About us

Marcescence magazine arose from the overwhelming number of questions we had about how these industries were connected to our everyday lives. Can we talk about how I ended up where I am today? What institutions and systems of belief brought me here? And my friends, too, what about them? What history, contexts, stories do we come from, do we unearth, do we create? 

For each question, we also knew that there were a multitude of people who have already been working on answering. Who have painted, written books, collaged, recorded podcasts, drawn, presented talks, sung songs, danced, and followed the questions in their heart. We know we have only a tiny fraction of information about the child welfare, foster care, and adoption industries in our brains and wanted to bring folks who held knowledge together to form a magazine issue, in itself a powerful piece of art.

Marcescence Magazine is an experimental publication that empowers voices of those impacted by family separation. We are interested in pieces that explore how race, class, gender, sexuality, global power dynamics, industrialization, disability justice, indigenous methodologies, immigration and more intersect with issues of family separation through foster care and adoption.

We are an annual publication written, led, edited, and managed by primarily fostered/adopted people of color in the U.S. context. We produce digital and limited-run print editions which are released each spring.  Each issue revolves around a general theme. The theme may be larger current events and social issues or more personal topics. We hope this journal can become a hub for impacted folks to come together and analyze, debate, share, create around these topics in the world and how those relate to ourselves.

The magazine is, in part, responding to certain trends: things such as internalized trauma exploitation and sensationalism, social media's effect on connection and storytelling and also our personal boundaries, unintentional monolithic/binary/oppositional dynamic creation, information silos, and disconnections between communities that could benefit from being in clearer solidarity with one another. Although the impetus for the magazine was partly shaped by external trends, these central tenants will stay relevant regardless if these trends endure or dissolve. 

This is a unique style, focus, audience, and angle and speaks to a rapidly growing community of both adopted/fostered people and non-fostered/adopted people who are redefining their understandings of what adoption means, what family separation is, and what family preservation looks like. We hope this journal can become a hub for impacted folks to come together and analyze, debate, share, create around these topics in the world and how those relate to ourselves. Lastly, we want this publication to become established as a well-known resource and to exist as a record of our collective presence and brilliant minds.

There are many people who have created and built incredible spaces for fosterees/adoptees of color or spaces to advocate for family preservation for many years. This project is building on the work of those before us (check out our Resources page for more).

If you’d like to get to know more about us, please contact us and we would be happy to connect! 

We also want to thank the folks who have generously given their time to provide feedback and supported this project so far <3
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*For SEO purposes: Common misspellings of our name include marcescense, marsescence, marsesense, and marcsesence.

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