Contact
Research Areas
Memoir; Modern Day Slavery; Adoption Issues; Gender and International Development; Chinese History
Education
Ph.D., Harvard University
M.A., Boston University
B.A. equivalent, University of Geneva
Links
Mei Mei Akwai Ellerman
Mei Mei Akwai Ellerman
Born and adopted in the United States, Dr. Ellerman studied from age 8 to 23 in France, Italy and Switzerland. After teaching Italian literature and cinema for 30 years, Mei-Mei now focuses on research, writing and social activism. She is a scholar at the WSRC, founding board director of Polaris Project (leading anti-human trafficking NGO in the U.S. and Japan), and the Polaris Boston representative. She also serves on the Board of Chinese Adoptee Links International, (for which she writes a weekly blog piece), Global Generations, and the International Advisory Board of the A. G. Bell Association for the Deaf.
Mei-Mei’s two memoirs (in progress) focus on the history of her biracial adoptive family and her 27-year-long search for her biological origins. The first one draws on personal narratives, letters, and photographs from the 1800s and early 1900s, interwoven with discoveries made during years of worldwide research. Her travels to France, Denmark, China, Thailand, and Korea, have allowed the author to unlock long- held family secrets and reassess vital aspects of her Danish grandfather’s career (in the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs and as Ambassador to China). They have also led her to unravel the mysterious past of her Chinese grandmother.
Current Projects
Mei-Mei is working on two memoirs: a cultural biography covering 160 years of her bi-racial adoptive family, In Pursuit of Images and Shadows: A Chinese Daughter Journeys into her Mothers’ Pasts, and Circles of Healing, Circles of Love: A Labyrinthine Journey in Search of Connection, testimony to the daunting 25-year- long ongoing search for her Chinese biological roots.
Representative Publications
Ellerman, Mei-Mei Akwai, “The Freckle.” Adoption Today (May 2009).