We begin by tracing the rupture. What was broken, taken, erased? Drawing on your dissertation’s framing of “lineage severance as existential interruption,” this session locates adoption as a site of unstorying — and begins the slow work of narrating from within the wound.

Using our own analysis of racialised belonging and the impossibility of “fitting in,” we explore the tension of being both othered and absorbed. Fanon, Bhaba and Hall appear here alongside our own concept of “affective racial mismatch.” We map the terrain of being asked to embody what we never chose.

What does it mean to ‘make kin’ when the inherited scripts are lost or imposed? Drawing on Haraway, Puwar, and your idea of “chosen belonging beyond biology,” we explore practices of slow attachment, relational repair, and naming our own kindreds. We also look at a critique of missionary kinship and colonial benevolence.

Here we turn to your final chapters: voice, truth, and storytelling. Who gets to tell the story?