When I was going through the process of adopting my second child, after having my first by a more conventional route, I looked for diverse representations of mothering to help me make sense of my journey. These recommended books helped me to understand the lived experience from all sides of the adoption triangle: adoptee, birth mother, and adopter. I was curious about the experience of other mothers whose children have an additional mother and found a lack of life writing on surrogacy and egg donation. As a published novelist and poet, I decided to move into experimental life writing and undertook a PhD in Creative Writing to discover and write their stories.
I wrote...
Another Mother: Curating and Creating Voices of Adoption, Surrogacy and Egg Donation
Written by an adoptive and biological mother, this book draws on interviews with six women to offer a fresh approach to life writing, combining edited interviews, fact-fiction, poetry, lyric essays, and quotation collage.
Alison conceived her first child via an egg donor in Cyprus before going on to adopt a second child in the UK; egg donor Charlotte’s eggs made two babies for other families before she had any children of her own; Rubi used surrogacy services in India to become a mother; surrogate mother Robin had two babies for another couple; adoptive mother Lorraine was adopted as a baby herself; and birth mother Margaret, now in her seventies, was reunited with the child who was adopted through the Church many years ago.
Carole Schaefer’s poignant memoir presents the story of a naïve, young, Catholic American woman falling pregnant outside of marriage and being pressured to give up her baby for adoption in 1965 at age nineteen. The book charts an eighteen-year journey to tracing and meeting her birth son.
The book’s unusual vantage point makes for compelling reading, offering insight into an experience seldom written about.
In 1965, Carol Schaefer was 19, a freshman in college and deeply in love. She was also pregnant. When her boyfriend’s family opposed their marrying, her parents sequestered her in a Catholic home for unwed mothers a state away, where she was isolated and where secrecy prevailed. She had only to give up her baby for her sin to be forgiven and then all would soon be forgotten she was told. The child, in turn, would be placed with a “good” family, instead of having his life ruined by the stigma of illegitimacy. Carol tried to find the strength to…
Sally Donovan’s book is a memoir by an adoptive mother of two children who were removed from their birth family due to abuse and neglect. It’s an eye-opening, and at times eye-watering, read, educating the reader about the complexities of mothering children who have experienced trauma. It is also a deeply moving book about ‘hope, love and healing.’
Anyone considering adopting would benefit from reading this book.
An uplifting true story of an ordinary couple who build an extraordinary family, No Matter What describes how Sally and Rob Donovan embark upon a journey to adopt following a diagnosis of infertility.
Sally Donovan brings to life with characteristic wit and honesty the difficulties of living with infertility, their decision to adopt and the bewildering process involved. Finally matched with young siblings Jaymey and Harlee, Sally and Rob's joy turns to shock as they discover disturbing details of their children's past and realise that they must do everything it takes to heal their…
Carrie Etter’s haunting poetry collection presents the imaginings of a birth mother who gave up her child for adoption when she was seventeen, exploring the many diverse visions she has of her son as an adult. The poet sees her son everywhere: in the supermarket, on the train, in the park.
This is a profoundly affecting collection that I could not put down.
"In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter reflects on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. In a series of haunting, psalm-like prose poems of enormous courage and insight, she describes possible encounters with this son now in his late teens, expressing how 'sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering'. The series of 'Birthmother's Confessions' return to repeated, harrowing questions that yield different answers at different moments. This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill ('hair the dark red of a nectarine pit') leaves a mark on the reader which…
Published twenty-one years after her autobiographical novel, Jeanette Winterson’s memoir lays bare her experience as an adoptee.
Her adoption is not a happy one, with her strict Pentecostal adoptive mother rejecting her, locking her out of the house, and even subjecting her to an exorcism. Winterson eventually reunites with her birth mother, which leads to an emotional collapse.
As an adopter, I found this to be a painful but important read, and I am grateful to Winterson for writing her truth.
The shocking, heart-breaking - and often very funny - true story behind Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It was Jeanette's version of the story of a terraced house in Accrington, an adopted child, and the thwarted giantess Mrs Winterson. It was a cover story, a painful past written over and repainted. It was a story of survival.
This book is that story's the silent twin. It is full of hurt and humour and a fierce love of life. It is about the pursuit of happiness,…
Adoptee Jackie Kay’s poetry collection presents the voices of three speakers who are distinguished typographically: the daughter, the adoptive mother, and the birth mother.
Read in conjunction with Kay’s memoir on adoption, Read Dust Road, this poetry collection offers a fascinating insight into the adoption triangle through multiple versions of the same events.
Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2022 The Adoption Papers was selected as one of ten books representing the 1990s in The Big Jubilee Read, a celebration of great books from across the Commonwealth to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, one of only three poetry collections out of 70 books on the list.
Susan Tate Ankeny left a career in teaching to write the story of her father’s escape from Nazi-occupied France. In 2011, after being led on his path through France by the same Resistance fighters who guided him in 1944, she felt inspired to tell the story of these brave French patriots, especially the 17-year-old- girl who risked her own life to save her father’s. Susan is a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, the Air Force Escape and Evasion Society, and the Association des Sauveteurs d’Aviateurs Alliés.
The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.
This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States history to earn a pilot's license, and the first female Asian American pilot to fly for the military.
Her achievements, passionate drive, and resistance in the face of oppression as a daughter of Chinese immigrants and a female aviator changed the course of history. Now the remarkable story of a fearless underdog finally surfaces to inspire anyone to reach toward the sky.
One of WWII’s most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the WASPs, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies.
Her singular story of patriotism, barrier breaking, and fearless sacrifice is told for the first time in full for readers of The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck, A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, The Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown and all Asian American, women’s and WWII history books.…
