Imagining Adoption looks at representations of adoption in an array of literary genres by diverse authors including George Eliot, Edward Albee, and Barbara Kingsolver as well as ordinary adoptive mothers and adoptee activists, exploring what these writings share and what they debate. Marianne Novy is Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh.
Combining advocacy and memoir with social and cultural history, this book offers a comparative, cross-cultural survey of the whole history of adoption that is grounded in the author's personal experience.
Jim Gritter's third book for CWLA examines the next step after open adoption. Building on his previous books, which promote the inclusion of birthparents, Gritter takes the approach that practicing goodwill, respect, and courage within the realm of adoption makes the process move smoother and enriches children's lives.
This work tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple. The story is told from three different viewpoints - the mother, the birth mother and the daughter.
2019 High Plains Book Award (Creative Nonfiction and Indigenous Writer categories) 2021 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado In Bitterroot Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her “real” parents. He replied that they had died in a car accident not long after she was born—except they hadn’t, as Harness would learn in a conversation with a social worker a few years later. Harness’s search for answers revolved around her need to ascertain why she was the target of racist remarks and why she seemed always to be on the outside looking in. New questions followed her through college and into her twenties when she started her own family. Meeting her biological family in her early thirties generated even more questions. In her forties Harness decided to get serious about finding answers when, conducting oral histories, she talked with other transracial adoptees. In her fifties she realized that the concept of “home” she had attributed to the reservation existed only in her imagination. Making sense of her family, the American Indian history of assimilation, and the very real—but culturally constructed—concept of race helped Harness answer the often puzzling questions of stereotypes, a sense of nonbelonging, the meaning of family, and the importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance. In the process Bitterroot also provides a deep and rich context in which to experience life.
Adoption and foster care is a new and burgeoning area of historical and interdisciplinary research. Too often, however, birth parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, social workers, and the children themselves have either been ignored or demonized. This comprehensive introductory resource provides an authoritative, yet accessible, examination of adoption and foster care as it has been practiced in the United States. Within the pages of this volume, the reader will find a complete view of the many individuals and groups involved, as well as a thorough understanding of the various social and economic forces that have contributed to the perceptions of what children are in need of care. Also discussed is the role of orphanages, once the primary institution for children without parents as well as a stopgap measure for poor children needing temporary care. Divided into three major sections, original essays review the practice of adoption, orphanage placement and foster care from the colonial period to the present day. Selected primary documents, including materials by children, as well as an in-depth bibliographic section, provide crucial information and insight for high school and college students. Social workers, journalists, and others will also find much value in this historical overview and guide. Contributors include Elizabeth Bartholet, Marilyn Irvin Holt, Martha Satz, and Claudia Nelson. Adoption and foster care is a new and burgeoning area of historical and interdisciplinary research. Too often, however, birth parents, adoptive parents and foster parents, social workers, and the children themselves have been either ignored or demonized. This authoritative and accessible work is the first comprehensive introductory resource that gives a fuller portrait of the many individuals and groups that have contributed to the perceptions of what children are in need of care. Also discussed is the role of orphanages, the primary institution for children without parents as well as a stopgap measure for poor children needing temporary care. Divided into three sections, original essays review the practice of adoption, orphanage placement, and foster care from the colonial period to the present day. Selected primary documents, including materials by children, as well as an in-depth bibliography section, provide crucial information and insight for high school and college students. Social workers, journalists, and others will also find much value in this historical overview and guide. Star contributors include Elizabeth Bartholet, Marilyn Irvin Holt, Martha Satz, and Claudia Nelson.
Adoptions that cross the lines of culture, race and nation are a major consequence of conflicts around the globe, yet their histories and representations have rarely been considered. Life Lines: Writing Transcultural Adoption is the first critical study to explore narratives of transcultural adoption from contemporary Britain, Ireland and America: fictions, films and memoirs made by those within the adoption 'triad' or those concerned with the pain and possibilities of transcultural adoption. While acknowledging the sobering inequalities which engender transcultural adoptions and the lasting upset of sundered relations, at the same time John McLeod considers the transfigurative and creative propensity of imagining transcultural adoption as radically calling into question ideas of biogenetic attachment, racial genealogy, cultural identity and normative family-making. How might the predicament of 'being adopted' transculturally enable the transformative agency of 'adoptive being' for all? Exploring works by Andrea Levy, Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, Sebastian Barry, Caryl Phillips, Jackie Kay and several others, Life Lines makes a groundbreaking intervention in such fields as transcultural studies, postcolonial thought, and adoption theory and practice.
