When I stated writing for #flipthescript/NaBloPomo/NAM this month I said that some of my posts would be short. This is one of them. Holdng down 2 jobs and my Bastard Nation Work sometimes wipes me out. Now I have to get up in the middle of the might to do an out-of-town job tomorrow. I got my hair cut this afternoon and fell asleep in the chair. Not a good sign. It’s one of those days, so here’s a short one:
I don’t make it a secret that I don’t read a lot of adoption literature. I read a lotof books, but adopta-lit isn’t high on my reading list. I prefer 19th century English and American novels, mysteries. pop culture, American history, organized crime ( my field in grad school) and auto/biographies. But I do have a list of adaption books that I’ve enjoyed over the years and find important.to the political and the personal. Occasionally, I”m asked what adoption-related books I like. Here is a non-fiction list:
- Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, ed. E. Wayne Carp
- Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: the Debate Over Sealed Birth Records by Katarina Wagar
- Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays, ed Sally Haslanger and Charlotte Witt
- Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58 by E Wayne Carp
- And Sin No More: Social Policy and Unwed Mothers in Cleveland, 1855-1990 by Marian J. Morton
- Babies Without Borders: Adoption, Migration Across the Americas by Karen Dubinsky
- Beggars and Choosers: How Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States by Rickie Solinger
- Birthmark by Lorraine Dusky
- Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France by Kristin Elizabeth Gager
- Children and Youth in Adoption, Orphanages, and Foster Care: a Historical Handbook and Guide, ed. Lori Askeland
- Coming Apart Together: Fragments from An Adoption by Emily Hipchen
- Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescence Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885-1920 by Mary E. Odem
- Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890-1945 by Regina G Kunzel
- Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption by E Wayne Carp.
- Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures by Craig Hickman
- Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice by Laury Oakes.
- Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and its Consequences by Janine M Baer
- Imagining Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture, ed Marianne Novy
- In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America by Michael B. Katz
- International Adoption: Global Inequalities an the Circulation of Children by Diana Marre and Laura Briggs
- Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found by Sarah Saffian
- Jean Paton and the Struggle to Reform American Adoption by E Wayne Carp
- Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness by BJ Lifton
- Like Our Very Own; Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851-1950 by Julie Berebitsky
- Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television by Nina C Leibman
- Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience by BJ Lifton
- Killing the Black Bod” Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
- Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia by David L Ransel
- My Dark Places by James Ellroy (not about adoption but relevant)
- National Council for Adoption Factbook III, ed William L Pierce and Conaught Marshner. (Bill Pierce’s last hurrah! And no, it wasn’t published by The Onion.
- One Small Sacrifice by Trace DeMeyer
- Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama by Marianne Novy
- Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico by Laura Briggs
- Sacrifcied for Honor: Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control by David Kertzer
- Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare by Dorothy Roberts
- Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transrnational Adoption by Laura Briggs
- The Adopted Break Silence by Jean Paton (out of print)
- The Adoption Mystique by Joanne Wolf Small
- The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond
- The Child Catchers: Rescue, Traffickig and the New Gospel fo Adoption by Kathryn Joyce
- The Dark Side of Adoption by Mirah Riben
- The Declassified Adoptee: Essays of an Adoption Activist by Amanda H L Wooston-Transue
- The Last Invisible Continent: Essays on Adoption and Identity by Michael Allen Pottter
- The Language of Blood: A Memoir by Jane Jeong TrenkaThe Last Invisible Continent: Essays on Adoption and Identity by Michael Allen Potter
- The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins by Dean Jensen
- The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance by John BoswellThe Other Mother by Carol Schaefer
- The Other Mother by Carol Schaefer
- The Way We Never Were: America Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Koonz.
- Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v Wade by Rickie Solinger
