Customer Reviews

The Search for Anna Fisher

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This was the first book I read about an adoptee searching for "someone who looks like me" and it made me viscerally understand the yearning most adoptees have, despite the most loving adoptive parents and most fulfilling lives. They are always aware that there is someone out there with a truly vested interest in what became of them. This beautifully written addictively readable autobiography of a search made me realize that some form of open adoption is the healthiest adoption for the child and both sets of parents, even if they do not fully accept this at the beginning. Consciously ignoring one of life's basic assumptions, that of knowing the people who led to one's very creation, should never be attained without the full knowledge and consent of ALL parties, and most especially the one who is the focus of the new family.

This is an excellent book for anyone searching and longing to find their true identity. I have reread it several times, feeling the emotions of this woman as I did my own search.

This is an extremely interesting book, detailing one woman's search for her birth mother at a time when ALL adoption records were sealed. This gives the story a lot of drama, as Florence must become her own private investigator while unearthing clues about her history over resistance from her adopted family. It's a story of perseverance with a great payoff. The book unfolds like a classic mystery, with the reader becoming as interested as the heroine is in her origins, the circumstances of her adoption, and her birth mother's whereabouts. One also sympathizes a great deal with the writer as she diligently calls government office after office, simply trying to find the name of the woman who gave birth to her. She knows the office employees have the name and file right in front of them, and that her fate is literally in their [disinterested] hands...yet they are precluded by law from sharing information with her. I do take exception to the idea, posted elsewhere, that all parties involved in an adoption need to consent before information is shared. If I gave up a baby some day, I can see how I might not want to discuss it or necessarily made public...but I don't have a right to cut another person, and perhaps their children, off from their family history. Everyone has the right to know who their family was and where they came from. It has a great deal to do with our identity.

Florence Fisher is an Adult Adoptee, adopted at birth, who searched and found both of her first parents, and who founded the Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association (ALMA Society). ALMA is one of the first Adoptee Rights organizations to fight for the rights of Adult Adoptees to gain legal entitlement to the first chapter of their lives: their life pre-adoption.

Published in the early 1970's, this book is still relevant today. Although time and increased education over the decades has assuaged some of these issues, the misunderstandings, stereotypes, and assumptions Fisher faced are still faced by Adoptee Rights Activists and searching members of the adoption constellation (often called "triad") today. Additionally, only 6 states in the U.S. allow Adult Adoptees the same access to their own factual birth documentation as the non-adopted receive. Adult Adoptees are the ONLY individuals in the United States who cannot see their Original Birth Certificates. The same laws Fisher fought decades ago are still, yes still, being fought by adoptees and their families, loved ones, and allies today.

It is hard not to be drawn into Fisher's story of her devotion to activism and search for her family. She is extremely transparent and honest about her journey and feelings--something the reader grows to know is important to her as part of Fisher's life was held in secret, and she desired no secrets any longer.

This book is an important piece of adoption and Adoptee Rights history.