Tag Archives: Joanne Wolf Small

"Adopted in America: A Study of Stigma" by BN’s Joanne Wolf Small; popular research download

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Congratulations!   Adopted in America: A Study of Stigma, a paper by long-time adoptee rights advocate Joanne Wolf Small was recently listed on Social Science Research Network’s  Top Ten download list for  Anthropology and Archaeology Research Network: Kinship & Gender (subtopic) Anthropology and Archaeology Research Network: Kinship, Gender, the Body and Sexuality (Topic): Social & Political Philosophy eJournal. “North America (topic), Culture Area students eJournal, Philosophy Research Network: Discrimination, Oppression, Coercion, Consent to Risk or Harm (topic) Social & Political Philosophy eJournal. You can download the paper for free here.  For decades, Joanne has been a true adoptee rights warrior   and bastard goddess.  She is a member of BN’s Legislative Committee. You can read more about Joanne and her book, Adoption Mystique  (that says it all!) here  Cross-posted to Bastard Nation.

Adoption Mystique Now in eBook!

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Good news!  The Kindle version of the adoption class Adoption Mystique by Joanne Wolf Small, has just been released. You can find Nook here. By way of review, here is what I wrote about the 2007 re-issue with new material, of the original 2004 edition. …a book that every adoptee rights activist needs to keep on the nightstand. I first ran into Joanne in 1980 when somebody gave me an article about sealed records and identities she’d written for a social work publication. It was from Joanne that I first heard the peculiar legal concept that the adoptee and natural parent(s) are “as if dead to each other.” That article stuck with me, and I credit Joanne in large part for raising my consciousness and bringing me into this strange adoptee rights “career” a decade later. But Joanne has done more than write. In 1980, she was the only adopted member of the federal Model Adoption Legislation Procedures and Advisory Panel (Model Adoption Act 1980). The panel’s sweeping recommendations, including unrestricted records for all adoptees nationwide, was a broadside on the secret adoption system. The report sent the industry into such a tizzy that Gladney formed the strong arm lobby, Continue Reading →

Check out Once was Von: Interview with Joanne Wolf Small

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Blogger Von has a nice interview with long-time bastard rights activist Joanne Wolf Little, Adoption Mystique, titled after Joanne’s hard hitting book of the same name. I was “introduced” to Joanne in 1980, via an article she’d written in a psych publication a few years earlier. She was the first person I ever “knew” who politicized the adoption experience and articulated how we’d been screwed and bastaradized by the state After I read Adoption Mystique, I thought, she’s said it all! What can we add to it? Damn! I really liked Joanne’s answer to Von’s question: Do you believe the stigma of adoption and of illegitimacy have changed” but I’ll let you go over there and read her reply yourself. Joanne is a long time member of Bastard Nation and a member of Bastard Nation’s Legislative Committee. In 2007 I wrote about Joanne here (scroll down).

OMNIUM-GATHERUMS: CLOSING OUT 2007

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  Well, it’s the last day of the year–or thereabouts–and (surprise!) there’s a lot of things Bastardette didn’t’ get around to writing about. Below are a few thoughts, in no special order, on some of them. A MEETING OF THE MINDS: THE EVAN B. DONALDSON RECORDS CONCLAVE: On December 10 I attended the EB Donaldson’s “conclave” of adoption reform organizations and individual activists in New York City. My critical comments on the EBD report, For the Records: the Restoration of a Right, are published in the Daily Bastardette (November 15, 2007)and in the Bastard Quarterly. I haven’t changed my mind. If anything, I am more critical than I was two months ago. The real importance of the report as far as I’m concerned has been the publicity generated by it and the public discourse that followed. Claud has written a good overall account of the meeting which I recommend you read. I’ll just add a few comments. As a grassroots activist I had my doubts about the meeting. We don’t need no suits! And as the bad guy of records access–the one who won’t take compromise for an answer–I was pretty sure I’d be the minority voice. What fun! I Continue Reading →