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The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption - Softcover

Gibney, Shannon

 
9780593112014: The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593112016 ISBN 13: 9780593112014
Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A MICHAEL L. PRINTZ HONOR BOOK • Strikingly honest, this speculative memoir explores the rarely depicted experience of growing up as a mixed transracial adoptee and offers an insightful look into the discovery of one’s own identity.

“A fantastical, transcendent memory collage that shirks convention in search of what is real and true about familial bonds.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Breathtakingly beautiful.”—Kimberly McKee, PhD, author of Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States

Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be tells the true story of author Shannon Gibney’s experience growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents in America alongside the fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth by the white woman who put her up for adoption.

At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines, occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins.

Gibney surrounds those stories with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the absurdities of the adoptee experience. The end result is a unique portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Shannon Gibney is an author and university professor. Her novel See No Color, drawn from her life as a transracial adoptee, was hailed by Kirkus as "an exceptionally accomplished debut" and by Publishers Weekly as "an unflinching look at the complexities of racial identity." Her sophomore novel, Dream Country, received five starred reviews and earned her a second Minnesota Book Award. The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be earned a Michael L. Printz Honor. She lives with her two Liberian-American children in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The literature of adoption is a fictional genre in itself. Adoptees know it to be generally as fantastical as any space opera—­and just as entertaining to the masses.
Every story must begin with the vulnerable but good-­hearted poor birth mother who loves her baby very much but cannot take care of it (the birth father is always conspicuously absent in these narratives). There is a kindly, upper-­middle-­class, usually white couple who desperately wants a child, and have pursued all avenues in order to get one (if the couple is adopting internationally, they are in a rich country in the Global North, and have spent years on various lists, waiting for an available child, many times spending thousands of dollars). They fight, despite all odds, to build their family through adoption, in the process creating a healthy, happy, thriving child who eventually grows into a healthy, happy, thriving adult who has bonded perfectly with their new colorblind family. All this miraculous transformation from a poor, brown, cast-­off orphan. Love conquers all.

Once the birth mother has given up the child, she is no longer part of the story.

Once the child is adopted, there is no talk of loss of first family, culture, language, or community. The adoption is simply a bureaucratic event that happened, and then is over.

Since the birth father was not part of the story from the beginning, he is not part of the adoptee’s story as it progresses.

And if you ask about any of the particularities of this literature of adoption: who is adopting whom, from where to where, what are the racial dynamics of the transaction, the role that money plays, corruption, the trauma of removal, the burden of assimilation, you are branded an angry and maladjusted adoptee.

When most of the literature written about a marginalized group of people comes from white adoptive parents who are psychologists, sociologists, creative writers, and professors who don’t identify themselves as adoptive parents in their “objective” work, what other possible outcome could there be?

This is how I came to understand epistemological violence.

In my body.




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Verlag
Penguin Young Readers Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593112016
ISBN 13 
9780593112014
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Edel Music & Entertainment GmbH
https://www.edel.com

Neum�hlen 17
Hamburg
Hamburg
Deutschland