Get ready for American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption. Gabrielle Glaser’s much-anticipated book will be released on January 26. This is the adoption blockbuster of the year–hell maybe the decade!
A year ago, just before Covid hit, Jeannette Dudley Robnett, Shawna Hodgson, (Texas Adoptee Rights Coalition) and I enjoyed a leisurely lunch with Gabrielle at the Stagecoach Inn in Salado,Texas, where we drank wine and talked adoption (and other things) for a few hours. It was, to put it mildly, a treat to talk to someone who actually thinks adoptee rights activists aren’t creepy ingrates and unicorn killers and that our rights are little more than those of a cockoach. I hope our discussion helped.
Here’s a partial description of American Baby from Amazon:
Claiming to be acting in the best interests of all, the adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and placed them with hopeful families, fabricating stories about infants’ origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. Adoption agencies and other organizations that purported to help pregnant women struck unethical deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific “assessments,” and shamed millions of young women into surrendering their children.
Since the book isn’t released yet, I obviously haven’t read it, but early reviews are wowzers.
“A searing narrative that combines the detailed saga of one unwed teenage mother with deep research on all aspects of a scandalous adoption industry…Throughout, the author deftly follows this genuinely human story, exposing the darker corners of adoption in 20th-century America. …Kirkus Review
“Glaser painstakingly researched Margaret’s story, and here wraps it around a social history of adoption, exploring evolving cultural and political views about motherhood. She shows how orphan trains and babyfarms gave way to corporate private adoptions, and documents the years-long legal battles wrought by adoptees and birth parents trying to access their personal histories…Booklist
Stephanie Koonz, whose book The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap and Marriage: A History, a book that has informed my own work, says;
“This moving story of one teenager’s experience with coerced adoption in the 1960s is also an eye-opening expose of an entire industry built on lies, greed, racism, sexism, and stunning amounts of medical malpractice. Riveting—and sobering.”
Join the Discussion
As part of the book launch, on January 27 at 7:30 PM (est) Gabrielle will be featured in the Watchung Booksellers Evening with the Authors series where she will discuss her work with Zara Phillips adoptee, singer, songwriter, and author of Somebody’s Child, whom some of you may know from various adoption events and social media. The event is free and held on CrowdCast. You can register here.