The Anna Jinja Show
The Anna Jinja show focuses on the stories, issues, and questions connected to adoption and foster care experiences.
The host is an international adoptee with biological roots in Korea and adopted roots in the United States. As you can imagine, her journey and experiences as a transracial adoptee are multifaceted. Her experiences have been with the pain of discrimination and rejection as well as the joys of self-discovery and learning to embrace all aspects of her identity.
Along the way, she has discovered that she is not alone. We’re all – in some ways – adopted into or out of homes, cultures, communities, and relationships as we grow and evolve. This show illuminates the theme of adoption, in all ways, in our lives. And how those experiences create who we are and who we are yet to be.
Her hope is that through engaging with the guests and creative content, we are welcomed home in this world, cradled in the belief that we belong, that we are worthy, and that we are loved.
So stay tuned, and you may discover your own adoption story.
The Anna Jinja Show
Karen Salyer McElmurray & Bob Stewart
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Bob Stewart wrote “Shadow Boxer” in 1977, decades before he’d ever hear Karen Salyer McElmurray’s name. He wrote it about shadows in general, the kind everyone carries, unnamed. He had no idea it would end up soundtracking a memoir about a mother who surrendered her son at 16 and spent twenty-five years waiting for a sound she’d only heard once: her baby’s cry, in a hospital room she wasn’t allowed to stay in.
Karen’s memoir, Surrendered Child, won the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and was named a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book. But this episode, “Shadows and Song: Surrendering to the Truth Within,” isn’t really about the awards. It’s about the day a stranger found Karen through a Google search, and Karen’s son Andrew showed up in a driveway, fully grown, and Karen had to reconcile the baby she’d been picturing for a quarter century with the man actually standing in front of her.
She calls it shadow and reality slamming into each other.
This episode is all about choosing family, carrying grief you can’t fully name, and discovering that the people we build our lives around aren’t always the ones we were given.
Bob and Karen never met before this recording. Neither knew the other’s story going in. That’s still my favorite part of doing this show: watching two people who think they have nothing in common realize they’ve been speaking the same language the whole time.