Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir of Being Found [Paperback]

Sarah Saffian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1999

The voice on the other end of the line was soft, yet forthright: "Sarah, my name is Hannah Morgan. I think I'm your birth mother."

The phone call, wholly unexpected, instantly turned Sarah Saffian's world upside-down, threatening her sense of family, identity, self. Adopted as an infant twenty-three years before, living happily in New York, Sarah had been "found" by her biological parents despite her reluctance to embrace them.

In this searing, lyrical memoir, Sarah chronicles her painful journey from confusion and anger to acceptance and, finally, reunion--but not until three soul-searching years had passed. In spare, luminous prose, Sarah Saffian crafts a powerful story of self-discovery and belonging--a deeply personal memoir told with grace, eloquence, and compassion. At once heartbreaking and profoundly uplifting, Ithaka is sure to touch anyone who has grappled with who they are.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When 23-year-old Sarah Saffian picked up the phone in January 1993 and heard a woman's voice on the other end say, "I think I'm your birth mother," she embarked on a journey both longed for and feared by almost all adopted children, the parents who raised them, and the ones who gave them up. Saffian's case was unusual: her birth parents eventually married and had three more children, her full-blood siblings. She honestly depicts her feelings of wariness and sometimes annoyance as they gently pressed her for a reunion. It was three years before Saffian felt ready to visit Hannah Morgan and Adam Leyder.

As befits a topic of such intimacy, Saffian sticks closely to specifics. She not only delineates her own shifting emotions with precision, she quotes extensively from her birth parents' letters to vividly reveal their personalities (Hannah understands her caution, Adam is needier and pushier). Saffian does not identify any of the players as villains or victims, despite the tricky emotional space they navigate, but finds human beings doing their best to give and receive love in circumstances for which there are no fixed guidelines. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

One month shy of her 24th birthday, Saffian received a telephone call from a woman who simply said, "Sarah, my name is Hannah Morgan. I think I'm your birth mother." What makes this story different from those on talk shows or in magazines and tabloids is that Saffian did not instigate the search; instead, her birth parents sought her out. The theme of "being found" when one wasn't particularly lost is the thread that holds the book together. The fact that the decision to contactAand even establish a relationship withAher birth parents was taken out of her hands sent Saffian into a three-year period of confusion during which she lost control of her career, relationships and social life. During those years, her birth father pushed for a reunion, but Saffian was apprehensive and suggested exchanging letters. These letters, interwoven with the daily events and emotions of Saffian's life, provide a documented history of her birth parents' eagerness to get to know their lost daughter, and Saffian's hesitation. The reunion finally took place, but it was Saffian's acceptance of her birth parents that is the real climax: "Yes, a reunion with my birth parents is a profound experience, but ultimately, they are just people, I am just a person, we are just meeting. What we do together is unremarkable: chop vegetables, pad around the house in socks, watch home videos, take walks. Maybe that is exactly what is so wonderfully remarkable about it." Admirably free of self-pity, this is a thoughtful investigation into what makes a family. $25,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Delta (October 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385334516
• ISBN-13: 978-0385334518
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #709,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

SARAH SAFFIAN (http://www.saffian.com) is an author, a journalist, and a teacher. Ithaka (hardcover: Basic Books, 1998; paperback: Dell, 1999), her critically-acclaimed memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family--both parents and three full siblings--has become an adoption classic. The book was widely and favorably reviewed--by The New York Times Book Review, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Salon, Glamour, Redbook, Francine Prose for Elle, and numerous other publications. Ithaka has been translated into Italian (Itaca, Corbaccio), and in 2006, it was published in a new edition with a current Afterword.

Sarah has worked as a Senior Editor for Entertainment Weekly, a Contributing Editor for Rosie, a Senior Writer for Us magazine, and a Staff Writer for The New York Daily News, and has contributed to publications including The New York Times, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, New York, Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and Slate. Formerly a journalism professor in the undergraduate writing department at the New School, Sarah also teaches courses in memoir and narrative journalism each July at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, created an online course about identity through Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and offers writing coaching/editing/ghost writing services under the rubric The Vertical Pronoun.

A frequent media commentator, Sarah co-hosted with NPR's Ray Suarez a pilot for a PBS talk show about books, called Latest Word. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, and graduated with Honors in English and American Literature from Brown and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Painful but necessary reading for birthparents, August 24, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Mary Anne Cohen) (Whippany, NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir Of Being Found (Hardcover)

I finally read Ithaka, after having it sitting on my shelf for months. The subject is difficult for me, as a birthmother who searched for her son and was rejected. Now, I wish I had read it before making any contact, and would advise any birthparents in search to do likewise.

Sarah Saffian is a fine and elegant writer, who as many previous reviewers have noted, grew up with money and comfort, and was found by the "perfect" birthparents. It is indeed hard to understand her reluctance to meet them--but the pain she suffered because of the contact is real, and I often cringed as I read what she felt, thinking that my son may have felt similar pain and disorientation at my contact.

Search and reunion is not a soap-opera nor a talk show--although much of what passes for wisdom in adoption reform groups and literature would make one think it was! Not all adoptees, nor all birthparents, are eager to be found--and those that are still must make huge adjustments to integrate the lost ones into their lives.

I hope that my son will find this book, and read it, and know that he is not alone in his fear and confusion at having "the dead" rise again as I did. I hope that all searching birthparents will read this book, not to be discouraged, but to stretch their minds and hearts with empathy for the adoptee, and the stresses that reunion can bring to some. I have seen many birthparents go into reunion expecting that the adoptee's life has somehow been on hold since the surrender, just waiting for the birthmother to return and pick up emotionally where they left off, as if a whole lifetime of family relationships were irrelevant. Some support groups encourage this kind of thinking, by pandering to what the members want to believe, rather than what is, and taking a very one-sided and one-dimensional view of the whole complex issue of reunion. "Ithaka" makes us look at other possibilites--and that is ultimately better and more healing than unrealistic expectations and cartoon scenarios of reunion bliss. Sarah Saffian had performed a useful service for birthparents by writing her story, even though reading it sometimes hurt, and sometimes frustrated and annoyed.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eye opener!, November 15, 1999

By 

Nanci Gauthier (Antioch, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir of Being Found (Paperback)

As a birth mother AND an adoptive mother,this book let me understand the feelings of the adopted child. I found my daughter 6 years ago and I have not met her at this point. We do write letters and emails, but have never talked on the phone or met in person. This book helped me to see how difficult this process is for the "found" child. She hasn't known anyone but her adoptive family and it is very hard for her to accept me and my family. I am sending her a copy of this book for Christmas. Thank-you, Sarah!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true real-life story of the endless bounds of family, August 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ithaka: A Daughter's Memoir Of Being Found (Hardcover)

I read this book after hearing Sarah Saffian tell her story on television. (The Leeza Show) I have no direct way to relate to what she has gone through. I am not adopted, yet the way she writes this book, anyone can posess the capacity to understand and read with a vaguely familiar sense of our own reality, simply because we all have our own version family. Whatever "family" means to the reader comes to the focus of contemplation and the realization that those who are most dear to us are always there for us. As Sarah endures her own self-discovery through the process of being found by her "other" family, she reveals such insight in the telling of her journey, that any reader, adopted or not, can truly understand.