Pushing up the Sky [Hardcover]

Terra Trevor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 29, 2006

In 1987, Terra Trevor and her husband Gary adopted a ten-year-old daughter from South Korea. Her new daughter experienced difficulty adjusting to becoming the oldest child in a mixed blood American Indian family. Her birth daughter, usurped from oldest to middle child, had a difficult transition too. Then her son, also adopted from Korea, was diagnosed with a brain tumor, an event that changed all of their lives forever. This is the story of a remarkable family facing incredible challenges. It is a story of compromises and insights, profound joy, deep suffering, and terrific rewards. Parenting birth and adopted children is one theme of this book. Most of all, it is a story on the meaning of family, and learning to let go of expectations and to forge a new identity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Terra Trevors Pushing up the Sky is a revelation of the struggles and triumphs packed into the hyphens between Korean and Native American and American. From her, we learn that adoption can best be mutual, that the adoptive parent needs acculturation in the child s ways. With unflinching honesty and unfailing love, Trevor details the risks and heartaches of taking in, the bittersweetness of letting go, and the everlasting bonds that grow between them all. With Pushing up the Sky, the literature of adoption comes of age as literature, worthy of an honored place in the human story. --Robert Bensen, editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press)

Terra Trevor shares her family's story, as it unfolds from the birth and adoptions of her children, more than 20 years ago to the present day. Trevor's story is no fairy tale, she writes courageously and honestly about each difficult aspect. Written from the perspective of a woman who straddles a complex ethnic and racial heritage, the story is suffused with issues of race, culture, identity loss and gain. Trevor is Native American, and she writes about her own incorporation of that heritage into her sense of self, while simultaneously figuring out how to weave her adopted children's cultural heritage into their family. Pushing up the Sky is about a real family facing real challenges, and is a remarkable tribute to the power of family. --Jane Brown, Adoptive Families Magazine

This powerful journey through life is elegantly unfolded by author Terra Trevor. Weaving her personal story through parenting, death, grief and living, she gives readers a glimpse into her soul. Trevor s story brought to life by her exceptional writing left me with tears pouring down my face. I could share her heartache and felt the tendrils of joy spring to life as she began her healing journey. She has weaved together a memoir that keeps readers turning pages. I would recommend this book to parents who enjoy sharing the adoptive parent experience with others. This book also is a great story about life, love and grief that anyone would enjoy reading. Pushing up the Sky deserves a wide readership for its great story-telling and lyrical use of language. Trevor has a beautiful voice and shares her experiences openly in this memoir. --Kim Phagan Hansel, Adoption Today Magazine

About the Author

Terra Trevor is a contributing author of ten books. Her memoir PUSHING UP THE SKY, published in 2006, is widely anthologized. For thirteen years Trevor wrote feature articles and penned a column in Adoptive Families magazine, and is a contributing writer for Adoption Today. A prolific author of a diverse body of work she is praised for the universality of her themes and the poetic quality of her literary voice.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Kaan; 1st edition (July 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977604608
• ISBN-13: 978-0977604609
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,661,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Terra Trevor is a contributing author of 10 books, including Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices On Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press) and The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (The University of Oklahoma). Trevor's memoir Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story, (KAAN) published in 2006, is widely anthologized. Visit her on the web at www.terratrevor.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where Dreams Collide, March 13, 2007

By 

Terri Sheridan "Librarian" (Santa Barbara, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pushing up the Sky (Hardcover)

Trevor's book leads us down the path less travelled; the path where life's dreams collide with cultural identities, shakable family values, childhood tragedy, and the loss of self that can only come from raw grief. Here is a story of strength that is renewed by letting go of what's safe, daring to fall into deep pain, then starting all over by holding onto the ribbons of love that connect all families. This thought provoking memoir should be read, shared, and savored for the feelings it evokes, the hope that it brings, and the courage that it imparts.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and worthwhile, November 7, 2006

By 

PATRICK OHANNIGAN (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pushing up the Sky (Hardcover)

There are several lines and scenes in this affecting memoir that have taken up permanent residence in my head, and this is one of them: "Why do you suppose when a person dies from cancer they say he lost the battle?" asks 15-year-old Jay Trevor of his mother Terra. "Dying is not about losing," he reasons, because "Heaven is filled with winners."

May we infer from that pearl of wisdom that the Trevor family has embraced the so-called gospel of prosperity? No, we may not. The forward by a family friend is more polemical than anything Terra herself says, and you can hear the smile in her syntax when the author confesses that some Sunday mornings found the Trevors "in the Lord's mountain house or camping on his beachfront property" rather than at formal worship.

The Korean church in which they eventually find fellowship attracts them partly because its pastor is diplomatic about his religious "preferences," and the discerning reader may recognize that a more doctrinaire author would have called such beliefs "convictions," because "preference" is a word better suited for questions like "one ply or two?"

That, however, is a quibble. The point is that Terra and her family respect the cultures that mark their lives without fetishizing any of them. Although questions of identity (Korean, Native American, and familial) suffuse the text like alpenglow on the Santa Lucia mountains, there are only two things in this book about which Terra and her kin are dogmatic: one of them is love, and the other is perseverance. That emphasis combines with Terra's clear-eyed humility to make this book great, placing it firmly in the ranks of worthwhile literature about adoption, loss, and redemption.

If you're going to tackle big themes on a small canvas, it helps to have Terra's straightforward writing style and eye for detail. I like her description of how newly-adopted daughter Kyeong Sook dries dishes by twisting the dishcloth "in a decidedly foreign spiral." Animals are sharply observed, too. When a red-tailed hawk or a raccoon goes anywhere near her yard, Terra notices.

Some authors are seduced by the dramatic potential of things like racism, terminal illness, and family therapy. Not Terra. Her understatement may be due as much to personality as to craft: one thing she shares with her readers is that deep-seated panic sometimes makes her outwardly calm.

Although the binding of this first edition will not stand up to hard usage, "Pushing Up the Sky" is not a vanity project for the grandchildren; it's a story of hard-won hope touched by mortality, ancestral memory, and the reverberations of international adoption, not least among them Seaweed Soup and Beef Bulgogi. The book reads like a string quintet, with members of the Trevor family taking turns on various instruments. It opens with almost Beethovenian drama, meets joy and grief head on, and closes with the wistfulness of a Korean folk song.

Have I said plainly enough that you should read this book? Terra, Gary, Kyeong Sook, Vanessa, and Jay are worth meeting, and "Pushing Up the Sky" is the next best thing to inviting them over, written by a mother whose art never eclipses her heart and soul.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Julie "Librarian", April 10, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Pushing up the Sky (Hardcover)

This book is a must read. It is the type of book that you will pick up and read from cover to cover. This family represents America, a melting pot of cultures, with Terra trying to emphasize the importance of cultural identity as well as being or becoming an American. Terra provides a realistic view of family life with its highs and lows, sacrifices, and unconditional love.