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Family Wanted: Stories of Adoption
Personal essays by Meg Bortin • Sarah Cameron • Dan Chaon • Dominic Collier • Bernard Cornwell • Robert Dessaix • Matthew Engel • Paula Fox • A. M. Homes • Tama Janowitz • Lynn Lauber • Carol Lefevre • Daniel Menaker • Priscilla T. Nagle • Sandra Newman • Mirabel Osler • Emily Prager • Jonathan Rendall • Martin Rowson • Abigail Rubin • Lise Saffran • Lindsay Sagnette • Hannah wa Muigai • Jeanette Winterson • Mark Wormald
Adoption, until recently a hidden subject, has become an open field of psychological study, policy debate, and ethical interest. Family Wanted is an honest, heartwarming, and heartbreaking collection featuring important authors personally involved in all sides of adoption. Here are more than twenty pieces, many published for the first time. Among the contributors are Paula Fox, an adoptee herself, who meets the daughter she didn’t raise and finds she is “the first woman related to me I could speak to freely”; Bernard Cornwell, adopted by a now-defunct religious cult, who responds by converting to “atheism and frivolity”; African author Hannah wa Muigai, who recounts being impregnated as a teenager by an older lover–whom she then found in bed with another man; Tama Janowitz, who to her comical shock learns to love the “hyperactive sweating lunatic” she adopted in China; and Daniel Menaker, who as an adoptive father becomes less concerned with the cause-and-effect of heredity and more content with “the lottery that to a large extent is everyone’s life.”
“Gripping . . . [Family Wanted] pulls the reader through [a] variety of emotions. . . . Some families work, others don’t. This anthology does.”
–The Guardian (London)
Adoption, until recently a hidden subject, has become an open field of psychological study, policy debate, and ethical interest. Family Wanted is an honest, heartwarming, and heartbreaking collection featuring important authors personally involved in all sides of adoption. Here are more than twenty pieces, many published for the first time. Among the contributors are Paula Fox, an adoptee herself, who meets the daughter she didn’t raise and finds she is “the first woman related to me I could speak to freely”; Bernard Cornwell, adopted by a now-defunct religious cult, who responds by converting to “atheism and frivolity”; African author Hannah wa Muigai, who recounts being impregnated as a teenager by an older lover–whom she then found in bed with another man; Tama Janowitz, who to her comical shock learns to love the “hyperactive sweating lunatic” she adopted in China; and Daniel Menaker, who as an adoptive father becomes less concerned with the cause-and-effect of heredity and more content with “the lottery that to a large extent is everyone’s life.”
“Gripping . . . [Family Wanted] pulls the reader through [a] variety of emotions. . . . Some families work, others don’t. This anthology does.”
–The Guardian (London)
- GenresAdoptionNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 3, 2010
A collection of many short stories, this book describes the experiences of adopted children, birth parents, and adoptive parents.
I loved the section about adoptive parents, though perhaps that's because I'm an adoptive parent myself. The section of stories about birth parents was OK. It certainly helped me better understand the perspectives of birth parents and their heartache, but I've read other books that do a better job achieving that goal than this one.
The thing I really disliked about the book was the collection of stories by adopted children. They seemed like a very angry, disconnected bunch of selfish people. I think the author picked the wrong group of people to represent adoptive children. If the goal was to help readers learn more about each perspective and connect with the unique issues of each group, the author picked the wrong people for the adopted children section. I didn't like them, didn't like their stories, and couldn't connect with their issues.
Perhaps the fact that the author herself has no personal connection to adoption played a part in the stories she selected. As a result, I think she used a somewhat flawed process to select writers for the book or to select which stories to include. I think she picked people who are good writers, but not necessarily people who have a good story to tell, that others can learn from.
Also, many of the authors are British, and perhaps that made them seem a bit cold to me. Their communication style seemed difficult to connect with.
I loved the section about adoptive parents, though perhaps that's because I'm an adoptive parent myself. The section of stories about birth parents was OK. It certainly helped me better understand the perspectives of birth parents and their heartache, but I've read other books that do a better job achieving that goal than this one.
The thing I really disliked about the book was the collection of stories by adopted children. They seemed like a very angry, disconnected bunch of selfish people. I think the author picked the wrong group of people to represent adoptive children. If the goal was to help readers learn more about each perspective and connect with the unique issues of each group, the author picked the wrong people for the adopted children section. I didn't like them, didn't like their stories, and couldn't connect with their issues.
Perhaps the fact that the author herself has no personal connection to adoption played a part in the stories she selected. As a result, I think she used a somewhat flawed process to select writers for the book or to select which stories to include. I think she picked people who are good writers, but not necessarily people who have a good story to tell, that others can learn from.
Also, many of the authors are British, and perhaps that made them seem a bit cold to me. Their communication style seemed difficult to connect with.
April 4, 2015
What does adoption look like from the perspectives of adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents? This is a great collection of essays and stories written by a rich diversity of authors from Western societies and African and Asian cultures, men and women, rich and poor, dated and more recent. Some adoptive parents, adoptees, or birth parents will make the reader furious by their lack of compassion in the case of birth parents forcing their adopted children to adopt a culture much different than their own, or foresight, in the case of teenagers failing to use contraceptives. These stories reveal that among the intimate exchanges in the triad of characters there is not one path an adoptee, adopted parent, or birth parents take.
April 3, 2018
This was an interesting read, well balanced with stories from people who had been adopted, parents of adopted children and mothers who put their babies up for adoption. Dominic Collier's story sticks in my mind particularly.
September 25, 2013
This is a collection of personal essays on adoption and -- full disclosure -- I am one of the authors. But that's not why I'm recommending the book. Also included are Tama Janowitz, Jeanette Winterson, Daniel Menaker, A.M. Homes, Matthew Engel, Bernard Cornwell and other great writers, each of whom has a poignant story to tell. The essays are arranged in three sections -- by writers who were adopted, who gave up a child for adoption, and who became adoptive parents. Some of the stories are almost unbearably sad, others joyful, but all speak to the question of what constitutes family in our modern world. And they all point to one conclusion: Love, not blood, is the tie that binds.
June 29, 2010
I hesitated to give it five stars only because some of the stories were so very negative. However, it was still good to hear those and learn from them, and there were some that were amazing to read too... so five stars.
July 1, 2011
I liked this collection. While not all of the stories are great (I didn't like the style of some of them, and one wasn't well-written), they all seemed honest. Heartfelt. I cried through some of them and I laughed a few times too.
January 19, 2011
This is a painful but important book for adoptive families to read.
June 7, 2011
I've read this previously and just picked it up again. I love the voices and different viewpoints.
April 12, 2013
It was a fine book, but it wasn't what I was looking for.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews