Bangladesh trip is the next step in a long journey of discovery

Jerry Large / Times staff columnist
Bangladesh trip is the next step in a long journey of discovery
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Who we are is part culture and part genes, partly who we think we are and partly who other people see when they look at us. Maiya Black, who can testify to that, is leaving on a trip tomorrow that she hopes will help make her feel whole.
Black is going to Bangladesh to meet her birth mother, a woman whose name she has known for only a few months but whose imprint has always been present.
"I always knew I was different, growing up in a Caucasian family in a not-very-diverse area," Black says.
"My mother says that I was about 2 1/2 when I asked her about the color difference." Her mother, Lynn Black, remembers, "Maiya wanted to know why most of the kids she saw were not brown." So she and her husband, Dennis, told their daughter the story of her adoption, or as much as a parent would tell a child that young.
The difference was often pointed out by curious strangers, and people still ask where she's from, or assume she is some mix of black and white.
Black, who is 29, is full of fond memories of growing up with a loving family in Kirkland, but while other kids looked forward to their birthdays, she dreaded hers.
Birthdays reminded her that she was different, and they made her wonder about her birth mother, a woman who lived somewhere in far-off Bangladesh. "Was she thinking about me?"
She credits her adoptive parents with giving her character, values and culture, but she has longed to see the woman who gave her her smile, her color, her raven-black, curly hair.
As a child, she used to imagine that her mother was a queen in an exotic land, but four years ago, her parents reluctantly told her that her birth mother had been the victim of a war crime. The Bangladeshi teenager brought her 12-day-old daughter to an adoption agency and gave her up.
"As a young girl, I fantasized about being a princess. Rape was not part of that," Black says. "It was hard to take, but I gained a new understanding, a newfound sympathy, new compassion for her. If she was a queen who gave up her child, I'd be miffed."
In what might as well have been a different world, Dennis and Lynn Black — a contractor and a teacher — had two sons but wanted a daughter. They decided on a foreign adoption as a way to contribute something to the world.
The war between East and West Pakistan, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, left that country with war orphans, and on April 8, 1973, the two strands came together. The Blacks drove to Portland to pick up their 8-month-old daughter and bring her back to the security of suburban America.
Bangladesh and race were both distant for Black as she grew up. She just wanted to be an American, she says, even to be Caucasian. Her parents tried to interest her in Bangladeshi culture. They'd buy books for her, but Maiya wasn't much interested. She'd jump up and leave the room.
She remembers even being a little embarrassed about her connection to a place that entered American awareness only when a disaster struck or when some article talked about poverty there.
Once when she was in middle school, she was shocked to read about a flood that had killed thousands in Bangladesh. She wrote to her representative in Congress asking what the United States was going to do to help. After a long wait, she got back a form letter saying the U.S. had many commitments to tend to.
Why didn't Americans care, she wondered?
In high school she says, "I was part of the popular crowd." She was never shy and took part in numerous activities and sports. She can remember only three other students who were not white. "I had no concept, zero concept, of even how to relate to anyone who wasn't Caucasian."
Once, she and her best friend waited at the friend's house for their dates, two boys from a Seattle school, to pick them up. When the friend's parents saw that the young men were black, they forbade their daughter from going.
"I had to go out and tell them. It was devastating," Black says. The boys looked like her. How could these wonderful people not like them just because of their skin? Lynn Black says her daughter called her from a pay phone, sobbing.
Later, she met a Bangladeshi professor at North Seattle Community College and found in her a role model. When she was 25, she sought out the local Bangladeshi community, and for the first time felt that she fit in.
The embarrassment she felt as a child is gone. Now she is amazed at how far Bangladesh has come since it became a nation, and she says she can deal with being culturally American and ethnically Bangladeshi.
Her new awareness is driving her choice of a career. She's pursuing a degree in global studies at the University of Washington's Bothell campus, and works as assistant manager of a store for Ten Thousand Villages, which imports crafts from rural areas in 31 countries as a way of providing an income to people in poor nations.
"We're so lucky to be where we are, lucky to be American. I want to spread my wealth," Black says.
She's in a serious relationship, thinking about marriage and family, another reason she wanted to have the missing piece of her life filled in. When she began searching for her birth mother, Black was told it would be impossible to find her, but her former professor's sister did just that.
Black was relieved to learn that her birth mother was alive and thrilled that this woman, Surutan Nessa, was eager to see the daughter she'd named Nilu.
Black, who loves skiing and sailing, will embrace a woman whose life has been a universe apart. "I expect we are going to accept each other for who we are."
She says her birth mother has prayed for her every day all these years, and that she wanted three things for her: that she would be educated, have a good husband and be an important person.
All of that is coming true, Black says, because this woman made a difficult choice. "I will support her in any way I can."
She's looking forward to looking into her birth mother's face and seeing something of herself there. When she gets back, I'll let you know how it went.
Jerry Large can be reached at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.