The ties that bind—and unbind—us from each other are staggering, and come in all different shapes and moods, emotions and motives. Adoption, so often viewed as the end of the family journey, is actually one timepoint on the continuum of a person's life.
I realized this when reading a book written by my friend, Amy Wallen. Her debut novel, MoonPies and Movie Stars, a Los Angeles Times Best Seller, is a comedy, one that sounds like it would have little to do with family, with abandonment in its many forms. But it does.
In her novel there is a stunning scene near the beginning, of a girl abandoned by her mother. It's a crucial and poignant discovery, and one that drives the narrative on a very deep level. I asked Amy what was it about abandonment in literature—in life-that we all relate to, even if we've not been abandoned in the literal sense?
"As human beings we are creatures who seek out love from others by giving our own love. At any point in our development if our love is rejected this can feel like abandonment," Amy said.
And that's a feeling that can happen regardless of how you came into your family, something that, in some way, we relate to.
This made me wonder about the themes—in the literature sense—about adoption. I made a promise to myself to slowly and purposefully seek out literature that focused on adoption. Memoirs, novels, graphic novels, short stories, essays—the format didn't matter to me. This is the first in a series of occasional posts about the all stories about adoption, all different, each one unique.
The Shiniest Jewel by Marian Henley
This graphic memoir is written and illustrated by the creator of the original Maxine comic strip. Readers will recognize her ubiqutious strips from seeing them in More, Glamour, Ms, MAD, and many other, and from their PBS adaptations. Marian Henley tells the story about the international adoption of her son from an orphanage in Russia and braids it with an equally moving narrative about her father's physical decline and her own midlife discovery of true love. There is something about this book that really moved me, and I read it twice and cried, but I laughed more than cried. Something about Henley's ability to find both the absurdity and universality of becoming a parent, of losing a parent, finding a mate and, ahem, of getting older is wonderfully relatable and comforting. I loved it, and so did my husband. The truth is, this is a book that will strike a chord with many—whether you're a parent or not—because it's about love, quest and being true to self.
The Favorites by Mary Yukari Waters
This is a novel by award-winning novelist Mary Yakari Waters, whose short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories and more. The Favorites, of all the books I read, was perhaps the most quiet yet the most stirring on a deep gut level. When teenager Sarah, who is half-Japanese and half-American travels to Japan to visit her family, she feels like an outsider. She quickly learns that, in traditional Kyoto, personal boundaries are firmly drawn and actions are not always what they appear. She also learns of a longstanding family secret--an interfamily adoption arranged during WWII. The reader learns this as Sarah does, from her mother (hardcover edition, p. 32):
"In-family adoption are actually an old tradition." In the villages, if you didn't have children there was no one to take care of you in old age. So extended relatives had to help each other out. But they always kept a child inside the family. Japanese people never give away their babies to strangers."
It is from this original secret being revealed that the story unfolds, both forward in time as well as backward. The Favorites feels very real and very true. In its understatedness it is at once haunting and compelling as it tells the story of keeping secrets, belonging, place in the family and the heart.
The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Holmes
Award-winning writer and Guggenheim Fellow, A.M. Holmes has authored numerous novels and short story collections, and writes for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, among others. The Mistress's Daughter is her memoir about how her birth parents initially contacted her, and what happened after their reunification. Holmes was adopted at birth during a time when closed adoptions were the norm. The first part of the book reads like a page-turner, a mystery she is on to find her birthparents after initial contact is made. The the second half is more about the journey to make sense of them, their lives together--and apart. This book is, at the core, about holding onto oneself, about feeling fragile when you're not certain who you are, and you're not sure if those feelings will ever lift. This book is about adoption, abandonment, acceptance. The closing line in the book reveals so much:
"Did I choose to be found? No. Do I regret it? No. I couldn't not know."
The Red Thread by Ann Hood
Ann Hood is the author of ten books, including The Knitting Circle, and the memoir, A Journey Through Grief. In The Red Thread, a novel, she tells the story of a Maya Lange, whose child has died in a freak accident. Through a series of events, Maya subsequently opens an adoption agency that specializes in placing baby girls from China. Knowing that Ann Hood had, herself, lost her own 5-year-old daughter quite suddenly, and that she had subsequently, with her husband, adopted a child from China, gave this novel a certain feeling of realness, of gravitas, of feeling like what happened could happen to anyone. The Red Thread tells of the interconnected relationships of various couples who are setting out to adopt, for their own reasons, from China, through The Red Thread agency. They have been placed, by Maya, in the same travel group and, over the course of time as they wait for their referrals, they struggle as issues rise to the surface that threaten what they thought they knew about themselves. This is a book, not only about wanting a baby, but about coming to terms with what family really means to each of us.
Related book posts: Talking Adoption With NPR's Scott Simon and The Waiting, With Author of The Russian Word for Snow, Janis Cooke Newman
