Creative Truth-Telling: An Adoptee Conversation with Sullivan Summer

Creative Truth-Telling: An Adoptee Conversation with Sullivan Summer A conversation exploring adoptee experience and the ways creative expression helps reclaim identity and reshape cultural narratives.

In this conversation, Anna Sarkitova will speak with writer and adoptee rights advocate Sullivan Summer, an independent scholar whose work centers the Black and transracial adoptee experience. Sullivan is the President of Adoptees for Family Preservation and co-editor of a forthcoming adoptee anthology on estrangement, which gathers creative nonfiction exploring the emotional and relational complexities of distancing from adoptive, biological, or other family systems. She will discuss why she believes estrangement is so prevalent in adoptee communities, what it reveals about adoption as an institution, and how creative work can become a space for truth-telling, reclamation, and personal agency. Drawing from her poetry, criticism, and organizing work, Sullivan will offer insight into how adoptees are reshaping cultural narratives by telling their own stories on their own terms.

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AAOM Speaker Series, hosted by Anna Sarkitova Presented by the Adoptee Advocates of Michigan (AAOM)
This interview is the first in our new speaker series hosted by Anna Sarkitova, international adoptee, advocate, and proud Adoptee Advocates of Michigan board member. In each session, Anna will sit down with powerful authors, community leaders, and changemakers who are advancing justice, visibility, and equity for adoptees and their families.

The AAOM Speaker Series is part of our grassroots fundraising campaign in support of our activism, community building, educational and legislative outreach where we work hard to bring adoptee voices directly to the people, families, and policymakers who need to hear them. As a volunteer-run organization, your support helps us compensate our speakers and sustain these vital conversations within the community.

Whether you are an adoptee, a member of the adoption constellation, or a passionate ally, this series is a great opportunity to stay informed, get inspired, and support the voices that too often go unheard in adoption.

Suggested donation: $10 (or more if you are able)
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Can’t donate? Come anyway- your presence matters.
We can’t wait to see you.
— The AAOM Team