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From the Dust Jacket:
In October 1997, journalist Karin Evans walked into an orphanage in southern China and met her new daughter, a beautiful one-year-old baby girl. In that fateful moment of matchmaking, she became part of a profound, increasingly common human drama that links abandoned girls in the East with parents in the West. Each year, thousands of foreigners travel to China to bring home a child, who is, for the adoptive family, a blessing beyond measure. But the exchange has a dark side: almost all the children filling the orphanages of the world’s most populous nation are girls, found tucked in doorways or bundled on park benches. For every daughter placed in waiting arms, countless others are left behind to unknown fates. In The Lost Daughters of China, Evans explores the emotional and political complexities of an international phenomenon that creates families across the boundaries of culture and geography. She describes the trying but often comic intercontinental journey in which she and her husband—guided by an adoption coordinator known fondly as “Saint Max,” and armed with high hopes and powdered formula—trekked with seventeen other families from Hong Kong to the Pearl River Delta to meet their daughters. At once a compelling personal narrative and an evocative portrait of contemporary China, this book investigates the country’s legacy of lost daughters. Evans casts light on an important untold story, delving into the underpinnings of an age-old cultural preference for boys, the machinations of the one-child policy, and the growing pains of modern China. In a sensitive and moving look at the unprecedented mixing of two cultures, she deftly weaves together the tales of the children themselves with the mystery of their anonymous Chinese families who remain in the shadows. Illuminating the real-life stories behind the statistics, The Lost Daughters of China is an unforgettable account of the red thread that winds from China’s orphanages to hearts around the globe. About the Author: Karin Evans has been an editor for numerous publications, including Outside, Rocky Mountain Magazine, the San Francisco Examiner’s Sunday magazine, Health, and Hippocrates, and spent two years as a stringer for Newsweek’s Hong Kong bureau. Evans lives with her husband and their daughter in San Francisco. |
Love and Fried Chicken is a collection of the first 104 newspaper columns written by Travis A. Naughton (author of the internationally acclaimed book Naked Snow Angels) for the Boone County Journal in Ashland, Missouri. Travis Naughton is an author, columnist, substitute school teacher, ordained minister, press box announcer, jug band musician, and stand-up comedian who lives in scenic Southern Boone County Missouri. He and his wife Bethany are the proud parents of three wonderful children, two of whom were adopted in China. Alex, Tiana, and Truman are the subjects of many of Naughton’s best columns—and the reason he drinks. |
From the Publisher:
In her compelling memoir Love and Loss: A Story About Life, Death and Rebirth, Jane Bay gives us a glimpse of the invisible web of connectedness between us and its power to help heal even the deepest of wounds. In sharing the loss of her Tibetan foster daughter, Namgyal Youdon, Bay offers a rare opportunity to travel through the agonizing process of grieving and experience the power and healing of unconditional love. The story is played out in the rich fabric of the cultural history of Tibetan Buddhism inside Tibet, India and America. Written as an “e-mail diary,” Love and Loss is based on e-mails Bay sent out immediately after Namgyal died, replies she received from her dearest friends, e-mails from Namgyal’s brothers (one in Tibet and one in India, before and after Namgyal’s death) and e-mails that she and Namgyal exchanged during the last two years of Namgyal’s life. Brief narratives interwoven throughout the e-mails complete the story. About the Author: Jane Bay has worked at Lucasfilm Ltd. in Marin County, California, for twenty-nine years. She is currently working on two other books: Growing Up Southern: Stories from the Attic of Childhood Memories and an anthology of short stories entitled The Magic of New Mexico. |
From the Back Cover:
Many people say being a parent is the toughest job there is. John DeGarmo, foster and adoptive parent, tells us just how tough it can be, having parented over 40 children. At times he and his wife, Kelly, have cared for up to nine children at a time, many with severe trauma and learning difficulties. Love and Mayhem is an honest and open account of the struggles, sadness and joy that comes with the job of being a parent to a traumatised child. From the sleepless nights with babies withdrawing from drug-addiction, to the heartbreak when a child moves on to another home, and the loving chaos times that come with a large and blended family, John DeGarmo fights for the many children who have come through his home. About the Author: John DeGarmo is a proud foster and adoptive parent who has fostered over 40 children. He regularly speaks on his experiences at conferences and training sessions, and is dedicated to improving and promoting successful foster and adoptive care systems. He is the author of The Foster Parenting Manual: A Practical Guide to Creating a Loving, Safe and Stable Home, Keeping Foster Children Safe Online: Positive Strategies to Prevent Cyberbullying, Inappropriate Contact and Other Digital Dangers and of A Different Home: A New Foster Child’s Story with Kelly DeGarmo, all published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, as well as his first memoir, Fostering Love: One Foster Parent’s Journey. John lives with their foster and adoptive children in Georgia, USA. |
We all live lives of dependence in one way or another. Joree Harbeck was born thirteen weeks premature. She suffered severe seizures hours after birth that caused cerebral palsy and significant damage to her brain. Her prognosis was pessimistic. Love goes both ways when we are willing to admit there is nothing we can do to determine the outcome of our lives, and we surrender to the truth that we are all dependent on others to assist us in traveling this road of life. Joy comes when we allow others to love and care for us deeply and when we do the same in return. |
With the collapse of the Iron Curtain in the last decade, one of the most enduring images has been the children left in dark, medieval orphanages to fend for themselves. Malnourished and unloved babies with sad eyes and no futures. Hundreds of New Zealand couples saw those images from Romania and other countries, and tried to adopt these children. Love Has No Borders is the story of the difficulties they encountered. It is a story of tragedy, and of triumphs. |
From the Back Cover:
A mother and a daughter tell their story. They share their struggle; the mother to connect with a distant and cocaine-addicted daughter and the daughter to believe she deserves the love offered. You will gain insight into the pain of a traumatic childhood, Attention Deficit Disorder and the world of drugs and street life. You will learn some creative solutions for connecting in difficult relationships. Sound guidance in the form of fourteen lessons is provided for changing relationship dynamics. For those entering the “real world” after jail or recovery, transitional information and direction are offered. Most of all you will be shown how to turn hope into loving action. We can all grow and learn from relationships. About the Author: Patricia Morgan began life in rural Ontario where she met and married her teen sweetheart, Les Morgan. After careers as an Early Childhood Educator and parent Education Facilitator, Patricia returned to school in 1984 to completed a masters degree in Humanistic and Clinical Psychology. She has worked as a family therapist, career counsellor and consultant to parents of acting out teenagers. In 1999 she became a Certified Integrative Body Psychotherapist and has a counselling practice in Calgary, Alberta. Patricia has created and delivered dozens of courses and workshops dealing with parent education, family dynamics, women’s issues, self esteem and the value of a light hearted lifestyle. She is increasingly being invited to conferences as a keynote or seminar speaker. As an accidental writer she is grateful for the gifts that have come from revealing the story of her relationship with her daughter, Kelly. Patricia is also mother to Benjamin and Katie and grandmother to Kelly’s two children, James and Danielle. Patricia is vibrantly alive and happily connected to her loved ones ... most days. Kelly Morgan has been in addiction recovery for over five years participating in a number of programs. Since her Attention Deficit Disorder diagnosis she has become informed and better skilled at managing it. She now works at balancing being a student at the University of Windsor with being a single parent mom to her two children, James and Danielle. She has also become a supportive source to others who are entering the recovery process or who are beginning to make healthy changes in their lives. While there are some days she still struggles with life challenges, Kelly most often celebrates her new accomplishments and blessings. By the Same Author: Adoption and the Care of Children: The British and American Experience (1998, Institute of Economic Affairs) and Adoption: The Continuing Debate (1999, Institute of Economic Affairs). |
From the Dust Jacket:
Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She’d been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor’s orders, the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean everything to them. Still an active correspondent, Tucker crisscrossed the continent, filing stories about the uprisings in the Congo, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the post-genocidal conflict in Rwanda. He witnessed heartbreaking scenes of devastation and violence, steeling him further to take a personal role in helping anywhere he could. At home in Harare, Vita was nursing Chipo back to health. Soon she and Tucker decided to alter their lives forever—they would adopt Chipo. That decision challenged an unspoken social norm—that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children. Raised in rural Mississippi in the sixties and seventies, Tucker was familiar with the mores associated with and dictated by race. His wife, a savvy black woman whose father escaped the Jim Crow South for a new life in the industrial North, would not be deterred in her resolve to welcome Chipo into their loving family. As if their situation wasn’t tenuous enough, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was stirring up national fervor against foreigners, especially journalists, abroad and at home. At its peak, his antagonizing branded all foreign journalists personae non gratae. For Tucker, the only full-time American correspondent in Zimbabwe, the declaration was a direct threat to his life and his wife’s safety, and an ultimatum to their decision to adopt the child who had already become their only daughter. Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo’s story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love—and dogged determination—can sometimes achieve. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant, this family memoir will resonate throughout the ages. About the Author: Neely Tucker, a reporter for the Washington Post, was born in Lexington, Mississippi. He has reported from more than fifty countries or territories in Africa, Europe, the Mideast, and the nations that compose the former Soviet Union, frequently covering war and violent conflict. He, Vita, and Chipo live in Washington, D.C. |
Love is a Start is an emotionally compelling true story about parenting children with neurological differences. Anyone who is raising or working with children with challenges will gather from this book valuable and timely information about the significance of the in-utero environment, the importance of sensory input for brain development, and the power of the parent-child relationship. About the Author: Donna Shilts is an occupational therapist and treatment specialist, currently working with children and families in the Pacific Northwest. She graduated from the school of Occupational Therapy at Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR, in 1987. In 1990 she adopted two little boys, ages four and five at the time. When she began keeping a journal documenting the children’s more difficult behaviors and filed away their drawings and school papers, she never imagined she would then present these materials in such a way that would of value to others. |
From the Back Cover:
Marcelle Clements • Laura Shaine Cunningham • Christina Frank Representing a broad spectrum of life and featuring twenty leading writers, all of whom are adoptive parents, A Love Like No Other reflects the diversity of American families that have come together through adoption. From the personal experiences of single parents and same-sex couples to those who have participated in domestic as well as international adoptions, these stories offer vivid and beautifully rendered snapshots of the parenting experience. By turns humorous, sobering, provocative, joyous and all refreshingly honest A Love Like No Other introduces the reader to a complex, emotional, candid, and wholly recognizable look at the new American family. About the Author: Pamela Kruger is a contributing editor at Child magazine, a writer and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Fast Company, Redbook, and other publications. She lives with her husband and their two children in New Jersey. Jill Smolowe is the author of the adoption memoir An Empty Lap: One Couple’s Journey to Parenthood. An award-winning journalist, she is currently on staff at People. She lives with her husband and their daughter in New Jersey. |
Love Me, Feed Me is a relationship-building, practical guide to help fostering and adoptive families enjoy family meals and raise children who eat a variety of foods and grow to have the body that is right for them. Grounded in science, but made real with the often heart-breaking and inspiring words of parents who have been there, Dr. Katja Rowell helps readers understand and address feeding challenges, from simple picky eating to entrenched food obsession, oral motor and developmental delays, “feeding clinic failures,” and more. Though written primarily for the adoptive and fostering audience, Rowell, aka, the “Feeding Doctor,” shares that her clients are more alike than different. “This book is a distillation of the advice and support I provide all my families as they transform a troubled feeding relationship into a healthy one, and bring peace and joy back to the family table.” |
Managing a household of eight children takes a lot of love and patience—and amazing parents. When six of your children are adopted from overseas, learning to adapt to any situation becomes a survival skill. Having created a riotously happy family, Julia and Barry Rollings thought they could handle anything life threw at them. That was until they received the devastating news that two of their children had not been willingly adopted out by both their parents in India. Much worse, Akil and Sabi had been stolen away from their mother while she slept, and sold by their father. What’s the right thing to do in such unthinkable circumstances? Do you accept the advice that “You adopt the child, not the family,” and let it go? Perhaps not tell the children until they are older—or perhaps never at all? But Julia Rollings is not one to take the easy road. With her family’s support, she takes a courageous leap of faith in deciding to reunite Akil and Sabi, then aged 13 and 12, with their birth mother Sunama. Heading into such an emotional landmine, the outcome could have been disastrous. Instead, it led to a moving journey of discovery to India that has expanded and enriched their family today in more ways than one. |
This has been the most important story that I could ever write, but the most draining to me mentally. As Robbie’s adoptive mom, it has been a tearing away of myself to see my real motives and feelings for him. His life has taught me much, but it has come at a personal cost to me. I am a nurturer by nature, like the many women in my family who came before me. Reactive Attachment Disordered children cannot handle nurturing on any level as they get to the teen years. This placed my natural desires at odds with my own child. This is quite a concept that many do not understand. Many people have said that all Robbie needs is love, as if my husband and I have never tried this option. What they do not understand is love is what is driving him away from us, his parents. But in our own way we are still trying, because we too believe that love is what he truly needs. This is why we cannot just give him back to the adoption agency. He needs us. This is why the title of this book is called, Love this Child. As a Quaker sitting in a unprogrammed service (no pastor just quiet), I would pray for God’s intervention on behalf of Robbie’s escalating concerns and the Holy Spirit would encourage me to love this child. Then I would say, “How do I love this child when he...?” The message never changed as I would pray for guidance from God each week. What I did not understand at the time and know now is that it takes love to raise these children. You have to be truly committed to them and their needs to get through the day-to-day living with them. I just wanted something more, I guess, as I prayed and then listened for the Holy Spirit’s leading. |
From the Back Cover:
The obstacles, surprises, and moments of grace that Jennifer Grant experienced, working through the adoption process to bring home her daughter from Guatemala, forever changed her life. Love You More tells Grant’s deeply personal story of adopting her daughter, Mia. The process confronted her notions about what family means, pushed her into uncomfortable places, and—despite the waiting, adjustments, and challenges of a blended family—brought abiding joy. Written for all parents but especially those interested in adoption, Love You More includes discussion questions, tips for prospective adoptive parents, and suggestions for readers on how to reach out in love and support for the world’s most vulnerable people, including orphans. About the Author: Jennifer Grant is a journalist whose columns, feature stories, and blog posts have been published in Sun-Times Media newspapers, Christiantiy Today, her.meneutics (Christianity Today’s blog for women), and adoption.com. Jennifer writes a column for the Chicago Tribune. She is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and is a founding member of Redbud Writers Guild. Jennifer lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and four children and has expertise in throwing parties, traveling light, and daydreaming. |
This is a true story. Twelve-year-old Karen knew when she locked eyes with Rob, that she had met her soul mate. Four years later, the passionate young couple are torn apart by Karen’s family move to Kentucky. Separated for twenty-seven years, enduring abuse, addiction, cancer, and near death experiences, the soul mates are once again reunited by chance. This is an unforgettable true story of young love that conquers all to reunite decades later. This book demonstrates the power and passion of love at any age. |
From the Dust Jacket: This is a heartwarming story of a couple who adopted eleven children. After being told that it would take a miracle for them to conceive, they chose to adopt again and again. They adopted babies, older children, and their siblings too. They proved that a stable, loving home filled with caring, sharing, and a sense of humor was what their children needed. It taught them to love their sisters and brothers. As a family, they enjoyed many trips, vacations, and sports activities with each other and their many friends. There were often difficult times of alcohol and drug abuse, runaways, and legal problems. But with many prayers and a bedrock belief in God to give them strength, they were able to see all their children become adults. Also, miracles happened when there were serious illnesses and terrible accidents. Thank Heavens for all the prayers! Today, as then, there are many children who need loving homes. All they are looking for is someone to unconditionally love them forever. This couple shows with enduring love how they managed during fifty years of marriage and a house-full of children. Those considering adoption need not be wealthy, only to have large hearts. Strange as it may seem, adopting a child or children more often brings as much joy and happiness and rewards to those adopting as it does to those who are adopted. About the Author: Marilyn Diskerud has always loved children and felt blessed that God chose her to be an adoptive mother. She was born in 1929 and married Phil in 1949. They adopted their first child in 1954 when he was three months old and adopted their last set of two older brothers in 1982. She retired after 12 years from her drapery business, “Marilyn’s Draperies,” in Minnesota. Her husband retired from FMC in Minneapolis after working for 35 years. In 1984 they moved to Florida with five of their children still at home. Marilyn Diskerud wants everyone to know that “if my book encourages even one family to adopt a child or two, especially those who are older children, then all my efforts in writing this book will have been rewarded. Everyone needs a loving family.” |
From the Back Cover:
Whether it’s the joy-filled decision to welcome a child into your home or the difficult decision to place your child in another’s arms—adoption is making the choice to love unselfishly and unconditionally. Loved by Choice offers a clear and uplifting look at adoption through true stories told from virtually every perspective. Birth parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, adopted children, families enhanced by special needs, interracial, and foreign adoptions are among those who share their joys and difficulties. The collection is a tender celebration of adoption, led by those who understand it best. About the Author: Susan Horner compiled, edited, and wrote many of the stories for Loved by Choice. She has written for Focus on the Family Club House Jr., Club House, Breakaway, and the Focus on the Family magazine. Kelly Fordyce Martindale is a freelance writer and a publisher of a monthly consumer paper. She has written for Woman’s Day, Today’s Christian Woman, and many other women’s magazines and newspapers. She has contributed stories to other compilations and is working on a parenting book. She lives in Frederick, Colorado, with her husband and two of her four children. |
From the Dust Jacket:
What would a liberal, white, civil rights law professor have to learn about race? When Sharon Rush adopted an African American girl, she quickly discovered the need to throw out old assumptions and start learning all over again. This is the moving, heartfelt memoir of a mother and daughter’s loving relationship that opened the author’s eyes to the harsh realities of the American racial divide. Only by living with her daughter through day-to-day encounters and life passages did Rush learn that racism is far more devastating to Blacks than most Whites can ever imagine. Some of the stories are funny, others are sad, a few are almost unbelievable. But they are all poignant because they illustrate how insightful a little Black girl of three can be about race and justice. The stories also recount the author’s struggle, as her daughter has matured, to come to grips with her own growing awareness of racism in America. With love and spirituality, Rush and her daughter live a deeply joyous life, and have become increasingly active in working publicly and privately against racism. Readers who journey across the color line with the author and her daughter will witness a real-life encounter with racism and come away with a deeper understanding of its persistence. About the Author: Sharon E. Rush is a civil rights lawyer and the Irving Cypen Professor of Law at the University of Florida. She has been studying race for over fifteen years and currently lives with her daughter in Gainesville. |
From the Publisher:
This is the story of a group of nine adoptive parents who came together for mutual support to look at the effects on themselves of living with traumatised children. They based their task on a form of research known as co-operative inquiry. The group describes their journey from setting up the inquiry through the process of exploring the effects of their children’s trauma on themselves and their families, to their development into a cohesive support group and the sense of empowerment this has brought to their lives. The book includes: a brief survey of attachment and trauma in relation to adoption; highly personal accounts of what it is like living with a traumatised child; a description of the inquiry process and step-by-step guidance on how others can set up their own “co-operative inquiry” group; and insights into the impact the inquiry has had on participants and their families two years on. Written with courage, honesty and humour, this book should inspire and encourage any adoptive parents who are struggling to take control of their situation. It should also closely inform new developments in adoption support. And as the first piece of research carried out with rather than on adopters, it provides a model for research in this field that brings real hope of reaching some difficult and empowering truths about adoption. About the Author: For reasons of confidentiality, all participants in the co-operative inquiry wish to remain anonymous and Megan Hirst is a collective pseudonym chosen by the group. |
Loving and Raising Asia gives an intimate look into the lives of a courageous young black southern couple who possessed enough love to see through the complicated entanglements of race in America to offer their love to a white infant even before she exited the womb. This is a true story of a woman who becomes unable to conceive a natural child because of multiple pregnancy complications. And, indeed, it may well have been that this situation heightened her inherent urge for motherhood—an impulse that led her to adoption as a practical option. But she finds that even in adoption there was an unexpected surprise when her adopted bi-racial baby turns out to be Caucasian. She learns that the young white birth mother used the classic culprit by claiming her pregnancy was he result of her being raped by a black man. |
From the Back Cover:
Considering adoption? Loving Journeys Guide to Adoption can give you the answers you need to make decisions that are right for you. Part One is a thorough introduction to the world of adoption, explaining general requirements and procedures. Part Two is a directory containing detailed listings of hundreds of adoption resources: private adoption agencies, adoption attorneys, American adoption programs, international adoption programs (including maps and country profiles), adoptive parents support groups, and more. With this preparation, the adoption process can be a loving journey. |
From the Back Cover:
A book for stepparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, foster parents, godparents—and anyone else who loves a child born to someone else. If you’ve picked up this book, you are probably facing one of the greatest challenges of your life... Help has arrived. |
From the Dust Jacket:
“What a lucky girl!” Everybody who has adopted a daughter from China has heard that one. And every parent has said, or thought, in reply: “No, we’re the lucky ones.” This anthology sets out to explain why people who have adopted children from China feel as though they’ve won the lottery. Since the late 1980s, as many as 7,000 Chinese-born girls (and a few boys!) have been adopted annually and now live in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. They are officially orphans, victims of a rigorous birth control policy limiting most families to one child. The story of these children is compelling as a narrative of hope and optimism but it may also become a story of dislocation and crisis of identity. These baby immigrants add unusual texture to the lives of the families they join—they come here not by choice but by someone else’s design. The memoirs collected in The Lucky Ones deal with infertility, moving to acceptance of a multiracial family, anticipating the adoption, reflecting during the trip to China and, at last, grappling with an odd destiny—turning terrible beginnings into happy endings. About the Author: Ann Rauhala is a former columnist and foreign editor of The Globe and Mail, now director of newspapers at the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto. With contributions from Jasmine Akbarali, Jasmine Bent, Cindy Boates, Lia Calderone, Julie Chan, Denise Davy, Sarah Giddens, Havard Gould, Heidi Hatch, Patricia Hluchy, Douglas Hood, Tess Kalinowski, Margaret Lawson, Glen McGregor, Lilian Nattel, Susan Olding, Shelley Page, Sonja Smits, Evan Solomon, and Steve Whan. |
Willebrandt is best remembered as the Assistant Attorney General under Warren Harding. Following her divorce, she adopted her daughter, Dorothy Rae, then two years old, as an unmarried woman in 1925. Although she never remarried, she managed to pursue her career and raise her daughter with the help of friends and her parents. Willebrandt also had two sisters whom her parents had adopted, one of whom Mabel herself, as a young teenager, had brought into their home and insisted the family adopt in order to rescue her from a troubled home. |
From the Back Cover (paperback edition):
ALEX SMITH AND HIS EIGHT PERSONALITIES WERE TRAPPED IN A WORLD OF UNFATHOMABLE EVIL... When Carole Smith and her husband decided to take on a foster child that no one else would have they knew ten-year-old Alex would be difficult. But nothing had prepared them for the unruly, self-destructive boy who stormed into their lives. Alone with Alex during the day, Carole was baffled by his infantile tantrums and violent, self-hating behaviors. Exasperated, she tried relating to him as the two-year-old he appeared to be, and finally, a door to Alex’s mind began to open. UNTIL HE ENTERED THE “MAGIC CASTLE” AND FOUND THE KEY TO HIS FREEDOM With the help of psychiatrist Dr. Steven Kingsbury, Alex’s tormented mind revealed a host of personalities, each born in a horrifying episode of Alex’s past—each carrying a memory too powerful for his conscious mind to handle. As the personalities came forth in the safety of Alex’s inner, secret castle, they unleashed stories of abandonment, brainwashing, and sexual abuse by those Alex trusted the most. In the spellbinding tradition of Sybil and When Rabbit Howls, here is a fascinating true story of the human mind; of innocence shattered by inhuman cruelty; and ultimately of love’s power to transform fragments into wholeness—tragedy into triumph. About the Author: Carole Smith is a former schoolteacher who lives with her family in Massachusetts. |
From the Publisher:
In Make Me a Mother, acclaimed memoirist Susanne Antonetta adopts an infant from Seoul, South Korea. After meeting their six-month-old son, Jin, at the airport—an incident made memorable when Susanne, so eager to meet her son, is chased down by security—Susanne and her husband learn lessons common to all parents, such as the lack of sleep and the worry and joy of loving a child. They also learn lessons particular to their own family: not just how another being can take over your life but how to let an entire culture in, how to discuss birth parents who gave up a child, and the tricky steps required to navigate race in America. In the end, her relationship with her son teaches Susanne to understand her own troubled childhood and to forgive and care for her own aging parents. Susanne comes to realize how, time and time again, all families have to learn to adopt one another. About the Author: Susanne Antonetta (also known as Susanne Paola) is the author of the memoirs A Mind Apart and A Body Toxic, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as the poetry collections Bardo, Petitioner, Glass, and, most recently, The Lives of the Saints. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, Best American Essays, and other publications. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband and son. Compiler’s Note: Portions of the book previously appeared in Fourth Genre (“Dark Matter”); Image (“Hosts”); Orion (“As Flies” and “Improbable Gifts”); Seneca Review (“Nine Lives”); The New Republic (“No Words Lecture Hall” [poem]); and The New York Times (“Who Is This Child, What Will He Be Next?”). “Hosts” was also included in a list of “Notable Essays in 2010” (selected by Robert Atwan) in the 2011 edition of The Best American Essays (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and reprinted in The Pushcart Prize XXXVI: Best of the Small Presses (2012, Norton). |
From the Back Cover:
Adopted persons face challenges their entire lives as they struggle to answer the mo basic question: Who am !? The hope of open adoption is that adopted children will develop stronger identities if they have the opportunity to develop healthy ongoing relationships with their families of origin. Making Room in Our Hearts offers an intimate look at how these relationships evolve over time, with real-life stories from families who have experienced open adoption first-hand. This book helps both adoptive and birth parents address their fears and concerns, while offering them the support to put the child’s psychological and spiritual needs at the center of adoption. Based on interviews with more than one hundred adopted children, birth and adoptive parents, extended families, professionals and experts, the book is an effective and invaluable resource for those considering open adoption, those experiencing it and professionals in the field. Openness has altered the landscape of adoption, and Making Room in Our Hearts will help us catch up to the reality that is open adoption today. About the Author: Mickey Duxbury, MFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has practiced in the Bay Area for over twenty years. She specializes in pre- and post-adoption education and counseling and helping families successfully navigate open relationships. She has facilitated adoption support groups for eight years and is an adoptive parent herself. |
From the Back Cover:
Children who are adopted have predictable and often unspoken concerns about themselves and how they joined their families. In this wise and timely guide, Lois Melina, author of the classic manual Raising Adopted Children, helps parents anticipate and respond to those concerns in ways that build self-esteem. Through sample conversations, reassuring advice, and age-specific activities parents will find answers to such questions as: — When should I give my child the letter her birthmother wrote? — How do I share information that might upset my child? — How can I know when my child is wondering about adoption? — What should I tell school personnel about my child’s history? What about family and friends? — How can I be sure we talk about adoption enough, but not too much? Whether parents adopted traditionally, as stepparents, or through donor insemination, surrogacy, or in vitro fertilization, Making Sense of Adoption will open the door to a lifetime of growth and understanding for adoptive families. About the Author: Lois Ruskai Melina, author of Raising Adopted Children, editor of Adopted Child newsletter, and freelance magazine journalist, has been writing about adoption since 1981. A frequent speaker at conferences and workshops across the country, she resides in Moscow, Idaho, with her husband and their two children. By the Same Author: Raising Adopted Children: A Manual For Adoptive Parents (1986); Adoption: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide (1987, Routledge); and The Open Adoption Experience: Complete Guide for Adoptive and Birth Families—From Making the Decision to the Child’s Growing Years (with Sharon Kaplan Roszia; 1993, HarperPerennial). |
From the Dust Jacket:
“There is no pleasanter sight within the front door of any man’s castle than the strewn and disordered evidences that children are there,” writes Edgar Guest, in this very human story on making of the house a HOME. The spiritual give-and-take that is the essence of Mr. Guest’s philosophy of life shines as joyously from this intimate narrative of his own home-building as from the pages of his books of verse, that are treasured in half a million American homes to-day. His publishers wish that they might put this little story of the inception and growth of Edgar Guest’s home-of-his-own in the hands of every young couple to be married in these United States this year. They feel that you, who will read these pages, will understand why. The story carries the message of hope and faith. “Our home is not yet completed,” writes Mr. Guest. “We hope to go forward together, changing and improving it. To-morrow shall see something that was not there yesterday. But through sun and shade, through trial and through days of ease and peace, it is our hope that something of our best shall still remain within its walls.” Compiler’s Note: This book is in the public domain and may be read online. The Guests adopted a three-year-old girl named Marjorie following the death of their first child, also a girl, at the age of 13 months. The story is related matter-of-factly and reminded me of nothing so much as when one might obtain another pet to replace one that died suddenly and unexpectedly. “‘I must have another little girl,’ [his wife] sobbed night after night. ‘I must have another little girl!’ ... We heard of a little girl who was to be put out for adoption; she was of good but unfortunate parents. We proposed to adopt her.” Guest’s language here is, like Marjorie’s birth parents, “unfortunate.” Guest extols the virtue of adoption (“I have heard many arguments against adopting children, but I have never heard a good one. ... To childless couples everywhere I would say with all the force I can employ, adopt a baby!”), but he frames it more in terms of the benefits that can accrue to the adopters than to the adoptee (“If you would make glorious the home you are building; if you would fill its rooms with laughter and contentment; if you would make your house more than a place in which to eat and sleep; if you would fill it with happy memories and come yourselves into a closer and more perfect union, adopt a baby! Then, in a year or two, adopt another. He who spends money on a little child is investing it to real purpose; and the dividends it pays in pride and happiness and contentment are beyond computation.”). The Guests can be credited for adopting an older child, but he exemplifies his generation (he was born in 1881) when he relates that they kept Marjorie’s adoptive status secret (“Our friends were asked never to refer in her presence to the fact that she was adopted. As far as we were concerned it was dismissed from our minds. She was three years old when she was born to us, and from then on we were her father and her mother.”). Sadly, Marjorie Ellen Meagher Guest’s misfortunes did not end when she was adopted by the Guests after being “put out for adoption”; she would die little more than 10 years later, at the age of 14. |
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