Adoption Reading Challenge

The Color of Tea

2012, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

The Color of Tea started off really dark and depressing – and slow. That was the worst part, it was so slow that I read a chapter and put it down and each night I considered just stopping and starting something else. If there had been something on the shelf I was dying to read, I’d have done that. But no, I muddled through. And I’m glad I did because about the time Grace decided to get out of bed and build a café was the time it lightened up and moved. Which makes sense.

I loved Café’ Lillian. I loved the women who made their lives there.

I can’t decide how I feel about the end. I knew it was coming – an infertility story that was going to turn into an open adoption story… Grace gave birth to the macaron café and GiGi gave birth to Faith and then they… swapped. That’s how it felt and that’s why I can’t decide whether I liked the ending. Which is pretty much how I feel about adoption in general, I guess.

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Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

2012, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Queer /

I love Jeanette Winterson and that’s pretty much all I knew when I grabbed Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? From the library shelf. It was obviously non-fiction, with a picture of a child who had to be a young Winterson – so I figured it was a memoir. Or maybe not a memoir but something about coming out . Whatever. It didn’t matter. Winterson wrote it, I was going to read it.

And I did. Not quite straight through, because I started it very late one night, but pretty darn close.

Winterson writes in true Winterson fashion about her adoption and early childhood with Mrs (and Mr) Winterson – it wasn’t pretty, to say the least. Mrs Winterson had some big, big problems and Mr Winterson had a few of his own, (war related, poverty related, his own childhood related, and of course – Mrs Winterson related.)  Then, she jumps ahead 25 years – to her nervous breakdown and the realization that she needed to look for her birth mother.

At that point, I was left wishing I knew a little bit more than I did about the missing 25 years.

Let me spoil it for you… Winterson finds her mom, an aunt, a half brother, more family members. They don’t mind her queerness, they want her to be part of their family but… it’s hard. Of course. Adoption is hard. Finding your birth family is hard. Figuring out what happens next is very hard. And when you throw in the childhood, the rough 25 years, the celebrity, the breakdown, the very thing that is Jeanette Winterson… it’s all going to be hard.

I’m fascinated by the Amazon reviews/comments. The people who thought it would be a self-help book. The people who find Winterson unlikeable. The people who find her treatment of her birth family untenable. The people who don’t recognize Winterson’s mentions and quotes from her novels as important to this story, to understanding what led her to be the person she was. Fascinating. This is a book for those who are thoughtful – It’s not self-help and Winterson doesn’t want you to like her. She tells you that here. She’s been telling you that in every novel she’s ever written. She doesn’t want you to like her because… she does not deserve it. Mrs Winterson (and the circumstances of her adoption) taught her to believe that…

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Being Lara

2012, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Fiction /

I ended up liking Being Lara, though in the beginning it was touch and go because I did not like Lara very much and I didn’t like her adopted parents very much either.  But, they did all grow on me after the story got moving and I ended up enjoying all of the characters – even when I wanted to shake them a bit.

I sure wish Lara’s adopted parents had answered her questions – when she asked for them. That they’d told the truth – when she asked them questions. That they had not ignored the letters from her birth mom.

But, I can also understand how scary it is to be the adoptive parents.  Except it’s really not about your fear, is it. You are, after all, the adult…

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My Father’s Daughter

2011, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Women /

I think I reserved My Father’s Daughter because I saw someone talking about in the Adoption Books Challenge. It sounded interesting and I didn’t have any other adoption themed books on my list – so I grabbed it.

It was… interesting.

Told from the perspective of the adopted child as adult – most of the adoption books I read are about young children or about the birth parent or the adoptive parent, so this was something slightly different.

When I read books about children from war-torn or third world countries being adopted by Americans or Euorpeans, there’s almost always a tone of… privilege. By adopting this poor child, we’re giving her a better life. Which is true… except when it isn’t.

Hannah Pool is a good example of this. White American mother and English father adopt African orphan. Mother dies, father does a nice job (once he gets his bearings), Hannah grows up in England – gets a good University education. Has traveled all over the world. And yet… what child, no matter what the situation, wants to be adopted. What child, no matter the situation, wouldn’t wish for her birth family – the experience of growing up with that culture and heritage?   When she learns she wasn’t an orphan, her birth father was not dead, and that she has siblings and finally visits… she sees their poverty, hears about a sister lost in the war, understands that if she had not been taken to that orphanage, she’d have grown up there – been like her sister(s) – and part of her, a big part of her, wishes that had happened.

I get it.

No matter how wonderful an adopted child’s life and family are, there’s always something that makes them different from others. I understand.

I don’t even know if having a completely open adoption can completely resolve these kinds of feelings and issues for adopted children. But I also know that adoption can be a good thing and the alternatives – children growing up in homes where adults can’t properly care for them or in orphanages or multiple foster homes, those are situations where it’s obvious adoption is a good alternative. But still.

Lesson learned: Adoption isn’t the ultimate solution. It brings problems all its own.

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Sing You Home

2011, Adoption Reading Challenge, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Women /

Jodi Picoult makes me growl – but in a good way.

I knew two things about Sing You Home before I reserved it at the library. I knew it had a gay theme of some sort, because I saw a Mombian mention it, and I knew it would be a complete mess. Nobody can pack more tragedy into one novel than Jodi Picoult.

Turns out it was about gay stuff. And also death, infertility, religion, abortion, alcoholism and probably more stuff that I can’t even remember.

And the reason I keep reading Jodi Picoult is because she writes really great characters – great characters who have more than their fair share of problems.

By the time I’d read the first section of the book, I figured what was going to happen was… exactly what DID happen. And as the story progressed, I knew exactly what the next problem Zoe was going to have to deal with would be. And by the time that problem showed up, I knew what the next issue was going to be. Picoult is predictable, but it’s weird because it doesn’t make me want to stop reading. It makes me yell out loud a lot. And say things like OMG, out loud. (At which point TW looks up and says, “WHAT?!” and before I can say anything, she says, “Oh. You’re reading Picoult.” And then she goes about her business.) 

Yea. It’s like that.

I don’t want to give away spoilers because I do want you to read this. I want you to know that even though I’ve never dealt with infertility, I think she did a nice job of telling the infertility portions of these stories.

I am queer and I think she did a tremendous job with Zoe and Vanessa. I don’t think I’d have changed anything – except giving them fewer issues and not having them choose to open THAT particular can of worms. Because duh – your ex husband NEVER reacts sanely. I do not care how great a guy he is. Or was.

And before I ruin the story for you. I’ll stop right there.

OH wait, one more interesting thing – the book includes a music CD (which I admit to not listening to yet) – that’s pretty interesting. Zoe is a music therapist and Picoult wrote the lyrics to the songs and a friend of hers wrote the music. You are invited to listen to a sing, after each section of the book, so you can hear Zoe through music as she goes through each of those sections. Really interesting addition to the book. I like the idea. It makes sense for Zoe.

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Double Dipping Challenges

2011, Adoption Reading Challenge, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction /

The only thing I knew about Betti on the High Wire was that it was a middle grade fiction book from the Cybils Shortlist. Bonus! It’s also about adoption, which means it is the first book I’ve read in Jenna’s Adoption Reading Challenge. Extra Bonus! It was good.

I reserved this one on audio and Prince J listened to it first. He wasn’t overly impressed but then again, his taste runs more toward Dexter. Elly listened to it and she liked it – except she didn’t like Lucy. Elly has very little time or patience for first graders.

Betti was Babo when she lived in a burned out circus camp with “Auntie Moo” and a bunch of “leftover kids” in a war torn country that Railsback never names. She was found wandering around the burned out camp when she was a toddler. Nobody really knows how old she is or exactly what happened to her circus parents but… odds are high, they were casualties of the war that’s raged in her country for years.

Americans come to the camp to meet the orphan children – and they generally adopt babies. Or pretty children. Not broken children like Babo, who has a broken eye and missing toes. They also don’t adopt broken children like Babo’s friend George, who is missing an arm. This is fine with Babo because she does not want to be adopted. She wants to stay in her circus camp and wait for her mother, the tallest woman in the world with a tail, and her father, the green alligator man with bumpy skin, to come back for her.

But Babo is adopted – and so is George. And they travel to the same city in the US, together but without an adult. George adapts pretty happily. Babo, who becomes Betti, does not. She wants to go home. She tries to be “bad” so the Buckworth’s will realize they made a mistake. But of course, she isn’t bad at all – and the Buckworth’s are a good family who work very hard to help her make her way.

There are the normal rough moments when Betti, whose English is good, gets confused about things like “free food at the grocery store” – or when the kids at day camp make fun of Betti (and George) —  or when both Betti and George are terrified by the fireworks on Fourth of July. And the moment when Betti realizes that her parents are dead… that’s hard.

Excellent storytelling. Excellent character development. So many children without families – in war torn countries and our own.

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