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Title: Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption
ISBN: 0807028304
Author:
Barbara Katz Rothman
Publicate Date: 2006-05-15
Publish: 2006-05-15
List Price: $18.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.14
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.35
Amazon Merchant Price: $13.50
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Ugh...
I must say that I was really excited to read this book, which appeared to closely parallel my struggles. What I got, instead, was a sociologists' opinion about why adoption is a bandaid for a massive wound.
Her opinions leak onto every page, leading one to beleive that they're absolute truth. I was bummed. I hoped for so much more from an intellectual stand point, but all that I got was ... a lot of wishwash with very few answers.
And so, my two stars is because I was hoping that she would act human a little more than scientist. That she would reveal her mom side a little more than her career side. (I understand that both sides make up the writer, but very little was personal about this book.)
If you're hoping to have someone who reveals what life REALLY is in a cross cultural family, go somewhere else because this book has very little to do with day to day life within my family.
"So where do babies fit in? On the one hand, mothers produce babies. On the other hand, mothers "consume" babies: we use babies as objects to produce ourselves as mothers. The baby is like an accessory, the very important object we have to add to our homes to complete ourselves and our families." -pg 37
Ugh...
How about I just want to aide our world by loving just one more child?
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2: Scholarly, Personal, and Lyrical: Great Read
You don't have to be either a sociologist or parent to find Weaving a Family a compelling read. Clear-eyed and unafraid, grounded in racial reality, Barbara Katz Rothman takes on some of the biggest issues in our society. Whole chapters are devoted to such topics as race labels and what they mean, motherhood and how it has changed in the last two generations, race matching in the adoption process, and the issues facing white women raising black children.
The centerpiece chapter, and the one that dictates the overarching metaphor of the book, is "Hair: Braiding Together Culture, Identity, and Entitlement." In this serious, sometimes humorous, and totally human chapter, Rothman recollects her acculturation into the African American community through her efforts to learn to care for her daughter's tight, curly hair. More than anything, learning to braid her daughter's hair helped Rothman gain respect among members of a "new" peer group, (mostly black) women mothering black children.
Given all its candor and insights, Weaving a Family is still most remarkable for Rothman's guiding voice. It is down-home, wise, and sometimes lyrical, as when she writes: "Victoria and I, a child and her mother, are at the bottom of a long strange funnel. There is the Eastern European anti-Semitism that brought my great grandparents to New York, where the confrontation with American racism bleached out their Semitic race and made my family white. Victoria got to where she is via the slave trade to the American South, and the Great Migration to the Northeast. . . . Ours is one story. But there are lots of families like mine."
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3: Essential Reading for Transracial Adoptions
As a recent adoptive (white) parent of an African-American infant girl, I found Barbara Katz Rothman's book, Weaving a Family, to be a godsend. In down-to-earth prose, but with the incisive thinking of the sociologist that she is, Katz Rothman takes a bold look at the complexities underlying her own transracial adoption (of her now-15-year-old daughter, Victoria, whom she adopted as an infant) and the phenomenon of transracial adoption in America today. While feeling no less her daughter's mother, she fearlessly explores and exposes the cultural ironies of transracial adoption, and the privilege and responsibility that imposes on those who enter such relationships.
This should be required reading for prospective parents considering transracial adoption. On one level, it's an easy read; the writing is magnificent. On another--the emotional level--it can be tough going, but absolutely necessary if the children of transracial adoptions are going to be well served by the arrangement, and by their families. Top rate...
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4: Finally, a smart book about race and adoption
Rothman skillfully weaves the knowledge of an academic with the passion of an adoptive parent in this marvellous book. This book is wise, personal, well researched, and often hilarious. Unlike many stories of adoptive parents, its never sappy. It sheds new light on the complicated questions of race and adoption; how white parents and black children fare with each other. Any one interested in adoption and contemporary race politics should read this.
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