The Last Invisible Continent Redux

A different review written by me of Michael Allen Potter’s The Last Invisible Continent:  Essays on Adoption and Identity  has been published in the Columbus Free Press. There is one error in it–my fault.  The number of sealed OBCs in Ohio is now estimated to be 400,000 not 100,000. Read Mike’s blog,  icartographer TWITTER:   Twitter fried my account and I was forced to start a new one.  Besides tweeting The Daily Bastardette I tweet  (and retweet) about adoption issues, civil rights, freedom of the press,  the corporate state,  Depeche Mode,  literature and books, plus some local stuff.  I retweet generously.  Join me there! Daily Bastardette @DBastardette.

Book Review: The Last Invisible Continent: Essays on Adoption and Identity by Michael Allen Potter. A superb and elegantly written mixing of the personal and the political.

Although I am an adoptee rights activist I seldom read adoption books outside of history or other topics I have a specific interest in. I almost always avoid memoirs. To be honest most are awful. It may be good therapy to write your adoption story, but please leave it in your desk drawer!  Michael Allen Potter’s The Last Invisible Continent: Essays on Adoption and Identity is quite a different story. I’ve been familiar with Mike’s work for several years. I knew part of his story. I knew this book would be important. I was thrilled when he emailed me a few days ago and told me the book was finished and on Kindle. I downloaded it immediately.  And holy moley! What a book it is! Unlike the typical weepy adoption memoir this one is hard and gritty. It’s of the street, but also of the heart. Mike doesn’t pull any punches about his mother’s mental illness, his battle with alcohol, or his rotten adoption, which he discusses almost in passing, though it it obviously the core of the essays.  My personal favorites are the essays “The Re-education of Michael Allen Potter” and “Checking the Bastard Box.”  In “Re-education”, Mike recounts Continue Reading →