My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted.
I have my three brothers, and then I have my adopted sister from El Salvador, who is actually the oldest. My brother and I were already born, and then my parents adopted my sister from El Salvador during the war and had two more kids.
My son, who is five, was adopted from Ethiopia. My daughter was adopted from Guatemala. Her parents died of typhoid and malaria. We got her from an orphanage. They are the lights of my life.
People in Finland have also adopted me because of my dad, and that's great, but it's the one language I can't speak.
My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French.
My dad was born in Haiti, and my mom was born in Tunisia. She is the daughter of a white French woman and a black, half-Guadeloupian, half-American man. My mom traveled the world a lot. She went through Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. She just got to experience a lot of different cultures, and that came through my childhood.
I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into their home where I was raised in a family full of love.
My father was adopted. He grew up in the Italian household.
Meanwhile I married and I adopted three kids who were all from one family and then later I was divorced.
I was adopted by two amazing people: a Salvadoran mother and a white father who were incredibly supportive of me and my work. I am eternally grateful for them.