Last week, an article in the Huffington Post https://huff.to/1I0A0fj To The Lady Who Called my Toddler a Thug, written by Rachel Garlinghouse, a white mother who adopted a black boy, got my attention. Particularly because of her concern that her little boy, just because of his appearance was, innocently and not so innocently stereotyped by people whom she knew. It’s the US, I thought, and it’s a dangerous, racialized ...
Continue Reading →
In the past few blogs I’ve written about wanting to love my birth mother Rosa, a woman I did not get to know. The mother who raised me, however, I knew and loved dearly.
She was 50 when she decided to keep me. her name was Esther, but I called her Mutti, for she was German. She was born in 1888, while Queen Victoria still ruled in England. Picture being raised by a Victorian woman! I could ...
Continue Reading →
These days I’m again going through the paces again with my hair. By that I mean: now that it’s more gray and white than black, I’m trying to figure out what to do with all the gray kinks and curls. I wish I had the nerve to just go “natural” the way younger women are doing. I’m also fascinated by the way African women have for centuries worked their hair. Look at novelist Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi’s many styles! Here she is in my ...
Continue Reading →
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:
The night I finished reading Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, the wind blowing outside my window ushered messages into my dreams.
I was Annie John, and had ...
Continue Reading →
At her dinner party last fall, Kathleen mentioned that I had written a book and suggested that everyone should read it. Suzie read it and recommended it to her book club, The Page Turners. “It would be great if you could be there when we discuss Split,” she said after the book was accepted by the group, “but it won’t be until February. Would you like to join us then?” Now isn’t that a wonderful question? I know of several ...
Continue Reading →
Here is an excerpt from my memoir Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity in which I write about having grown up as an exotic child among Whites in Guatemala City.
“On my first day of school, ...
Continue Reading →
For the past several weeks I’ve been following posts on The Lost Daughters website, where Karen Pickell and other contributors discussed The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption, by Karen Joyce. The thoroughly researched issues in the book have finally exposed the machinations of the adoption industry. For that, Karen Joyce ...
Last night I came upon an article recently written by professor Darron T. Smith PhD. in The Huffington Post’s Black Voices. It underlines issues I had to deal with, anguished and alone, way into adulthood. It’s titled Can Love Overcome Race in Transracial Adoption? and adresses ...