This project began out of disappointment.  

Why are spaces outside the adoptee community silent on environmental injustices surrounding adoption? In the discourse surrounding uncertain toxic futurities, reproductive anxieties, and climate disasters, adoptees of color (and their birth families) are typically erased in narratives of environmentalism and rescue.

Adoptee Literary and Art Archive seeks to uplift adoptee voices and environmentalisms.

We aim to begin a conversation surrounding the intersections of transracial adoption, art, and environment.

We argue that transracial adoptee environmentalisms are essential for just futures.

Interested contributors must self-identify as transracial adoptees. Transracial adoptees may be domestic or international (although not all adoptees are transracial).

Contributors must also connect their work to the environment. ‘Environment’ includes the places where we ‘live, work, and play.’ Broadly, it includes the natural environment as well as built space. We are interested in your relationship with the environment and transracial adoption. Contributions that navigate questions of uncertain climate futures are of particular interest, although this is not a requirement. Your experience birdwatching in the city is just as welcome as your thoughts on climate refugees.

There are no restrictions on the type of contribution. We welcome film, audio, text, and image representations of sculptures, paintings, creative fiction, memoir, poetry, ceramics, and any other literary or art form of contributors’ choice.

Accepted contributions will be licensed under a restrictive Creative Commons agreement CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International. Within this project context, please visit Licensing for a summary of implications for contributors. 

A list of optional guiding prompts is available to aid in sparking ideas, thoughts, questions, and curiosities for creating work. 

 The digital archive itself is in progress and will eventually be hosted on CollectionBuilder. 

In short, librarians at the University of Idaho created CollectionBuilder as an accessible platform to host digital collections and exhibits. As an open-source tool (nonproprietary), anyone can use and modify the CollectionBuilder web templates for free.

We chose CollectionBuilder for its accessibility, longevity (beyond a university-hosted site), customization, and metadata capabilities. If interested, we recommend browsing other CollectionBuilder sites for an idea of what the archive will look like. 

First and foremost a resource for transracial adoptees, the digital archive continues the legacy of adoptee activism, which demands that adoptee voices are seen, heard, and understood as legitimate sites of knowledge. 

The archive will also serve as a wealth of primary resources for scholars interested in discussing adoption, environment, and uncertain climate futures within the same breath.

Adoptee Literary and Art Archive is a beginning, a reclamation, and one way in finding home. 

Please visit Submissions for instructions on how to contribute.