On Saint Patrick’s Day, as my son’s name is Patrick, I decided to honor his grandmother, my mother-in-law, whom I loved most dearly. I wrote this essay for her when she was 102. When time came for her to accept that her only son would choose a black girl as his wife, I never heard any negative comments. Florita accepted me and Patrick fully and unconditionally into the fold of her family. And that was remarkable in the 1970’s upstate New ...
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This blog post was inspired by Denise Oliver Velez’s diary in The Daily Koz, https://bit.ly/1F9qYs3 in which she writes about the almost complete lack of representation of non-White women when female merits are praised during this month. It comes down to the usual, that history is written by the victors, and those have belonged, in our time and age, to the White race.
I was thinking of blogging about women writers whose ...
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 In Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:Guatemala City is only 15 degrees north of the Equator, but at five thousand feet above sea level the altitude allows ... |
In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
My German mother and I boarded a busy ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
And so, I learned that no woman in the world, “not even the Queen of England,” was spared a situation that would continue for a few days ...
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In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:
I was passing by Vati’s room one afternoon; we still ...
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Those who seek to adopt and those who have adopted don’t want to read about unsuccessful adoption stories or hear from adult adoptees who are at odds with their fate of having been given up for adoption. It’s easy to understand why that’s so. After all, parenting is the one science for which there are no guidelines. My childhood, as the only black pearl among white ones in Guatemala City, was undoubtedly a happy one.
Going to town ...
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As I was considering Josephine Baker adopting a dozen children of different races, ethnicities, and cultures to prove that people of diverse backgrounds can live in peace and harmony with each other, I remember a conversation I had with an East African friend a few years ago regarding the AIDS epidemic that orphaned so many children throughout sub-Saharan ...
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Some full moons are different than others. Last night’s did not let me sleep. I awoke at 2 AM with my creativity in full gear, and put pencil to paper to write about something no one else in the world - and I mean it: in the World - has experienced. I’m talking about early WWII, from the perspective of a ...
This is my response to Anne Cavanaugh-Sawan’s article in Adoptive Families Circle: Does She Know?
Love this sensitive, well-written post.
It is clear that you are a psychologist and know how important it is to include the story the birthmother may have had, even though it may be quite different to your sensitized version. But your daughter knows she is an adopted child, and while she may at this point not show you that she feels different, you ...
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