Family Wanted: Adoption Stories

by SaraHolloway (Editor)

• Prizes: ','1','ChildrenBookAge: ','Book Overview: A collection of pieces on adoption, by writers from three sides of the issue: adopted children, birth mothers and adoptive parents. Family Wanted reveals profound truths about identity, family, love and belonging.','\'A frequently startling and consistently moving collection... blood alone is not the motor of the family story, but love, guilt and pain will continue to be\' Telegraph \'The stories take you on a roller coaster of emotions... Whoever you are and however your life is affected by adoption you will find elements of yourself within this book\' Adoption Net \'This eclectic set of reflections by adoptees and adoptive and birth parents runs the gamut of possibilities... a joy to read\' Times Educational Supplement \'A celebration of the range and diversity of the human condition... wonderful reading\' Irish Times \'A truly emotive read with a wide appeal... stunning anthology\' The Big Issue','Sara Holloway is the Senior Editor at Granta Books.');">

  New

  Paperback
  2006

  $9.54

  Family has always been fertile ground for writers. To the usual familial themes, adoption adds its own potent elements: mystery, luck, the questing for origins, the yearning for a child, the importance (or not) of blood ties, and fundamental questions about what it is to become a parent and a family. AM Homes writes of being relentlessly tracked down by her birth mother, and Bernard Cornwell about being adopted by members of a repressive religious sect; Tama Janowitz comically describes meeting her Chinese daughter for the first time, and Martin Rowson reflects on encountering his surprisingly numerous long-lost siblings; Matthew Engel wrestles with international red tape and social workers in his bid to adopt a child and Emily Prager writes movingly about how her young daughter came to terms with being adopted; Jonathan Rendall falls for his birth mother and Paula Fox writes about the joy of being reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption decades before. The pieces in Family Wanted reveal profound truths about identity, family, love and belonging.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.27

  A powerful collection of pieces by writers on adoption, from all three sides of the issue: writers who are adopted, those who have given up children for adoption, and those who have adopted. AM Homes writes about finding her birth father, Bernard Cornwell about being adopted by members of a strange religious sect; Tama Janowitz describes meeting her Chinese daughter for the first time, and Martin Rowson reflects on meeting his long-lost siblings; Daniel Menaker explores what adopting his children has taught him about life, and Sandra Newman and Robert Dessaix, both adopted, explore what difference blood ties make to a family; Jonathan Rendall finds and then falls out with his birth mother; and Paula Fox writes about the joy of being reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption decades before. There are very modern stories of international adoption: from China, Chile, Thailand, Russia and Mali. And also stories about the outdated morality of 1950s and 1960s, when many young women were forced to give up their children. There is humour and heartbreak, profundity and slapstick. Honest and deeply felt and thought, Family Wanted sheds a fascinating and surprising light on identity, family, love and belonging.