore their mixed cultural
identities.
"Three Names of Me" is narrated by Ada Lorane Bennett. Her second name,
given to her by staff at the Chinese orphange, is Wang Bin. Her other
name is unknown, whispered to her by the Chinese mother she never knew
but whom she imagines. That name she carries in her heart.
"I wanted to give my daughter something to help her connect with the
missing fragments of her origins," Cummings says. "Names are a
concrete, familiar way for kids to claim their identity, but many don't
know their birth name. The story makes this absent name - and all it
represents - as live and real as her other names."
Ada will never know her biological mother, but Cummings understands why
the woman gave up her baby.
"At the time we adopted Ada, Chinese people were in a double bind," she
says. "Not only were they not allowed to have more than one or two
children, but they had no mechanism for making any kind of open
adoption plan.
"If it was discovered that they had another child, they would be
subject to fines and prosecution. They were forced into abandonment,
secretly placing the baby somewhere crowded - a movie theater or
farmers' market - where it would be found quickly and taken to an
orphanage."
MORE COMFORT NOW
Girl babies were more often abandoned, Cummings says, but not because
of chauvinism. "China doesn't have much in the way of governmental
programs such as Social Security," she explains. "Traditionally, you
need a son in your old age to care for you. A married daughter goes to
another family. But people in China love girls. Before the need for
strict population control, the ideal was to have three sons and two
daughters."
The first wave of adoptions from Asia took place in the 1980s, when
Korean children were brought to the United States. As that generation
matures, some are questioning international adoptions. Among them is
former Minnesotan Jane Jeong Trenka, author of the memoir "The Language
of Blood.''
Cummings isn't concerned about a backlash affecting her daughter. "The
climate now is radically different than for Korean adoptees who had
tremendous things to overcome, such as feelings of deprivation,
alienation and betrayal," she says.
"There is a lot more comfort now and a sort of normalcy with the influx
of so many different kinds of people. It's clear that there are adult
Asian adoptees now who feel pretty whole."
Cummings and Brietenbucher plan to take their daughter back to China in
the near future, with profits from "The Three Names of Me" dedicated to
the trip.
"Ada's got a lot of pride about China, but she doesn't want to
constantly think about her differences," her mom says. "She doesn't
have as much need at this point in her life for culturally specific
things like taking Chinese lessons, although she likes calligraphy.
She's 12. Kids want to fit in and be like all the other kids."
(More information: Families With Children From China, a national
organization with Minnesota branches, fwcc.org.)
Mary Ann Grossmann can be reached at mgros...@pioneerpress.com or
651-228-5574.
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING
"This sweet tale of international adoption pulls no punches when Ada
considers questions about adoption." - Kirkus Reviews
"Simple, lyrical text enhances the quiet tone of the story. Soft and
delicate, the realistic illustrations capture the mood of the story and
reveal Ada's thoughts about who she is and where she came from. The
warmth and simplicity of this story, plus the positive message on
adoption, should appeal to most readers." - School Library Journal
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