Adoption Book Review: “Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption”

I’d love to read and review every adoption book that comes down the pike, but alas, I have a life. So today and tomorrow I’m going to provide the Reader’s Digest version of a couple of adoption book reviews I found on Literary Mama.  

Please visit Literary Mama to read an extensive review of this book.

Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption by Barbara Katz Rothman

Highlights and excerpts from a review by Deesha Philyaw Thomas:

The reviewer (Thomas) is a black adoptive mom, and says she approached this book with both interest and skepticism, wondering whether a white author would “get” racism. She also wondered, “Would Rothman write about hair? About how for black folks, hair isn’t just hair?”

Thomas was pleasantly surprised that Rothman devoted an entire chapter to hair. Apparently, the author’s original intention was to write a book about how white mothers learn – or do not learn – to do hair for their black children. Rothman writes, “In the doing of hair, one does race. Race is constructed, celebrated, despaired of, enjoyed, feared.”

Rothman “sees beyond black and white,” writes the reviewer. In addition to discussing the adoption of black children by white parents, she also considers the adoption of Chinese and Korean children by white parents.

I found particularly enlightening the reviewer’s comments about how international adoption emphasizes “The Baby, as if the baby were hatched and not born of a feeling, breathing mother.” The author muses that in international adoption, “the children appear to come from orphanages, not mothers.” Rothman believes that the perceived anonymity of these mothers, as well as the “availability and the almost-whiteness of the children” draws Americans to international adoption. Rothman points out that adoptive families who make return visits to their child’s native country usually do so to consume the country itself, rather than to seek out birth mothers. Rothman writes that “the reality of a grieving mother…is far more than most adoptive parents want.”

The reviewer compliments Rothman’s “insightful and challenging discussion of race and describes Rothman’s writing style as “engaging,” “deeply personal,” and “scholarly.” The reviewer concludes that Weaving a Family should be required reading for white parents in transracial adoptive families.