The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption - Softcover

Gibney, Shannon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593112016 ISBN 13: 9780593112014

Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A remarkable portrait of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee, from the acclaimed author of Dream Country.

A MICHAEL L. PRINTZ HONOR BOOK AND KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE CENTURY

“A fantastical, transcendent memory collage that shirks convention in search of what is real and true about familial bonds.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be tells the true story of author Shannon Gibney’s experience growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents in America alongside the fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth by the white woman who put her up for adoption.

At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines, occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds her stories with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.

Strikingly honest and beautifully written, this speculative memoir explores the rarely depicted experience of transracial adoption first-hand, and offers an insightful look into the discovery of one’s own identity.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Shannon Gibney is an author and university professor. Her novel See No Color, drawn from her life as a transracial adoptee, was hailed by Kirkus as "an exceptionally accomplished debut" and by Publishers Weekly as "an unflinching look at the complexities of racial identity." Her sophomore novel, Dream Country, received five starred reviews and earned her a second Minnesota Book Award. The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be earned a Michael L. Printz Honor. She lives with her two Liberian-American children in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The literature of adoption is a fictional genre in itself. Adoptees know it to be generally as fantastical as any space opera—­and just as entertaining to the masses.
Every story must begin with the vulnerable but good-­hearted poor birth mother who loves her baby very much but cannot take care of it (the birth father is always conspicuously absent in these narratives). There is a kindly, upper-­middle-­class, usually white couple who desperately wants a child, and have pursued all avenues in order to get one (if the couple is adopting internationally, they are in a rich country in the Global North, and have spent years on various lists, waiting for an available child, many times spending thousands of dollars). They fight, despite all odds, to build their family through adoption, in the process creating a healthy, happy, thriving child who eventually grows into a healthy, happy, thriving adult who has bonded perfectly with their new colorblind family. All this miraculous transformation from a poor, brown, cast-­off orphan. Love conquers all.

Once the birth mother has given up the child, she is no longer part of the story.

Once the child is adopted, there is no talk of loss of first family, culture, language, or community. The adoption is simply a bureaucratic event that happened, and then is over.

Since the birth father was not part of the story from the beginning, he is not part of the adoptee’s story as it progresses.

And if you ask about any of the particularities of this literature of adoption: who is adopting whom, from where to where, what are the racial dynamics of the transaction, the role that money plays, corruption, the trauma of removal, the burden of assimilation, you are branded an angry and maladjusted adoptee.

When most of the literature written about a marginalized group of people comes from white adoptive parents who are psychologists, sociologists, creative writers, and professors who don’t identify themselves as adoptive parents in their “objective” work, what other possible outcome could there be?

This is how I came to understand epistemological violence.

In my body.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593112016
• ISBN 13: 9780593112014
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland