The Creator
My name is Hannah, and I’m a Chinese transracial adoptee from Lishui, Zhejiang province (adopted in 1996). I grew up in a predominately White suburb in Minnesota located on the traditional homelands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people.
I am a 2022 Yale Environmental Fellow and an Environmental Studies Master’s student at the University of Oregon on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional homelands of the Kalapuya people. My research primarily examines how Asian American transracial adoptees navigate questions of identity and belonging in the age 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 and environmental 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, an experimental memoir, a film proposal, and letters from adoptee academics, schoolteachers, activists, artists, and journalists. Reading this work was a visceral experience. In their struggle, messiness, and clarity, the voices I read sparked a passion for adoptee environmentalisms. I hope to honor its legacy with this archive.
In 2022, Adoptee Literary and Art Archive served as my terminal master’s project, through the University of Oregon’s Environmental Studies Department, and was designed to continue after graduation. I was mentored and advised by three incredible committee members:
Dr. Sarah D. Wald (Chair), Kate Thornhill, and Dr. Mattie Burkert.