Quote of the Day

From Cheri Register, adoptive parent to two daughters from Korea:

“They [adult adoptees] have more to gain from talking to each other and building community than from arguing with adoptive parents, either their own or the collective bunch of us.”

- from Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects on Raising Internationally Adopted Children

I just started reading this book, but thought this quote was particularly appropriate for me right now.

Run

For the most part I don’t go looking for adoption-related fiction, I really don’t. True, I looked for The English American after reading about it on an adoption-related blog, but after I finished it I was in the mood for something different… something non-adoption, perhaps.

So I went to our local library and picked up Run, by Ann Patchett, off of a display table. I vaguely remembered reading Bel Canto a few years back and I vaguely remembered liking it, so I read the flap copy for Run and headed for the circulation desk. As it turns out, two of the main characters in Run are transracially adopted, and the theme of what makes a family surfaces throughout the book. This isn’t a book review and so I won’t say anything more — I just thought it was ironic that my adoption-obsessed self couldn’t catch a break the one time I happened to be looking for one.

I wonder about these instances where adoption seems to find me in unexpected ways, even when I am not looking for it. Is there something in my unconscious that is searching out this stuff when I’m not looking? Can I sense these themes within pages that I have not yet read? Or is this just a sign that we truly are becoming an “adoption nation,” with more and more people aware of some form of adoption, even if they are not directly impacted by it?

It seems that when it comes to adoption I can run, but I can’t hide…. and believe me, there are times when I just want to hide.

Check Out This Book Review: Growing Girls

I haven’t read the book Growing Girls, by Jeanne Marie Laskas, and I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I’m not sure how far up it is on my list.

But not only did Kev Minh over at Borrowed Notes read it, he wrote a fascinating 3-part review of it. (One of his poems was also published in the book, interestingly enough.)

Check out his review Can One Poem Subvert a Whole Novel?: (I’ve excerpted a few paragraphs below.)

Laskas functions like a mother, but her inner dialogue betrays a slight repulsion toward her charges. There’s something wrong with the chickens, there’s something wrong with the donkey, there’s something wrong with Anna because she went through a tutu phase and there’s something wrong with Sasha because somehow the orphanage delayed her speech development. It seems as though that if her immediate surroundings are not up to her specifications, if things aren’t done by the book, then she faults the actors in her life for not following the script she wrote in her head long before.

…

But, I can’t abide by the attitude Laskas takes toward Anna and Sasha’s mothers. It’s as if she is sending a postcard to her daughters’ Chinese mothers apologizing for not writing because she is busy being the kind of mother they chose not to be to their own children. It’s as if she is telling them that she has taken on the challenge of cleaning up their mess and that it’s okay for them to slip away now, barely detectable, like dust in the wind.

So whether you’ve read the book or not, check out Kev’s review, and be sure to read all three parts!

On My Bookshelf

Most authors write blog posts with titles like “On My Bookshelf” to tell you about books that they’ve read, or are going to read, or have heard about that sound interesting.

This is not one of those posts.

I have many books, too many books (though LB insists that there is no such thing). But on the particular shelf that I’m thinking of, instead of books there is a row of three-inch three-ring binders, each stuffed full with articles about –yup, you guessed it: adoption.