Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees

  What happens when the people you call family struggle to understand your experience? In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Nathan sits down with Jorge, an adoptee from Paraguay, to talk about belonging, family, and finding a voice through the arts. Growing up in a blue-collar adoptive family, Jorge struggled to find his place. Discovering the arts opened a path toward expressing...

  In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Yazz shares her experience as an Indian adoptee adopted into an Australian family and raised abroad. Growing up across different places, she struggled to fit in and understand where she belonged. She reflects on how those experiences shaped her identity and contributed to anxiety that followed her into adulthood. Yazz discusses finding suppo...

What does it mean to grow up loved, yet still struggle to see yourself reflected in the people around you? In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees, Nathan welcomes Erik, a Black transracial adoptee raised by a white family in Massachusetts and author of Stranger in My Own Story. His journey brings forward the complicated relationship between family, race, and belonging—and the questio...

  In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , I sit down with Benjamin, a Brazilian adoptee raised in Australia, to talk about identity, family, fatherhood, and the power of finding community. Benjamin shares what it was like growing up without seeing many people who looked like him and how being adopted has shaped the way he approaches being a father. He also tells the remarkable story...

  In this episode of Color Shift , Nathan sits down with Rose, a Chinese adoptee who grew up in Alaska and Canada, to talk about identity, isolation, belonging, and what can change when you finally find yourself in a place where you don't stand out. Rose reflects on growing up in predominantly white environments and how that shaped her experience as a transracial adoptee. She shares what it w...

  In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Nathan sits down with Sun Mee, a Korean adoptee raised in a white German family in a small town in southern Germany. Adopted from South Korea at 3½ years old with little information about her biological family, Sun Mee learned early how to adapt. She disconnected from her Korean roots, pushed down difficult emotions, and embraced the role of...

  In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Nathan sits down with Sara G., a Mexican adoptee whose story began within the foster care system. Sara shares what it was like navigating foster care and adoption while also growing up separated from parts of her culture and identity. Her experiences eventually helped shape the path she chose as an adult: becoming a social worker and working...

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Nathan sits down with August, a Chinese adoptee raised in rural Central Pennsylvania, for an honest conversation about identity, belonging, and what it means to finally begin seeing your adoption story through a new lens. August shares how the COVID-19 pandemic became a turning point in his life—his own "coming out of the fog" moment...

  What happens when DNA uncovers a story that feels almost too incredible to be real? In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Sara shares her journey as a mixed-race adoptee raised in a white family, navigating questions of identity, belonging, and race that followed her throughout her life. Her path to discovering her biological father through DNA testing led to what can only be de...

For much of his life, Patrick Armstrong believed he had a fairly positive adoption experience. Raised in Indianapolis after being adopted from Korea, he spent decades navigating racial isolation while completely rejecting an important part of his identity—without fully realizing the impact it was having on him. After dropping out of college, Patrick spent years traveling in search of purpose and t...

In this episode of Color Shift , we sit down with Lily , a Thai adoptee whose journey spans continents, recovery, and self-discovery. Born in Bangkok and spending her early years in foster care, Lily was adopted at age four by a white American family in Pennsylvania. Growing up in a home where she never felt a true sense of connection, she spent years searching for belonging and understanding her...

In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Maya shares her experience as a Cambodian adoptee raised by LGBTQ moms in Maine before eventually settling in Pennsylvania. Maya reflects on growing up at the intersection of adoption, race, and family, and how those experiences have shaped her sense of identity over time. The conversation also explores her recent journey into family research,...

  For this episode of Color Shift , Nathan sits down with Sarah Myer, the acclaimed Korean American comic artist, author, and illustrator behind the award-winning graphic memoir Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story. Adopted from South Korea and raised in rural Maryland by a white family, Sarah shares the deeply personal experiences that shaped both their identity and creative voice. Through con...

  In this episode of Color Shift: Transracial Adoptees , Luciana shares her experience growing up as an Indonesian adoptee in rural East Texas, navigating identity, belonging, and the feeling of being “othered” in a conservative environment. She reflects on family complexity, racial awakening, and the process of “coming out of the fog” as she began recognizing how adoption and race shaped her live...

Vinh  was born in Vietnam, with Cambodian roots, and adopted into an Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish family, where he was raised in Sweden. Growing up across multiple cultures, Vinh carried a deep curiosity about his origins—one that stayed with him for years and ultimately led him to begin searching for his birth family.  Without support from any formal systems or government resources, Vinh’s sear...

Tara was adopted as a baby from Lake Charles, Louisiana by white Mormon parents and raised in Utah with seven siblings—three biological to her adoptive parents and four adopted from different families. In 2018, she reunited with her biological family and discovered she had one full biological brother and one half-brother. Unfortunately, her biological father had passed away before she could meet h...

In this episode of Color Shift , we’re joined by Renee, a Korean adoptee born in Daegu in 1976 and brought to the United States in 1977. Renee’s adoption story, as she shares, isn’t a simple one—and it’s one she’s willing to speak about fully, with honesty, care, and deep intention. Renee opens up about the complexities of her experience and the ways it has shaped her identity, relationships, and...

April joins the show to share her story of growing up as a Black/biracial adoptee navigating identity, belonging, and family in predominantly white spaces. Relinquished at birth in Massachusetts, April spent her earliest months in temporary foster care before being placed in a foster-to-adopt home in Rhode Island. By the age of two, she was adopted into a white family with three biological childre...

In this episode of Color Shift , Nathan sits down with Amy, a Black transracial adoptee who was adopted at just two months old and primarily raised by a single white mother in Rhode Island. Amy reflects on what it was like growing up in a predominantly white environment and how those early experiences shaped her understanding of identity, race, and belonging. Amy speaks candidly about her adoption...

Patrick (“Pat”) was adopted from Vietnam at six months old and raised in Central Pennsylvania, just outside of Harrisburg, where he still lives today. At sixteen, he returned to Vietnam on a motherland tour with his adoption agency — a trip that would profoundly shape his understanding of his own story. During that visit, he met his birth mother for the first time. His birth father had already pas...

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Hasina, a transracial adoptee born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1977. With little known about her birth story, Hasina spent her earliest years in an orphanage before being adopted at age three by a white Canadian family and raised on a farm outside of London, Ontario. Hasina shares what it was like growing up in isolation, navigating identity without mirrors, and...

In this special episode of Color Shift, we have invited a panel of guest to talk about their experiences at Camp Rice.  A Korean Culture camp hosted by Asia Families.  Hyn and Monica attended Camp Rice last year as "campers" for the first time.  They report that their experience and time there was nothing short of life changing, rejuvenating and much needed.  Hollee had the incredible ta...

In this episode of Color Shift , we’re joined by Steven, a Vietnamese adoptee who grew up in Wyoming and has returned to Vietnam several times as an adult. Steven reflects on transracial adoption, identity, and what it means to reconnect with a place that holds both history and possibility. We also talk about Adoptive Threads , a project Steven created to support adoptee-led organizations and prov...

Most of the time, I would have a nice info here for the show notes about the guest.  Well, this time, I am keeping short and sweet.  The guest this week is none other than myself, Nate Choi.  I am also happy to introduce my long time friend Jeremy.  Jeremy did an amazing job interviewing and being such a respectful host for this episode.  This episode was scary, hard, wonderful and amazing.  I tea...

Karasalla was born in Hawaiʻi, mixed Samoan and Black, and entered the foster care system before her first birthday. She was later adopted by a white, conservative family in Oregon, where she grew up navigating questions of race, identity, and belonging—often without the language or mirrors to fully understand her experience. In this episode of Color Shift , Karasalla reflects on what it meant to...