Critical content analysis of adoption texts: Representations of transracial Chinese adoption within children's picture books.

摘要

This study conducts a critical content analysis of 36 picture books published in the US from 1992 to 2013 featuring transracial Chinese adoption. The targeted readers range from PK to grade three. The study is conceptualized within the conceptual frameworks of critical literacy, critical curriculum studies, and critical race theory. In analyzing these books and commenting on the findings, I have answered the original research questions that focused this study: Who tells the story? How are the stories told? What types of stories are told? What ideologies are embedded within the stories? How is transracial Chinese adoption represented in the illustrations?;While outlining and categorizing the data and unpacking the patterns, findings reveal that these multicultural adoption tales serve as a mirror for Chinese adoptees to see themselves and as a window that provides non-adoptees with glimpses of actual life experiences of children adopted across borders. Findings also reveal that though the multidimensional aspects of transracial Chinese adoption are reflected in these children's stories, the representations are varied in terms of authenticity, accuracy and complexity. Some significant themes and issues such as losses, racial denigration, and the adoptees' schooling experiences are omitted or under-represented. The authentic voices of the adoptees and birth parents are noticeably missing. Ideologies such as fatalism, rescue and salvation, and validation of White motherhood are sometimes inherent in the verbal and visual representations. Certain cultural details and customs are occasionally represented inaccurately. Implications for literacy teachers, teacher educators, librarians, children's literature researchers, and children's book writers and publishers are also put forward in this study.