Party 2023

I’m posting a few pictures from our annual Guatadopt party, which this year featured traditional textiles modeled by young women in our group. Thank you to everyone for your amazing energy, friendship and support in setting up, cooking, serving, hauling dishes up and down stairs, washing dishes and bagging up trash. And for being your fabulous, wonderful selves. Thanks, too, to the Friends of the Ixchel Museum for loaning the textiles and to Susan and Anne for their fascinating and engaging presentation. A glorious weekend of families, friendship, talking, listening and love. With Tim and two large sheet cakes; above, huipiles (embroidered blouses) from Chichicastenango and Nebaj.

A brief encounter

This essay means a lot to me and I’m happy to see it published in the Marin Independent Journal. It’s called “A Brief Encounter with a Good Man Gone Too Soon.” Thanks for reading.

Interview in The Bookends Review

I’m grateful to my MFA buddy and friend, Diane Gottlieb, for placing this interview with me in The Bookends Review. The piece was published on April 13, 2022, but I’m a little behind in everything. An excerpt: After you wrote Mamalita, you switched to fiction and wrote your first novel, Mother Mother. What was behind that decision? After Mamalita was published, I realized there was more to say about family, belonging, identity and marriage. I’d already told our story. The story I wanted to tell—needed to tell—was broader and deeper. The only way to get my arms around it was through fiction. You tell the story through two protagonists: Julie, the white adoptive mother, and Rosalba, the indigenous Ixil Maya mother of Juan, the boy Julie adopts. How did you create the voice of a woman whose life is so different from your own? Imagining other lives is the work of a fiction writer. That said, I did a ton of research. First, from visiting Guatemala every year and knowing my kids’ birth mothers as well as many other women in Guatemala. Second, from witnessing testimonials of survivors of Guatemala’s civil war. Third, I read everything I could get my hands on— Straight up political histories of Guatemala, diaries and letters in translation, guides for midwives and Peace Corps volunteers. I immersed myself in Guatemala and absorbed the information into my body, almost as an actor might. Then I sat down and put it on the page. Thanks for reading the entire interview here. xoxo

Story collection by Kevin Fisher-Paulson

Our adoption book group will meet on Sunday for the first time since the pandemic began—two years! I loved the book so much I’m sharing the title: How We Keep Spinning…!, a selection of columns from the San Francisco Chronicle by Kevin Fisher-Paulson. Kevin and his husband Brian are adoptive dads to two sons, Aidan and Zane. In addition to parenting kids and writing his column, Kevin is the Chief Deputy of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, while his husband Brian is an accomplished dancer who has performed on Broadway and beyond. Here’s a blurb from the book’s back cover: “While telling his stories, Kevin has stumbled over more than a few truths about foster care, gay marriage, interracial family, rescue dogs, and cupcakes.” The chapters are short, with titles like “Sometimes the parts that don’t match make the best family,” “Love as hard as you can for right now” and “Sometimes the detour is the journey.” Every piece made me think, in a good way. Or if “think” isn’t the right word, maybe “reflect.” As in: reflect on my own small personal universe and reflect on the big picture of this thing called life. Fisher-Paulson’s writing is honest, funny, sharp, and observant. If you’re like me, by the end of the book you’ll want to meet Kevin and his family and be their best friend. I’m not on Twitter, but if you are, find Fisher-Paulson @kipcap1213. On Amazon: How We Keep Spinning! By Kevin Fisher-Paulson.

Mateo’s Perspective

My son Mateo is on the radio! His short 2-minute essay, Meeting My Birth Mother, aired today on KQED-FM Perspectives. Mateo wrote the piece as an assignment for his Language and Composition class. His teacher, Mr. Hettleman, submitted the Perspectives of several students to KQED and Mateo’s was one of two that were chosen. Thank you to Mr. Hettleman and all Mateo’s teachers for encouraging our son. Here are the first two paragraphs of Mateo’s Perspective. You can listen to it here. Hand-in-hand my mom and I walk along the colorful cobblestone streets of Antigua, Guatemala. I am 7 years old and we are on our way to meet my mother— the mother I haven’t seen in almost seven years. As church bells chime, we hurry towards the bus terminal. My mom— my adoptive American mom— hired a searcher to find my Guatemalan birth mother. Today is the day I meet her.