Marissa Martin

Marissa Martin, 43, is a nonprofit consultant and policy advocate who serves on the Advisory Board of Also-Known-As. Born in Incheon, South Korea, she was adopted when she was 6 months old by a family from New Hope, a small suburb just outside of Philadelphia. Growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in the 1980s, Marissa recounts that while her parents did acknowledge her Korean heritage, adoption agencies often encouraged raising children in a “colorblind” environment; in fact, she tells us about how mother was quite involved with her adoption agency, frequenting Korea to bring back other babies, as well as textiles and hanbok.

When Marissa was 14, she discovered her adoption file, though she didn’t address the contents with her family: information about her birth parents and the circumstances of her adoption. Convinced that the only person she could rely on was herself, she left for college in D.C.. There she reached out to Holt to inquire about her file, where she received a bizarre set of non-identifying details about her birth parents.

When Marissa was 25, she visited Korea for the first time, meeting her foster mother and visiting the agency which handled her adoption—an emotional experience left her conflicted on returning again. Since that initial visit, Marissa has been back to Korea ten times and is in reunion with her birth mother and relatives. Their relationship is calibrated by “some good meetings, and some terrible meetings,” giving narratives to complicated emotions as a crutch against grieving them. Yet throughout her life, she has embraced being a Korean adoptee, while still hoping that one day she can simply say, “I’m Korean American,” without the “adoptee” attached.

Special thanks to the Thomas and Wonsook Foundation for their generous support in making this project possible.