A powerful collection of pieces on adoption, by writers from all three sides of the issue: adopted children, birth mothers, and adoptive parents.
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. This riveting anthology of mainly autobiographical pieces covers the gamut of the adoption experience. AM Homes tells 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 fierce love and tenaciousness of the adoptive parents is as moving as the confusion and vulnerability of the adoptees and the bitter regret of the birth mothers.
Full of drama and irony, heartbreak and humour, the pieces in 'Family Wanted' reveal profound truths about identity, family and love.
