Elephants and Tea - One Herd - 19

Our Voices
Unveiling Health
Disparities
AND THE PLIGHT OF MINORITY WOMEN IN HEALTHCARE
BY KIMBER HAND-HARRIS
I
am blessed enough to
come from a family that
is a beautiful mixture of
all types of people with
one commonality: love.
It never mattered that
my mom, aunts, uncles, and several cousins
had all been adopted, it actually made for
some of the best and biggest family parties
and holidays one could imagine. When my
grandparents adopted my mom from Seoul,
South Korea, in 1965, when she was two, the
information provided about her history was
minimal. Two years later, they adopted my
aunt, who was also two, through the same
adoption agency. This was quite a big deal
in our very reserved small town and made
local news.
My maternal grandma had three sisters
and a brother, all who procreated, and a
couple of her siblings adopted children
as well. The family ran deep back then,
to say the least. One spring Sunday afternoon
in the late 1960s, our family's
church reverend asked my grandpa for
a moment of his time. They exchanged
niceties and then-as the story goes-the
pastor, very bluntly, stated, " Jim, we are
no longer able to find any room for your
'daughters' in our Sunday School classes. "
Taken off guard, my grandpa asked
for more clarification. " What exactly are
you saying? " This time he was told, " We
cannot have your oriental kids around
the others anymore. We just can't. People
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Elephants and Tea - One Herd

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