Transracial Adoption

Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption - Edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin. This anthology was painful to read. I already knew a bit about the issues around transracial adoption (or as some call it, transracial abduction), but this book was so thorough in detailing the many, many issues around this practice; I learned a ton. It combines personal pieces with more academic ones (& some are not exclusively either, of course).

Several of the pieces argue for reframing the debate about transracial adoption: not is it right for white folks to adopt children of color, but why are all these children being taken from their parents to begin with, & why aren't we doing more to keep them w/their birth families? Most of the pieces are written by transracial adoptees, although there's one by the sibling of a transracially adopted person (who is herself the birth child of their parents), & I think some of the academics might not themselves be adoptees.

The essays offer sharp critiques of colonialism, war, racism, & capitalism as they affect supply & demand for certain types of babies (foreign-born over domestic, particularly African American). White Americans' desire for exoticness through foreign adopted children is discussed a lot; in one guidebook on international adoption (critiqued by Kim Park Nelson in "Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace"), an adoptive mother is cited as saying, "My daughter was born in China & is an adopted American. I was born in America & I'm an adopted Chinese." Um, NO. I also learned a lot about the trumped-up "crack baby epidemic" of recent years, as well as much more about how the US government systematically took American Indian children from their parents.

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The Secret History of Moscow - Ekaterina Sedia. When I got a sampler of this book @ WisCon in May, I was so pleased to find an urban fantasy novel that doesn't use the same old boring, overdone Celtic/faux-Celtic themes. Instead, we are shown modern Moscow, where suddenly people are disappearing & turning into birds. I couldn't wait to read the whole book, & I wasn't disappointed. This is splendid: sort of grimly terrifying in bits & sprinkled w/dry observations that made me laugh out loud in other bits, & also there's bits that had me really wide-eyed w/wonder.

Galina, whose sister Masha gave birth in the bathroom of their apartment & then turned into a bird & disappeared, finds herself in an underground world, after diving through a subway window w/two other folks investigating the disappearances. This underground is populated by those who have been left behind or wounded by life in Moscow: mythical creatures, forgotten or reduced to children's tales, & other humans who were scarred enough by the surface world to find their way in. Galina & her above-ground compatriots join forces w/Zemun, a cow who created the Milky Way, & various other figures from Russian history & mythology (like Elena, a Decembrist's wife), in order to find out what is happening w/the people-turned-birds.

Throughout the book I was torn between delight @ the underground world & sadness, because everyone has their own sorrows that have resulted in them gaining entrance to the world below. Galina, who has been in & out of mental hospitals for years, knows her mother dislikes her & prefers Masha--Galina herself seems to prefer her sister over herself. Yakov, a cop, has repressed memories of his tumultuous marriage & child. The denizens of the underground world are frozen as they were when they came through, which is sometimes especially horrifying, & the underground is definitely no paradise.

I kind of felt like the resolution of the book came a bit suddenly--a few chapters from the end, I was wondering if this book would end on an unannounced cliffhanger, but it's a stand-alone. I found the ending terribly sad, & a bit shocking (although I suppose not, really, but nevertheless I was shocked as things unfolded). I also liked how the book critiqued tourism & Western capitalism. Not in a preachy way, mind you, & there certainly isn't any Communist nostalgia here either. The characters in the book just recognize that, despite official public discourse, both systems have serious flaws for ordinary folks.

I'm glad this book stands on its own, but I also really want a sequel!