This adoption memoir is genuine and sincere. The author has taken a big emotional risk in revealing her views and experiences in the adoption process. I recommend this book for anyone interested in international adoption and particularly for anyone who has adopted from Guatemala.
The biggest strength of the book, along with the author's sincerity, is the emotional ending when she meets her daughter's birth mother. The decision to end the book with her daughter about to meet her birth mother is a brilliant decision. The latter omission honors the sacredness of that experience that belongs only to her daughter and those with whom she wishes to share it. Any parent will relate to the author's concern for her daughter's development; a theme of the memoir is her worries about whether her daughter's multiple fostering may have harmed her development and ability to bond with people (pages 183, 193, 282-83).
Moreover, clearly the author always has the best interests of her daughter in mind, as is evidenced by her enrollment in after school Spanish upon her arrival in the U.S. and her efforts to connect her with her Guatemalan heritage. Another further step, however, would be to connect more deeply with indigenous Guatemalan culture through immersion in K'iché (Quiché) once her daughter became proficient in Spanish (the language of colonization). There are places in the U.S. where this can be accomplished: University of Kansas Kaqchikel Mayan Resource Center; State University of NY at Albany Institute of Mesoamerican Studies; University of Texas; University of Chicago Center of Latin American Studies. At issue here is the loss of indigenous languages as a major ongoing problem in the world and complicity in that loss through removal of children from a context in which they could otherwise be brought up as a speaker of one of the K'iché dialects. Even though the ending of the memoir reveals that her daughter's birth mother freely chose to not raise her daughter for important and understandable reasons, the fact of the matter is that the girl's indigenous heritage is not sufficiently honored through Spanish study, positive thoughts about Guatemalan culture, and artwork. Academia de Lenguas Mayas sells simple and practical tapes and books in K'iché. The ACL has its central headquarters in Zone 1 of Guatemala City. There are also Quiché courses available in CALUSAC of the University of San Carlos, in Guatemala City. Much of this information is online.
The glaring weakness of the book is the lack of critical awareness regarding the implicit but nonetheless real connection between Guatemalan poverty, particularly among the indigenous, and the long civil war that erupted after U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles propped up the United Fruit company's unjust hold on the Guatemalan land-based economy through the overthrow of democratically elected Pres. Arbenz, who supported agrarian reform. The brief reference on page 147 to rumors about CIA overthrow is shocking in its lack of awareness. When the author refers to looking so "young and innocent" (page 180), that reference and the lack of critical awareness made me think of the myth of American "innocence" referred to by Edward W. Said in his Culture and Imperialism (Vintage, 1993) page 8. I also read the author's references to "guilt" in the memoir (pp. 143, 155, 265, 271) as superficial due to the lack of an attempt to relate her experience with the role of U.S. foreign policy in creating the situation of poverty in Guatemala and, conversely, to prop up the standard of living in the U.S. through cheap bananas, coffee, and clothes. One does not learn from the author that one can purchase fair trade coffee and bananas in an effort to help create a more equitable situation in the enormous coffee and banana economy. While there are a few brief acknowledgements of the author's privilege, she stays at the finest hotel (Camino Real) and hires a housekeeper in Antigua, even the brief references to privilege are not accompanied by depth of insight that would help connect her situation with the larger socio-economic picture. A depressing aspect of the book is the repeated dismissal of the Hague Treaty (pages 78, 178), as if that treaty was not an effort to deal with sort of corruption her memoir relates. The memoir would be less superficial had the author become informed even a little bit about our postcolonial context. To this end, for starters see Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism referred to above.
The other unflattering self-revelations in this memoir can be viewed ultimately as a strength of the work. For instance, I found the author's treatment of a foster mother, who had bonded with the baby and with whom the baby was deeply bonded (page 194), to be insensitive and not in the best interests of the child. To the author's credit, however, she acknowledges as much by expressing doubt about the right course of action (pages 199, 285). A major strength of the memoir is that the author reveals much about herself and her attitudes, including an annoying naiveté and an obvious lack of reading in postcolonial studies, but altogether her self-revelations mark the memoir as genuine and sincere. Moreover, those who embrace notions of American exceptionalism and historical innocence will read the memoir without finding the weaknesses I point out here.
Despite the caveats referred to above, I recommend this book and am grateful the author took the time and effort to share her family's experiences with a wider audience. A much better written, better balanced, and more critically aware book is Jacob Wheeler's Between Light and Shadow. A Guatemalan Girl's Journey through Adoption (University of Nebraska Press, 2011).
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