I did not know that Hugh Jackman and his wife actually adopted both of their kids. I mean the older boy looks kinda like Mr. Jackman for heaven's sake! Then again, maybe I'm color-blind since Oscar is mixed race and way darker than his dad... Look at them, who knows Wolverine can be this awesome?
Jaden Smith needs to be careful, there might be a serious competition for future heartthrobs.
Losing Isaiah is a movie about Isaiah, a black crack baby whose mother put him in the trash one night thinking she’d come back after scoring a hit but her getting stoned and passed out leaving the baby to found by strangers. A white social worker named Margaret Lewin bonded with Isaiah in the hospital, she and her family later on adopted him. In the meantime, Khaila was arrested and entered a rehab program. Four years later, Khaila found out her baby was not dead, decided to fight for Isaiah’s custody and contested the adoption. The court resolved to dismiss the adoption largely based on the issue of race. Obviously, Isaiah did not adjust well to his “new” mother. The movie did have a happy ending with the mothers putting asides their own feelings and placed the welfare and happiness of the child first.
My main grudge with this movie is how the court would feel that it was in the child’s best interest to literally tear him away from the only family he’d known and thrown him unceremoniously to his now-reformed mother. In this case, the court system behaved as if racial identity was the end-all solution and purposefully refused to figure the roles of responsibility and love into the equation. I believe we need to examine the intentions of the parties involved before summarily positing a life-changing judgment. According to my understanding of the movie, Khaila willfully abandoned her child in a dangerous place, the outdoor trash, to look for a cocaine fix. The fact that she was stoned to the point of passing out did help the matter either, as it was, Isaiah was in mortal danger if the workers did not notice the boy and proceed to work normally. Khaila did not volunteer to attend the rehab center but was placed there after she was caught shoplifting. Therefore, one can argue that she did not intend to get clean, and the rehab center was a by-product of her arrest. So the judge was taking the side of segregating the races and ignored the child’s safety and desire stay with his “white” family. Just by saying Khaila was Isaiah’s mother and so her mother instincts should be enough to take care of him is wrong since Khaila had erroneously failed her son once before.
The ending was pretty much a fairytale cop-out. It looked like the director take a look at the plot and say “Well, we have to throw the Lewin character a bone to keep the audience happy and make us appear less racist.”
Lately, I've been thinking about books. The really old type, the ones that your father read when he was young and the yellowed and battered copies are still on the bookshelf at home, out of the grubby reach of children. I really, really liked to read those books, partly because it was a way to connect to my dad, but the main reason is so I have materials for daydreams. Since the moment I got to touch the fully annotated version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West, I was hooked. As any self-respecting, old fashioned Vietnamese book lover, my dad also have the translated work of famous French writers; two of the authors I've always come back to reread are Victor Hugo, whom wrote Les Miserables, and Hector Malot, the author of Sans Famille.
In both novels, one of the main characters would be an orphan or was abandoned, Cosette for Les Miserables and Remi in Sans Famille, respectively. Cosette was adopted by Jean Valjean, a former convict, after her parents' deaths while the poor and childless Mother Barberin after Remi was found abandoned by her husband. Valjean had ensured Cosette grew up in comforts and relative luxuries when Remi, homeless, wandered the countryside with his close friend. The more notable part I found in both novels is that the relationships between the adoptive parents and the children were happy ones. The parents provided for the children the best they could manage, giving them better lives than they would've had otherwise. In Cosette's case, Valjean witnessed the way her foster family abused and maltreated her; Remi would've grow up in overcrowded and underfunded orphanage without knowing a good childhood.
Compare this to the single mother from Tennessee who gave up on her transnational adoptive son from Russia, sent the boy back to his native country by himself with a note inciting Russian government into "threatened to freeze adoptions for U.S. families" as AP Associates reported. News like this makes me wonder if we could somehow measure what people called "mother instincts" and just how much the roles and relationship between a child and their parents is influenced by the parents' own relationships with their own sets of parents.
After the last post on adoption a la "As Seen On TV," I got to thinking, apparently never a good thing, since I keep coming back to the Korean TV drama series. Have you ever watch one of those? You would start laughing or crying and proceed on crying on and off throughout the show. Since 99% of the shows are limited run, meaning everyone knows exactly how long the show last so the directors would milk the shows for all its worth, putting in as much clique as possible. An extremely common plot device is an character who turns out to be adopted but somehow get embroiled into old family grudge. Somehow, the adopted kids always have to choose between the adopted family and the birth family. Add that to the fact that Korean culture, and the rest of Asia, pretty much insist on blood ties and we have fireworks.
Just look to the right, that's a Kdrama called "I'm Sorry I Love You." Don't you feel sad already? I mean, I can tell before I watch the show, there's going to be a lot of crying/Kleenex and at the end of the movie someone will die, probably of cancer.
If you want a taste of Kdrama and movie, just watch this music video, you understand what I mean.
All that ramblings lead me to Naleigh. So have you seen her? Katherine Heigl and hubby Josh Kelley adopted a daughter from Korea named Nancy Leigh, or Naleigh, to be their first child. She is a special need child that made the adoption process faster than normal.
Though the adoption process was arduous, Heigl confessed to Ellen DeGeneres that it was worth it. Korea seems to be VERY throughout in the vetting period. Well, I do think a 40 page long questionnaire is extensive and that's just on the child-rearing philosophy, mind you.
Naleigh looks bright and cute in this picture. I sure hope she'll have a sibling to play with... whenever mommy quits Grey's Anatomy, that is.
One thing we know for sure is that Naleigh would never have to make that awful choice like the Kdrama actors have to, right?
So I was listen to the soundtrack of the Runaway Bride, you know, that song "Where Were You On Our Wedding Day?" is really catchy, pop-ish and funny song. Anyhow, it reminded me of the movie Juno, which also has a pretty awesome soundtrack and if you have watched it, you'd know the main character is a teenage girl who got pregnant with her high school boyfriend and then decided to give up the baby for adoption. Throughout the movie, she maintained contact with the couple she decided on giving the baby to, one of those "open adoption" where the adopted family and the birth parents are not constraint by court order to seal the paperwork as in a "blind adoption."
This got me thinking: is it better for the kids and everyone involve if the adoption is "open" as oppose to "blind" ? And does it really matter if the kids never found out about the adoption until the very last moment on the adopted parent's deathbed: "Oh, btw, you're adopted." It's so clique, I can almost see it as a movie trailer, in which the kid immediately set on a journey to find the birth parents. You know what? I bet Hollywood, or at least Hallmark, has made something along this line... IMDB is going to be my next stop. No, I don't think there's nothing wrong about that self-discovery journey across the American landscape to find your birth parents, it's just that I happen to enjoy those type of movies from time to time. It also remind me of that episode of Friends, where Monica and Chandler were trying to adopt and so they spent an evening at another random couple who have adopted this young boy. Chandler, in his typical fashion, let it slip out that the boy was adopted and caused him to scream on top of his lungs "I'm ADOPTED?" when his parents had obviously decided to withhold the fact.
I know the practice of optimistic couples who want to adopt would go to these agencies, having interview with these (typically young girls) pregnant women and hope that someone would pick them to be their unborn child's parents. Between The Blind Side, Juno and Friends and the fact that I've learned most of the necessary American culture tidbits from the tube, I'm wondering if the common type of adoption on the TV changes from "blind" to "open" because of the more open minded people we have now versus 10 or 20 years ago... or is it the media was just portraying cases that would support their argument for "open" adoption? I personally think that international adoptions are one of the major selling point for "open" adoption. Really, if you are a middle aged, white woman walks into a school uniform store with a middle aged, white man and 2 kids in tow, the assumption the salesperson would have is that the man is your Significant Other and the 2 kids are your kids. Would your perception change one bit if I say the kids are two cute Chinese-looking girls? Everyone would take a wild guess and think you'd adopted from China.
My story is convoluted but my point is that international adoption leads to interracial adoption, which would be impossible to pretend that "I'm, the white woman, has [birthed] an Asian looking kid with my white husband." Well, unless you used in vitro to have the baby then you should probably talk to your fertility specialist about the mix-up. Just like that episode in Desperate Housewives where Gabriel and Carlos found out their in vitro baby carried by a surrogate was mixed-up with a black couple's baby-making materials.
Well, here is the obligatory link to the trailer for the movie Juno, if you haven't seen it yet, make sure it's somewhere near the top of your Netflix queue, OK?
Even though I've just posted a blog post already, I have to shout out a CONGRATULATION to Sandra Bullock for winning the Main Actress Oscar tonight! So the Blind Side has been recognized aside from the random joke told during the presenting.
And Bullock thanked Meryl Streep for being an very very good kisser and an excellent "partner."
Well, most of the missionaries that were caught in Haiti on child abduction charges have been released. Meanwhile, we found out the leaders of the group were previously investigated for inquiring about how to quickly getting Haitian children into US, barring any and all international adoption laws.
On the other hand, Angelina Jolie says that she's "open" to a Haitian adoption. Would the Brangelina bunch has a new addition soon? That is possible even though the recommended "wait time" after this type of disasters is 2 years as per the UN but I don't think Brad and Angelina would encounter much problems if they decide to adopt from Haiti.
I did not know that Hugh Jackman and his wife actually adopted both of their kids. I mean the older boy looks kinda like Mr. Jackman for heaven's sake! Then again, maybe I'm color-blind since Oscar is mixed race and way darker than his dad... Look at them, who knows Wolverine can be this awesome?
In both novels, one of the main characters would be an orphan or was abandoned, Cosette for Les Miserables and Remi in Sans Famille, respectively. Cosette was adopted by Jean Valjean, a former convict, after her parents' deaths while the poor and childless Mother Barberin after Remi was found abandoned by her husband. Valjean had ensured Cosette grew up in comforts and relative luxuries when Remi, homeless, wandered the countryside with his close friend. The more notable part I found in both novels is that the relationships between the adoptive parents and the children were happy ones. The parents provided for the children the best they could manage, giving them better lives than they would've had otherwise. In Cosette's case, Valjean witnessed the way her foster family abused and maltreated her; Remi would've grow up in overcrowded and underfunded orphanage without knowing a good childhood.
Just look to the right, that's a Kdrama called "I'm Sorry I Love You." Don't you feel sad already? I mean, I can tell before I watch the show, there's going to be a lot of crying/Kleenex and at the end of the movie someone will die, probably of cancer.
Well, most of the missionaries that were caught in Haiti on child abduction charges have been released. Meanwhile, we found out the leaders of the group were previously investigated for inquiring about how to quickly getting Haitian children into US, barring any and all international adoption laws.