I’m posting a link to a recent NY Times review of a new nonfiction book about adoption: American Baby: A Mother, a Baby, and a Shadow History of Adoption by journalist Gabrielle Glaser. While American Baby focuses on harsh practices of the past–secrecy, shame, coercion–the reviewer notes that
“[T]he shadows of the past cannot be easily dismissed as mistakes of an unenlightened moment. Today, the nearly half a million international adoptees in the United States do not have access to their birth records. And the tens of thousands of babies created from donor gametes are not legally entitled to identifying information.”
If you’re reading this, you know that identity is a core issue–perhaps the core issue–for many of us who write, think, and talk about adoption and donor conception. The reviewer’s conclusion of American Baby seems to indicate work remains to be done.