Honors Program
Fine and Performing Arts Honors
Date of Award
5-2023
Thesis Professor(s)
Christine K. Anzur
Thesis Professor Department
Communication and Performance
Thesis Reader(s)
Amber E. Kinser
Abstract
Transracial adoptive families often encounter various struggles around race as they acknowledge the challenges of racial dissimilarity in their family structure. This thesis, grounded in the theoretical framework of Relational Dialectics Theory, explored the competing discourses around the conversation of race for adult Asian adoptees. The results from 35 semi-structured interviews and contrapuntal analysis revealed one dialectical tension highlighting the Asian adoptee’s role in maintaining conversations of race with their White adoptive parents. Some adoptees voiced the discourse of taking the opportunity to be the advocate, while others voiced the discourse of feeling frustrated with being the advocate. The results of this thesis provide the perspective of Asian adoptees in White families as they attempt to engage in conversations about race with their family members.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Withheld
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Hornberger, Brooke, "“If I am going to have to force you to talk about it with me, then I’m not going to”: Relational dialectics in transracial Asian adoptees’ conversations about race" (2023). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 754. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/754
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.