Adoption in the Time of Love, Violence, and Fetal Microchimerism

Join us for an illuminating conversation with Dr. Kit Myers, Hong Kong transracial adoptee, father of two daughters, police abolition activist, and an old adoptee camp counselor friend. Kit would have been your favorite P.E. teacher, but he opted to immerse himself in academic studies, coming out on the other side as current Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced. We discuss Kit's process in becoming a professor, teaching his daughters about valuing love, anger and their mixed Hmong and Chinese American identities, the influence that fetal microchimerism had on his desire to continue his birth family search, and his research on the inherent love and violence infused in the the act and industry of adoption. You can find Kit on Twitter @MyersKit and follow his police abolition work at #AbolitionMay. 

Kit Myers Bio
Kit was adopted from Hong Kong to Oregon when he was three years old. He enjoys family time, nature, being active, and eating delicious food. He is an assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced. Kit received his doctorate and master’s degrees from the University of California, San Diego in ethnic studies and his bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies and journalism from the University of Oregon. Prior to his current position, he was a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow at UC Merced. His research examines love and violence in adoption, family, and kinship formations specifically in the ways that they intersect with race, gender, sexuality, immigration, citizenship, nation, and indigenous sovereignty. Kit has published articles in Adoption Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, Adoption & Culture, and Critical Discourse Studies as well as co-edited a special issue on adoption and pedagogy. He serves as an executive committee member of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption & Culture and served on the steering committee for the Society of Adoptee Professionals of Color in Adoption. He has also worked with the Adoption Museum Project and three summers at a camp for transnational and transracial adoptees. Kit is also passionate about police abolition, publishing online articles and working with faculty to get cops off campus. You can visit his website (ucmerced.academia.edu/KitMyers) for more information on his research. 

Co-Hosts: Nari Baker & Robyn Park
Music: Mike Marlatt & Paul Gulledge
Editing: Federico aka mixinghacks
Artwork: Dalhe Kim

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