How adoption stories affect perceptions of identity

As a Chinese adoptee, I’ve spent much of my life quietly navigating the spaces between cultures, identities, and the stories I’ve been told. A turning point came during a conversation with a close friend—also a Chinese adoptee—where we found ourselves asking what it truly means to be Chinese, American, and adopted. We realized how often we both grapple with these questions of identity, and how growing up as adoptees means learning to define ourselves while missing key pieces of our personal history. Identity, we agreed, is deeply tied to the stories we’re told, and for adoptees, those stories often come from others—especially our parents. But what happens when those stories are incomplete? Or simplified? Or never revisited? These reflections led me to my research question: How do the adoption stories parents tell their transnational adoptees affect their perception of identity? To explore this, I needed a methodology that could hold complexity, emotion, and nuance—a methodology that could tell the story behind the numbers. That’s what brought me to grounded theory.