7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complex and insightful., May 11, 2007
This is, without a doubt, the best book I have read about transnational / transcultural adoption. It includes rich examples from the lives of adopted children and their families and it intelligently and sensitively analyzes the contradictions that surround the strange world of international adoption. I have served as a mentor for adopted teens, and the issues Sara Dorow describes here are very much felt by transcultural adoptees themselves, whether their parents are sensitive to them or not (I've found that many adoptees are terrified to talk to their parents about what they really feel due to deep-seated fears of abandonment). I find it interesting that the one person to give this book a low rating is an adoptive parent, which to me only supports Dorow's points in this book. There are many wonderful adoptive parents out there who knock themselves out to understand their children's struggles, but some parents get defensive and deny the complicated terrain that international adoptees are forced to negotiate in a racially divided America (and world). Adoptive parents need to realize that there are people in the countries of origin who have the legitimate gut reaction, "They're stealing our babies" (and that their children may themselves feel "stolen" at some points). Thank you, Sara Dorow, for your diligent research and careful analysis. This is an important, foundational work.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating analysis of adoption from China, September 13, 2006
This review is from: Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship (Nation of Newcomers) (Paperback)
I have read this book from cover to cover (unlike the author of the review above), and I must say I am deeply impressed with the even-handed, nuanced analysis of this vitally important yet extremely touchy issue. I am an adoptee and a researcher and writer in the area of adoption. Dorow's analysis succeeds in doing what so few books on adoption do: she balances between a critical (in the best sense of the word) appraisal of transnational adoption as a process of child-transfer in a global capitalist marketplace and an empathetic understanding of the life experiences of adoptive families. It is indeed an academic sort of book, but it is also a valuable read for non-academics interested in the issues of race, gender, and kinship that arise in transnational transracial adoption. This book is the most insightful analysis of adoption from China that I have read. I applaud the author for her sensitive discusion, and highly recommend this book for anyone interested in considering the issue in social and cultural context.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Timely and Accomplished, June 11, 2007
This review is from: Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship (Nation of Newcomers) (Paperback)
Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship provides a sociological examination of Americans who adopt Chinese born children and the dynamic but uneven cultural `economy' that shapes their politics of belonging and processes of identification. This book does not set out to describe the practice as an unworthy or untroubled pursuit where individuals are held accountable for either the negatives and positives that can emerge. One of the many admirable characteristics of this book that makes it stand out from most other accounts of adoptive parenting is how it resists representing the practice as a highly individualistic, personal and `fate-driven' endeavor. There is an ongoing need to look beyond more common narratives which heroically position adoptive parents' own ability to love and care as something universal, culture-free and outside hierarchies of racial privilege - whilst failing to move beyond tropes that reify, underestimate and/or denigrate adopted children's cultural heritage, birth parents and communities of birth. Thankfully Dorow's study does not build its narrative from easy but damaging assignments of heroes and villains although we are made aware of how hard it is to resist such stereotyping - such as when she views Americans with Asian babies ready for departure at an airport and her first reaction is that "they're stealing the children".
Dorow does not hide her own moral struggles and culturally loaded reactions, and instead makes them transparent and situated in a dialogue with a scholarly process that usefully identifies some of the complex representations of race and ethnicity, as well as relationships of power unfolding in adoption that can be interrogated and challenged by all. The people I had in mind of being able to collaborate with the critical thinking and strategizing on offer in this book includes the ever growing and mostly White middle-class adoptive parents whose considerable commitment to ensuring the well-being of their adopted children should not be taken lightly. The likelihood of adoptive parents being able to engage with the intellectual tone and jargon in this book also shouldn't be underestimated.
People who are adopted might experience this book somewhat differently from adoptive parents and the general public. This is not the first account adopted people have of what it's like to be an adoptive parent. It's something they've been able to observe, assess and query for most of their lives and this experience can produce a special (but rarely recognized) kind of expertise on the topic. However, I think that many mature-aged adopted people can still be surprised when looking at how a `new' - and a sometimes younger generation of adoptive parents - are raising overseas born children in an era of greater global connectivity and mobility. I too am keen to have a deeper understanding of adoptive parenting, which is the topic of my dissertation, but I would have liked to found out more about Dorow's own biography as well as having deeper detail about where she fits into the hierarchies within and pushing along adoptions as they operate today. Coming from a different position, that of an Asian adoptee and researcher, I am would have appreciated finding out more about where her own perspectives have emerged from and how her own subject-positions have an impact on her ethnographic efforts.
However, Dorow's study remains a real achievement as it begins to fill a significant gap of literature featuring more theoretically informed accounts of transnational adoptive parenting. Dorow illustrates her representation of adoption with sociological theory and empirical material made up of interviews and observation of a number of American adoptive parents (including the mostly marginal and overlooked population of Chinese-American adoptive parents). Dorow also conducted interviews and observation in China as well as referring to texts by both Chinese and non-Chinese scholars.
This multi-layered approach successfully allows us to look at important but less sentimental aspects of transnational adoption. We begin with Dorow's critical overview of some of the key conditions that compel parents to adopt overseas born children. Her work challenges the humanitarian image of adoption saving needy babies, for example, by highlighting how many adoptions are driven by biological complications (infertility) and domestic racial tensions (i.e. overseas adoption is less fraught with racial politics than say, the adoption of Indigenous American Indian or African American children).
Dorow's book also reveals the culturally loaded, and sometimes racist narratives that White adoptive parents are particularly vulnerable to employing in order to justify their adopting children across racial and cultural lines of differences and away from their country of birth. There is also a considered discussion of some of the discourses, practices and power relationships that currently shape the ways adoptive parents not only embrace but also filter the incorporation of the ethnic heritage of the children who join them into their family life. The poetic but analytical detail in Dorow's work is rich and memorable - with themes such as gifts, ambassadors, clients and cultural bridges taking us through the sensitive lines adoption bleeds into and crosses over - moving between the makings of a new human market and matters of the heart. At no time, however, did I feel that Dorow was suggesting that adoptive parents were completely blind to these complexities or that they were unwilling or incapable of changing. On the contrary, Dorow's informants appear to be well positioned to effect change from within the circles of power and privilege they inhabit.
A final point worth making is that a major weaknesses in most adoption studies is how most fail to take full advantage of, and refer to what is a healthy and growing body of literature by researchers and experts whose biographies include being transnationally adopted. However, this is disclosing one of my biggest disappointments with academic writing on adoption today in general.
Dorrow's study thankfully for the most part avoids such oversights. She refers to work by several Korean adult adoptees and at least one Chinese adult adoptee...their fiction, their creative non-fiction, presentations they have made and their films. This really strengthens the research and her standing as a resourceful scholar.
Too many other investigators who make decent contribution to the field are still let down by their failure to refer to literature by transnationally adopted researchers and professionals. To push the relevance and significance of this point one only needs look at the canon of work by authors who are say, Women, Queer, Asian-American, Latin-American or African-American - in fields about Women, Queers, Asian-American, Latin-American and African Americans - to see how strange the absence of adopted authors is in studies about adoption.
Researchers of adoption would benefit from searching out and referring studies emerging from researchers who are transnationally adopted such as Kathleen Bergquist, Farnard Darnell, Perlita Harris, Tobias Hubinette and Julia Chinyere Oparah to name just a handful. There are also the creative works by people such as Jane Trenka, Hoa Stone, Kevin Minh Allen and Sunny Johnsen. Such scholars and authors are beginning to write about Korean or Chinese adoptions as well as on a range of other countries and from a variety of displines. Here's to more healthy and vibrant approaches to understanding adoption.
Written by Indigo W. Willing (VN adoptee and adoption researcher)
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