About the book:
Through the years I was often encouraged to tell the story of my ‘fairy tale’ life. However, not until reaching my late forties, when I became increasingly at odds with myself, did I discover that what seemed magical to others was not necessarily so. Eventually, I discovered issues more important than details of my life I needed to share with a larger audience.
Catana Tully at 8 months of age
The central theme of my book addresses ethnic misplacement due to having been raised within a culture and among a people different to my own. I have structured the story chronologically to reveal layers of great privilege and simultaneous disinheritance.
Unlike any adoption memoir, in this story the issues of the adopted child surface much later in life. The first obvious market for this book is older exotic children who were adopted into mainstream White culture in the US and Europe where interracial adoptions have become a popular phenomenon. However, the concerns should be of great interest to all parents, or prospective parents of adoptees, older exotic adoptees, and all people of mixed races.
While Split at the Root is a profoundly personal journey, everyone who has read the manuscript – colleagues and friends in the US, Europe, and Latin America – have found aspects that resonate within their own, very different experiences. My colleagues in departments of human development and psychology, and several counselors I know, find the issues imbedded in the story urgent and in need of further exploration. With that in mind, I have started to write an academic version addressing the issues raised in Split at the Root, such as the development of identity in young children, and the risk of emotional incest, particularly for those who lack the protection of their own extended family.
Beyond such timely issues, Split at the Root is a dramatic, complex, psychological mystery that will attract a large and diverse audience.