My name is Hannah, and I am a Chinese transracial adoptee from Lishui, Zhejiang province (adopted 1996). I grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota in a predominantly White neighborhood on Dakota land.

I am currently a Yale Fellow (2022) and an Environmental Studies Master’s student at the University of Oregon on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. My current work explores how adoptees are navigating questions of identity and belonging in the context of uncertain climate futurities. 

I received a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Mount Holyoke College with a concentration in ecology. Upon graduation, I interned for Saguaro National Park monitoring Mexican Spotted Owls in the Rincon Mountains.

In the Fall, I moved north to the Grand Canyon for about a year, becoming a certified Wilderness First Responder and the crew lead for their soundscapes program. It was here, creating environmental education projects and managing acoustic systems on the North and South Rim, that I became interested in the digital humanities. 

During this time, I read Seeds from a Silent Tree, the first Korean adoptee anthology published in the U.S. in 1997. Seeds from a Silent Tree includes poetry, experimental memoir, a film proposal, and letters. The contributors include academics, schoolteachers, activists, artists, and journalists, among others. Reading this work was a visceral experience.

The voices I read, in their struggle, messiness, and clarity, sparked a passion for adoptee environmentalisms. I hope to honor its legacy with the archive. 

Adoptee Literary and Art Archive will serve as my terminal master’s project. This archive, or versions of it, will continue upon graduation.