1) As far as names go, I actually think it’s better to change them. Others are free to disagree with me, but, I think keeping one’s name is sort of a false promise. It’s saying “we’re not different” when really, you are. My parents (re)named me in the same sort of name they named my biological siblings. Yes, I get weird looks when people hear my name, or if they see it on paper first they try to make it sound “Asian” (Joo leeeeee?), but I just can’t say for sure what having my other name would have meant for me. I worry that it would have only further distanced me from the rest of my family or alienated me in school (I got teased enough for my “chinky” eyes, I can’t imagine having had a name that was equally mockable). I unofficially took my birth first name as my middle name when I was seven or eight (my parents never gave me a middle name so that I could always take my birth name) and I am legally adding my birth surname as my middle name. But these were decisions I came to on my own, identifying a part of my history that I wanted to make a part of me.

I think my concern is that having an ethnic-specific name would have been too much for me as a child. I was so lost in a world of whiteness, my own confusion about who and what I was, and dealing with near constant hassling from classmates, teachers, family friends and strangers. Having to carry the burden of a Korean name, having to live up to that, honor that, just might have added more to the mix than I could bear. It’s true that many adoptees change their names later in life, but again, this is their decision on their time, so I am interested in seeing what my fellow bloggers have to say about it.

2) I think this question ties me up in existential knots. I have no idea what life would have been like had I been adopted domestically, especially given Korean laws and regulations. But, at the same time, despite all the things I might have lacked – I would not have a huge void in my life when it came to my culture. I would still be missing parts of my history, but I could at least be grounded in knowing my people. Other things, like racism, ableism, heteronormativity, etc, would have been experienced differently, filtered through a lens of cultural upbringing and a sense of the conditions for all these things in Korea.

All I can say is that it would have been different. But at the same time, this question is sort of beside the point. There are conditions, circumstances, histories and legacies that contribute to the way that transracial adoption is run, there are conditions, circumstances, histories and legacies that contribute to the way TRAs experience their adoption. This question of “better” or “worse” is what leads people to think that they are “saving” a child. That sort of attitude is never a positive contribution to one’s childhood.