‘What if I was not adopted’: transnational Chinese adoptee English teachers negotiating identities in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

While race in TESOL has gained traction in recent years, less research has focused on Asian American teachers working in Asian contexts, not to mention Chinese adoptees from the US working as English teachers in Asia. Drawing from our larger study on the work narratives of Asian Americans teaching English in Taiwan, this paper examines how Chinese adoptees negotiate their linguistic and cultural competencies and identities in Taiwan. We uncover the various forms of emotional labor that they experienced. Similar to other Asian American teachers, they also grappled with notions of authenticity and legitimacy in the ELT field in Taiwan. However, teaching in Taiwan provided Chinese adoptees with the opportunity to negotiate the roots and routes of transnational adoptee identities and simultaneously deploy their adoptee identities as pedagogical tools for teaching about racial and family diversity, which complicates and extends research on racial identities as pedagogy in ELT. It is inevitable that their racial identity and transracial family makeup are invoked, and they are confronted to take action on it. The process can be laborious, yet teaching students about diversity through these adoptees’ own vantage points also constitutes their professional identity as a competent teacher.

KEYWORDS:

• ELT
• race
• identities
• adoptees
• Taiwan
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shumin Lin

Shumin Lin is an Associate Professor in the Institute of TESOL at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, where she teaches applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. Her research examines language socialization across the lifespan in the contexts of classroom, family, transnational migration, and eldercare, focusing on language ideologies and identity.

Ming-Hsuan Wu

Ming-Hsuan Wu is an associate professor in TESOL and Bilingual Education programs at Adelphi University in New York. Her research examines Asian American students' experiences of learning “Chinese” as a heritage language, their interracial friendships, and their work trajectories as English teachers in Asia.

Genevieve Leung

Genevieve Leung is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Language at the University of San Francisco. At USF she is the co-director of the Asian Pacific American Studies minor and the academic director of the M.A. in Asia Pacific Studies. Her research focuses on language and cultural maintenance of varieties of Cantonese (including Hoisan-wa) in the Bay Area. She has also worked on various language maintenance and teacher training projects in Taiwan.