Motives to write:
1) I'm working through my feelings like anger, guilt, sadness, betrayal, shame, paralyzing fear, numbness towards doing The Work, the emotional reproductive labor. I have an obligation as a privileged person to do this emotional labor of processing guilt rather than numbing against it, perpetuating inequities. I struggled with "being worthy" of this work, and realized that was a way to avoid and to numb, so I'm going deeper through my feelings. I'm also integrating feelings about relationships with the trauma I experienced the past decade with my work in academia and through a doctoral program (May not end up in this project, but it's all connected).
2) My grandmother requested that I write "her" story for her in 1993, when I began research for this project. She passed away in 2015 during the first weeks of my full-time doctoral studies, and in late 2018 I had a big breakthrough with a DNA test match which answered the huge question mark, perhaps life-defining question mark for her, about the identity of the father of the baby she conceived at the end of WWII, a baby which she was forced to put up for adoption, to orphan, by her religious family. That baby was my father, and his life experience and orphaning, adopting, and othering transferred to me somehow (lots more self-reflection development needed here lol).
3) Solving a mystery, explaining my origin story, making sense of pain, figuring the purpose of why I exist. Hopefully some of that resonates and inspires.
4) I'm motivated to create being-in-relationshipness (inspired by Indigenous scholars like Kim TallBear), naming power structures based on difference (my thinking with feminist theory a la Jackson & Mazzei), and the consequences of subscribing (even unthinkingly) to them. Inspiring a revolution of connectedness.
5) Model fearlessness for others, for other writers to tell stories rather than keep secrets, empowering those protected by silence, and disempowering the secret keepers who create the conditions that enable predators, exploiters, and absent-minded-taking-advantage-of-others.
What themes? Orphaning (as a verb--I'm thinking of the project or part of the project as a concept analysis of Orphan, but I'm also using the Spanish word for Orphan, Huerfano, to construct/deconstruct new meanings, also being pedagogical in my writing by "teaching" my new meaning of Orphan/Huerfano, encouraging readers to discard their preconceived notions), adoption, DNA relatives, partus sequitur ventum (Latin for descendant from the womb, or social status conferred by the mother's social status), Hypodescent (from the US legal construct of chattel slavery (1619 project) which refers to "automatic assignment by the dominant culture of children of a mixed union between members of different socioeconomic groups or ethnic groups to the subordinate group" (Kottak, Conrad P. "Chapter 11: Ethnicity and Race." Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2009, p. 238), family-like non-family relations, Whiteness as a construct, patrilinealism, abortion, The book "Somebody's Baby" (Charlotte Vale Allen, 1995) which my grandmother gifted me as a story which resonated with her experience, Human trafficking, kidnapping, inherited privilege, consent, branding, paternalism (I wrote about the last four in my dissertation as well)
What messages? Love everyone, radical inclusion, connectedness, abandonment of Whiteness as a un-reflected construct, abandonment of Whiteness as a source of power. You can't hide from the (truth). Secrets come to light and heal all involved. Reconciliation. Disrupting inherited privilege, making it right, restoring integrity. Be fearless in stretching brittle relationships to change their shape.
