Excerpted from Dr. Raible's review:
Adopted individuals spend much more time living with the consequences of their adoptions in adulthood than as children. When Dubinsky refers to adopted individuals as 'adult adopted children' (p. 129), she underscores their status in the minds of many as perpetual youngsters who are never quite allowed to grow up...
Whereas Dubinsky muses, “Perhaps the only figure more popularly symbolic of global inequalities than the American tourist in the Third World is the American adoptive parent in the Third World” (p. 120), one could reasonably argue that it is the transnational and transracial adoptees who more accurately embody the very power imbalances Dubinsky explores so lucidly in her book. After all, we are the ones who crossed borders, and in doing so, forfeited languages, ties to our families of origin, and cultural heritages, even as we simultaneously gained the enormous privileges typically reserved for middle class families in the First World. In exchange for material and educational gains, we were required to sacrifice our birth citizenship and sever ties to our original extended families. As the disempowered subjects of a crisis intervention, which is, after all, what adoption is, we had no say in the decisions to migrate or be adopted, yet we frequently hear how lucky and grateful we should feel. Moreover, once adoption was done to us, many of us were then forced to endure overwhelming racism as we single-handedly integrated the all-white neighborhoods in which our well-intentioned adoptive parents raised us.
Adopted individuals spend much more time living with the consequences of their adoptions in adulthood than as children. When Dubinsky refers to adopted individuals as 'adult adopted children' (p. 129), she underscores their status in the minds of many as perpetual youngsters who are never quite allowed to grow up...
Whereas Dubinsky muses, “Perhaps the only figure more popularly symbolic of global inequalities than the American tourist in the Third World is the American adoptive parent in the Third World” (p. 120), one could reasonably argue that it is the transnational and transracial adoptees who more accurately embody the very power imbalances Dubinsky explores so lucidly in her book. After all, we are the ones who crossed borders, and in doing so, forfeited languages, ties to our families of origin, and cultural heritages, even as we simultaneously gained the enormous privileges typically reserved for middle class families in the First World. In exchange for material and educational gains, we were required to sacrifice our birth citizenship and sever ties to our original extended families. As the disempowered subjects of a crisis intervention, which is, after all, what adoption is, we had no say in the decisions to migrate or be adopted, yet we frequently hear how lucky and grateful we should feel. Moreover, once adoption was done to us, many of us were then forced to endure overwhelming racism as we single-handedly integrated the all-white neighborhoods in which our well-intentioned adoptive parents raised us.
For the entire review click on text above or click here.
2 comments:
Thanks for the link, i hope all is well.
It's a very fair review with some of the usual insightful comments we've come to know and love!
Hope all well with you.
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