ASAIK: ADOPTION MEMOIRISTS– "HOW COULD YOU CHOOSE MY BIRTHRIGHT FOR ME?"
Lorainne Dusky (standing); Jean Strauss, Emily Hipchen, Carol Schaefer The ASAIK conference (Association for the Study of Adoption, Kinship, and Identity) is Bastardette’s absolutely favorite adoption conference! The event 2 years ago in Tampa was fun (yes academics can be–and do–have fun!) and crucial to my understanding of the warp and woof of adoption politics beyond hum-drum “activism.” Literature, art, rhetorical constructions, history, cultural studies, and philosophy give an authentic voice to adoption’s actors. They expose the profound problems of identity loss, state-built identity, psychological repression, and otherness–illogics that go far beyond adoption industry manipulation and power politics, and into the very heart of what makes adoption absurd. Daniel Deronda is not far removed from sealed records. “How could you choose my birthright for me?”Today’s first session, “Memoirs, Classic and New,” was a bang-up with authors Lorraine Dusky, Jean Strauss, Carol Schaefer and Emily Hipchen discussing their adoption experience, the process of memoir writing, and reading excerpts from their books. BJ Lifton, unfortunately could not make it due to illness. All of the panelists pointed out that they were writing about a subject that until recently was supposed to be stuffed away in the back closet like an ugly cloth Continue Reading →