How “Adopted: The New American Family” Came to Be
Director Barb Lee and her production partner Nancy Kim Parsons had always wanted to explore the increasingly popular trend of international adoption in America, an issue they know particularly well as Korean adoptees themselves. With this deeply personal understanding, they set out to create a documentary that told the story of two families at different points along the adoption journey.
In the end, both Barb and Nancy hope to inform, educate, and challenge the viewer’s preconceived notions of not only adoption, but of family as a whole.
To begin “Adopted: The New American Family,” Barb and Nancy sought every expert’s advice and opinion. They attended conferences and organizations of adoptees and adopters. They interviewed therapists, pediatricians specializing in international children, adoption advocates, lawyers, and adoption activists (pro and con). They put as many of them on camera as they could.
Two years later, they began shooting the personal story of John and Jacqui, a white couple from New Hampshire adopting a little girl from China. John and Jacqui allowed the crew into their home to chronicle their international adoption journey. They watched as John and Jacqui received their referral for a girl named Min Xin Pei, traveled to China to meet her for the first time, then adjusted to a new life as parents of a one-year old Chinese daughter.
Then, they met Jen, a 32 year old Korean adoptee from Oregon, who was just beginning to address the complex adoption issues they had spent the past two years unraveling. As Jen’s adoptive mother slowly succumbs to brain cancer, Jen wrestles with abandonment, a theme that haunts the filmmakers the same way it seems to haunt most every adult adoptee they have encountered. While the loss of a parent is always searing and painful, its effect on Jen is agonizing, bringing to the surface Jen’s dormant feelings about her first great wound, which happened some 32 years ago when she lost a mother for the first time.
“Adopted: The New American Family” tells the stories of two families formed by crossing racial and international boundaries. In these new American families, issues of race, identity, and loss come front and center. Our film strives to confront these very issues, ultimately asking the question: are you ready for this kind of family?
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| Barb Lee, the director, posing with her family when she was 5 years old. |
Nancy Kim Parsons, the producer, with her family when she was 1 year old. |