Mariel Carlson, University of Minnesota MSW Student and Outreach Graduate Assistant at CASCW Laura LeBrun, MSW, University of Minnesota Graduate and Outreach Graduate Assistant at CASCW Welcome to the Expanding Knowledge blog series! The following is an eight-week series that will feature means to enhance your child welfare work through education by non-conventional means, exploring content beyond traditional academia. We recognize that everyone learns in unique ways and thus will suggest resources from social media, books, podcasts, and more to help broaden the child welfare knowledge base and increase access to a variety of voices.
Our sixth week in Expanding Knowledge will explore nonfiction books.
Nonfiction books primarily hold dual purposes: narrating the life stories of individuals or delving deeper into a certain subject. Both hold value for different reasons. Books that look generally into a topic, such as the foster care and adoption systems, give incredibly valuable insight into historical contexts that have shaped the systems we see today. Memoirs, however, allow people outside of the foster and adoptee constellations to see how the systems can individually affect people’s lives. As nonfiction books can discuss many ideas and themes, we categorized them so that you can find a category that will most interest you or enhance your learning.
It is important to consider the identities that creators use when considering how these perspectives will influence your child welfare practice. It was intentional that only one feature could be considered as a biography: a children’s book. Often, foster and adoptive parents are centered in conversations due to many factors, including age, power differentials, and perception of role. As former foster youth and adoptee voices are the center of our work, their voices should be elevated. Nonfiction books about a certain topic may feature foster and adoptive voices, but it is important to remember that their stories are written from the lens of the author. In addition, while memoirs are written from those voices directly affected by the systems, we need to remember that these pieces have been edited by individuals who are likely not impacted by the foster and adoption systems. We invite you to consider the positions, identities, and power dynamics inherent in any of the child welfare-related media you might view. Whose voice is centered? Are those with lived experience exploited or further marginalized?
With these notes in mind, we would like to give thanks to Lauren J. Sharkey for pointing us to a website to help amplify foster and adoptee voices. As a final comment, however, we would like to discuss the importance of word choices when referring to identities, and thank Lauren as well for bringing our attention to the discussion about #ownvoices. You can view one of the discussions about this term. We hear and agree with the fact that people should be able to define their own identities, and thus we have tried to use words within our descriptions to reflect the identities of the authors that they have chosen for themselves. If we have made a mistake in any of these word choices or identities, we would appreciate it if you would contact us via email so that we can correct these errors. Below are nonfiction books that we recommend you consider viewing:
1. Surviving the White Gaze, Rebecca Carroll
Category: transracial adoption
Surviving the White Gaze is a memoir following Rebecca Carroll’s journey through an early childhood as one of the only Black people in her rural New Hampshire town, connection with her birth family, the search for identity, and more. Born in 1969 to a Black father and white mother, Rebecca always knew of her adoption. Her adoptive father was friends with her birth mother and birth uncle, which led to the Carrolls adopting her as an infant. Her parents believed in the concepts of peace and love, embracing artistic professions and nontraditional lifestyles. Yet, while Rebecca’s family seemed to acknowledge the superficial importance of her Blackness, they could not protect her from the racism, prejudice, and stereotypes that come from being a Black child living in an all-white family, in an almost all-white county. Details of her childhood seem absurd (such as the “slave trade” in her school), but what is quite possibly the most heartbreaking part of Rebecca’s story is her meeting and relationship with her birth mother. Rebecca so badly wanted the approval of her birth mother, yet it instead led to deeply damaging emotional effects.
Rebecca’s story is deeply personal yet holds an objective viewpoint in how adults’ decisions can lead to effects on children’s lives. It is a must-read for the child welfare worker who is navigating transracial foster care and adoption, as it provides many examples of the effects of trauma as it relates to adoption. Overall, a quote in the prologue exemplifies the importance of not only racial mirrors, but also relationships with those who look and hold similar cultural backgrounds to the child: “…black folks are to one another – we are the light that affirms and illuminates ourselves to ourselves. A light that shines in its reflection of unbound blackness, brighter and beyond the white gaze.”
For those people who enjoyed Surviving the White Gaze or would like to explore another book about similar themes, All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung discusses similar concepts. Nicole, an American born to Korean immigrants, was adopted as a child by white parents and knew of her adoption but did not grow up in an environment where the complexities behind adoption were actively discussed. Like Carroll, she questions her identity and culture throughout the memoir, which documents her search for and ensuing relationships with her first family.
2. Goodbye, SaraJane: A Foster Child Writes Letters to Her Mother, Sequoya Griffin
Category: foster care
Sequoya Griffin entered the foster care system with her siblings and was adopted by a white family, who she first meets within the first few chapters of the book. The memoir documents, according to Sequoya, “foster care placements, reunification, adoption, disruption, group homes, and aging out of the foster care system.” Both parents dealing with substance abuse, Sequoya and her siblings last saw their mother on Sequoya’s tenth birthday, though pictures of this heartbreaking moment were soon torn up by one foster mother. This event was not the only instance where Sequoya faced injustice by those who were supposed to protect and take care of her. Her experience highlights the brokenness of the system, its workers, and those foster and adoptive parents meant to be safe harbors for the children.
Throughout it all, however, Sequoya weaves letters that she wrote to her mother — one of her ways to maintain connection with someone she loved dearly. This relationship was important, even though Sequoya never saw her mother, for her adoptive mother “slowly snatched my identity away from me.” This memoir, therefore, is vital for the child welfare worker who works with all children in out of home placements, so that they can be attuned to mistreatment and abuse of children in the child welfare system and attempt to influence more positive and fulfilling outcomes for youth.
If this book appeals to you, we would also recommend that you explore Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter. Ashley also had an extended and tumultuous experience in the child welfare system and has used her voice to call attention to the abuse that occurs within foster homes. While her adoption was a positive experience, her time in foster care should not be discounted.
3. Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, Susan Devan Harness
Category: American Indian history
Susan Devan Harness’s memoir is particularly notable due to her identity as a transracial, American Indian adoptee. She is a member of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes. As is well-known within the child welfare world, Indigenous communities faced incredible racism, leading to the creation of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, and Susan’s story reflects such injustices. She was removed from her family and tribal culture at 18 months and was adopted at the age of two to a white family. At fifteen, she questioned her family about the identity of her “real” parents, receiving the answer that they had died in a car accident. It took years before she found out that they were, in fact, alive.
Like other memoirs, Susan discusses themes of identity within transracial adoption. She also, however, weaves concepts such as assimilation of American Indians into white culture, the cultural construction of race, and intergenerational trauma. As Susan studied these concepts professionally and includes the voices of other adoptees, her book holds incredible value. Bitterroot is necessary for the child welfare worker who works within American Indian communities or those interested in understanding intergenerational trauma on a deeper, more personal level.
A memoir that touches on similar themes is While the Locust Slept: A Memoir by Peter Razor. Peter, an Ojibwe man, spent considerable time at the State Public School in Owatonna, Minnesota. He faced abuse and racism there and, when he was adopted, he continued to be treated as someone unworthy of humanity. The memoir is haunting but eye-opening for those looking for personal accounts of historical injustices faced by Native people.
4. Through Adopted Eyes: A Collection of Memoirs From Adoptees and Through Adopted Hearts: A Collection of Memoirs From Birth and Adoptive Parents written and compiled by Elena S. Hall
Category: essays
Elena S. Hall is an adoptee who was adopted from Russia. Although she started graduate school and is an advocate for adoption, she wrote the first book, Through Adopted Eyes, with her identity of adoptee as her focus and makes that clear in the acknowledgements. The first part of Through Adopted Eyes is Elena’s story, and the rest of the book features essays from other adoptees. What is especially important about this book is that Elena features voices with a wide range of voices and experiences: people adopted transracially, transnationally, and from foster care, as well as children, teenagers, and adults.
Upon her release of her second compilation of essays, Through Adopted Hearts, Elena has graduated graduate school and expanded her work by collecting stories from birth and adoptive parents. Similar to her first book, Elena amplifies a wide range of voices, whose experiences are important to learn from. Both of these books are vital to child welfare workers working with all children, due to the wide variety of voices. If there is a specific voice that you are hoping to learn from, Elena included an index at the end of both books that categorizes the stories by the author’s identities.
5. Finding Hope: A Birthmother’s Journey into the Light , Hope O. Baker
Category: Birthmothers
Hope Baker is a birth mother who gave up her son for adoption at the age of 21 years old. She used an open adoption and even lived with the adoptive mother during her pregnancy. While she tried to move on with her life, Hope was also experiencing depression and struggled with substance abuse. This book tells Hope’s emotional story. We recommend this for anyone working in the field of adoption or those who might be considering adoption themselves – Hope’s memoir inspires empathy for birth mothers in a way that is not often discussed in the adoption narrative.
A slightly different narrative but similar birth mother perspective is told in The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler. This macro-oriented book tells the story of thousands of women who were forced to give up their children for adoption before the passage of Roe v. Wade, and who went on to live their lives with hidden grief. Fessler is an adoptee herself and traveled the country to hear from these women and share their stories.
6. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Bruce Perry
Category: trauma
Although well-known in the child welfare field, Bruce Perry’s book remains one that should be highlighted due to his (at the time) revolutionary work with children experiencing trauma. Each chapter focuses on a story of a child or children experiencing trauma, and how Bruce, a clinician, teacher, and researcher, and his team worked to improve their lives. One of the most important aspects of the book is how important it is to meet children experiencing trauma where they are at emotionally or developmentally, rather than chronologically. We would also highly recommend a later version of this book, which chronicles misunderstandings that have come from individuals about children who have experienced trauma, as Bruce seeks to correct these misconceptions.
Another book that has an important trauma-informed lens is The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. The Primal Wound, a book that inspired Reckoning with the Primal Wound, a documentary featured in last week’s blog post, explains how there is a trauma that comes with the loss of a birth parent, even if the separation happened at birth. It is important for those seeking to understand trauma responses in children despite having “a good family.”
7. Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, Dorothy Roberts
Category: race and racism
In light of the recent racial pandemic, Shattered Bonds holds almost more importance now than it did when it was first published in 2002. It documents the disproportionate representation of Black children in the foster care system and the residual impacts of this representation on greater society. Dorothy Roberts, an American scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, mixes conversations with Chicago-area mothers and national statistics to elaborate on this crisis. Overall, Dorothy highlights the frequent theme of children being removed from their families not because of abuse or neglect but simply because of poverty. This book is vital for the child welfare worker who wishes to understand the racial implications of our current child welfare system.
If you are interested in learning more about racial contexts within the child welfare system, particularly in regards to children of other identities, we also recommend that you explore A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World by Margaret D. Jacobs. Although Jacobs is a non-Native historian, her book demonstrates the historical undermining of Indigenous families, with some focus on the Baby Veronica case.
8. To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care , Cris Beam
Category: historical context of foster care and adoption
Cris Beam was a foster parent, which led her to want to explore “the life cycle of a foster child.” Her book profiles a few foster children and weaves historical contexts throughout its 337 pages. While Beam’s book has a more uplifting tone than many of the other choices in this post, its historical contexts, such as the political pendulum that influences foster care, makes it just as valuable as the others. In addition, it documents the importance of an adult in a child’s life who will “just stay” and be there to take care of them. This book is vital to the child welfare worker who wishes to learn about a more broad historical perspective of the foster care system and is also a good introduction for people new to the foster care system.
For those interested in the historical contexts of adoption, we also recommend American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser. American Baby is a relatively new book that explores the “dark time in [American] history” of the 1960s adoption movement. It holds huge implications for the adoption industry today and is vital to read in order to understand why the adoption system looks the way it does today.
9. Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA , Richard Hill
Category: searching for first families
Richard Hill is an adoptee who documented his search for his birth family via genetic genealogy. His birth records are sealed, making the journey a difficult one. Not only does this tale give a glimpse into the difficulty of using genetics and the internet to find a birth family, but it is also praised for giving other adoptees on similar journeys tips and tricks for navigating the search. It includes a breakdown of the science behind DNA, genetics, and the evidence that this gives adoptees in the search for birth families. A similar memoir is written by Sara Easterly in Searching for Mom: A Memoir. Sara struggled with intergenerational trauma, suicidality, and attachment to her adoptive mother throughout her life. After becoming a mother herself, Sara found that longing for her birth mother even greater. This story is, at its heart, a mother-daughter narrative that anyone can relate to when seeking belonging and forgiveness.
10. Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles, Michelle Meadows, illustrated by Ebony Glenn
Category: children’s literature
This children’s book tells the story of Simone Biles, U.S. Olympic Champion and Gold Medalist, and her journey in gymnastics. As a child, Simone and her siblings were removed from their biological mother and adopted by their grandparents. The story highlights her perseverance and ultimate success in the gymnastics world. Given what we know about the sexual abuse of Simone Biles and other women gymnasts by coach Larry Nassar, this children’s book is a refreshing reminder of the power and importance of family support; we can see, even from a child’s perspective, how vulnerable Simone Biles has beeen by continuing to compete and share her story in the spotlight. Looking for more children’s books? We recommend Gabriella & Samantha’s New Mom by Pauline Rose Moore, illustrated by Fatima Stamato, and edited by Anne Hamilton. The story is about Gabriella and Samantha, two sisters removed from their birth family and placed in foster care, experiencing anxiety with each move to a new foster home. This story is based on the author’s own foster care to adoption story.
Do you have any nonfiction books or other resources that have been helpful to you as a child welfare professional? Please send us an email.
The reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are expressly that of the author and are not that of the University of Minnesota, School of Social Work, or Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare.