Please help me avoid racefail.

[mythochromos]

I need to do some research on what life would be like for two characters:

#1 is a Japanese-American male who grew up in the Midwest (around Flint, MI) and relocates to Chicago shortly before the story in question starts. I'm concerned about what would be different for him, living in about the same environment as I do as a white female.

#2 is a Chinese female growing up in China, region/location to be determined. She is abandoned by her parents; probably they couldn't afford the baby or didn't want their only legally allowed child to be a girl. I'm concerned about what possibilities there are for her upbringing (remaining in China, not being adopted by an out-of-country family).

Please give me links, book recs, whatever I can read to get some realistic ideas!

Comments

[athousandsmiles]

I'm intrigued by your choice of Flint, Mi, as I grew up there. Being a white woman myself, I can't comment as to life for a Japanese-American though. The few exchange students or minorities in my school system (small suburb of Flint) were treated as novelties, IIRC. :-/

[rosarum]

I won't pretend to be an expert on the subject, as it's very complex and easy to misread, but my sister is a Chinese adoptee and she and I spent time volunteering in her orphanage for a few days last summer.

Your protagonist is likely to spend her childhood and teenage years in a welfare institute, which generally act as both an orphanage and a nursing home for elderly and disabled citizens. She will have been given a surname by the director of the institute, though her biological parents may have left a note with her indicating her first name. If she was lucky, there is the possibility that she might have spent time in foster care or have been adopted by a Chinese family, as the government has begun to encourage internal adoption as opposed to foreign. Many orphans work at the welfare institute they grew up at after they reach the age of majority; others leave and try to find employment elsewhere.

The Lost Daughters of China by Karin Evans isn't a bad book, but like most of the material about orphans in China, it comes from the perspective of a Westerner and is aimed towards potential adoptive parents.

Obviously I'd suggest doing more research on your own about China in general to avoid accidental racefail, but I hope that gives you a good starting point.

[isana]

Chinese-American who grew up in MI here: can't speak directly to Flint, but what generation of Japanese-American is your character? Are his parents from Japan? There is a Japanese school in Novi (in southeastern MI) that he might go to every week, not only to learn the language, but also to keep up with the curriculum in Japan in general, since most Japanese who move to MI are there for the car industry (Toyota, etc.) and don't expect to stay in the US permanently.

On more general terms, having been an Asian who grew up in MI: it depends on the timeline of your story. I'm in my late twenties, and while I was one out of three Asian kids in the first grade, by the time my brother's generation rolled around, ten years later, a third of the school was Asian. Of course, this was in Ann Arbor, so YMMV.