Tag: Book Review

The Adoption Mistique

Since I only became aware of this book today, I thought I’d share a bit about it. Below is an excerpt from the author’s website LINK>The Adoption Mystique.

I do not accept the notion that being adopted, like being Jewish or being female should restrict my rights as a citizen. I believe that adopted persons are entitled to full restoration of the rights that were abrogated. To me it is a matter of equality and social justice.

I am grateful to my parents for their patience, courage, openness, honesty, and empathy. Our family had no adoption secrets. A record of the date and story of my homecoming and the significant events of the first four years of my life were available to me at anytime. I was a curious kid. I asked many questions. They told me my birthmother was young. She ran off with someone. Her family annulled the marriage. “What was my name”? “Rebecca, maybe Roberta.” “How do you know”? They said they had papers for me in a strong box. I could have them when I was twenty-one.

The birth of my fourth child put me in touch with my heritage in a way not previously realized. This daughter had blue eyes. That meant I had to carry a blue-eyed gene. It was time to explore more fully my family of origin. It took seven months to find my birthmother.

It took ten years, however, “divine intervention,” and many false starts to complete a search for my birthfather’s side of the family.

Along the way, I found a review by Heidi Hess Saxton on WordPress – LINK>Anti-Adoption? Review of “The Adoption Mystique” by Joanne Wolf Small, MSW. She admits that “The complexity of the issues surrounding adoption, and that to seek reform in one area is not the same as wanting to eliminate the practice altogether.

She also quotes Joanne Wolf Small from a presentation titled “The Dark Side of Adoption”- “My personal experience as an adoptee was a positive one. In the social setting in which I grew up, I thought it was OK to be adopted. In later life I became involved in trying to establish my own identity, and subsequently worked with many others toward that end. We got, and still get the message, loud and clear. It is not OK to be adopted!”

One commenter on her blog wrote – Making a life-long commitment to an adoptive child is a complex endeavor. Part of it is honoring that child’s heritage. That child does in fact have another set of parents who made life possible. From a parental view it is much like a child of divorce, a step child. It does not serve the child to deny it’s other parents. In making a life-long commitment I would hope that adoptive parents would put the child’s reality and needs foremost. If the commitment is “truly forever” it must honor the origins as well.

Blogger’s note – Because there was so much adoption in my family (both parents were adoptees and both of my sisters gave up babies for adoption), I too thought it was OK to be adopted though I yearned to know about our cultural ethnicity. My mom yearned to locate her birth mother but was denied access to her adoption file, which I now possess. I also know now who all 4 of my original genetic grandparents were. I have steeped myself deeply into facing ALL of the realities around the adoptive experience since 2017 now. There seems to be no end of perspectives to learn and so I find topics for my blog here every day.

White Tears, Brown Scars

I promised myself that I would not buy any more books this year. However, this book was mentioned in my all things adoption group as merging racial inequality and adoption. My two passions, so how could I resist ?

A reviewer admits – “I am always a bit weary of how I am received when I talk about race in feminist spaces. I fear that I might be “causing a division in the sisterhood” as journalist Ruby Hamad describes in her debut book, White Tears/Brown Scars. I am afraid of being divisive; for calling things out when most people prefer to sweep snarks or discriminations under the veneer of polite conversation. When I bring attention to a remark, I don’t do it to mark a line between me and white women (if I did, I’d be separating myself from 90% of my friends). I loved Hamad’s book for its unapologetic rigor and sharp threading of racial history in both the United States and Australia. Since its release last week, commentators have called it ‘incisive’, ‘courageous’, ‘a work of depth and scholarship,’ and ‘well researched and informative’.” 

Still from the review linked above – Racial trauma is a term used to describe the physical and psychological symptoms that people of color experience after exposure to particularly stressful experiences of racism. Similar to survivors of other types of trauma (e.g., sexual assault survivors), people of color may frequently experience fear and hyper-vigilance, self-blame, confusion, memory difficulty, shame, and guilt after experiencing racism.

The woman who posted this in my all things adoption group said – This author touches on orphan trains and adoption throughout history and connects it all back to white feminism & saviorism. It’s a tough read, but worth it.

I’ll write more after I have had a chance to read this one on my Kindle.