An adoption expert and transracial adoptee herself examines the unique perspectives and challenges these adoptees have as they navigate multiple cultures

Product Code: 9319
ISBN: 9780807093375
Publisher: Beacon Press
Pages: 208
Published Date: 01/30/2024
Availability:In stock
N/A
Price: $17.95

The February 2024 Justice and Spirit: Unitarian Universalist Book Club selection.

“Your parents are so amazing for adopting you! You should be grateful that you were adopted.”

Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially adopted involves layers of rejection, loss, and complexity that cannot be summed up so easily.

In “You Should Be Grateful,” Tucker centers the experiences of adoptees to share deeply personal stories, well-researched history, and engrossing anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth. These perspectives challenge the fairy-tale narrative of adoption, giving way to a fuller story that explores the impacts of racism, classism, family, love, and belonging.


Bookmark and Share
Contents

INTRODUCTION
Adoptee Manifesto

PART I: DISCOVERING

CHAPTER 1
You Should Be Grateful
CHAPTER 2
The Adoptee Lounge
CHAPTER 3
How Much Did I Cost?
CHAPTER 4
My Ghost Kingdom
CHAPTER 5
The Search

PART II: EXPERIENCING

CHAPTER 6
White Privilege by Osmosis
CHAPTER 7
Sandy the Flower Man
CHAPTER 8
Unclaimed
CHAPTER 9
Filling the Void
CHAPTER 10
Survivor’s Guilt
CHAPTER 11
Sandy’s Death
CHAPTER 12
I’m Still Looking for My Baby
CHAPTER 13
The “M” Word

PART III: RECKONING

CHAPTER 14
Us vs. Them
CHAPTER 15
The Sondersphere
CHAPTER 16
An Out-of-Bounds Love

Gratitude
Notes
Index

“With deft candor and keen insight, ‘You Should Be Grateful’ looks beyond the political and pop cultural myths about adoption to consider, instead, what adoption looks for those who must live it. Tucker grounds her own story in broader discourses on history and legacy, race and racism, and inequity and privilege to explore not just the complicated meaning of transracial adoption but the meaning of family connection. In my years of studying adoption, this is the book for which I have been waiting.” —Gretchen Sisson, author of Relinquished: The American Mothers Behind Infant Adoption

“This book is so necessary. Angela is well respected among adoptees because of the way she unabashedly advocates for them—whether she’s encouraging adoptees to own their own narratives or coordinating adoption agencies to go back into their files and uncover buried information. I am a fan of hers as a fellow adoptee, but I’ve also had the privilege of covering her work in news stories. Angela teaches us all to live boldly.” —Michelle Li, cofounder of The Very Asian Foundation

“Angela Tucker brings to the forefront what so many adoptees, specifically transracial adoptees, are feeling and thinking or, to some degree, may have experienced. As an adoptive mother, I am always learning ways to better assist my children through our experiences with adoption, as we know that it is traumatic even in the best of circumstances. Tucker has given my children a hero in their own community, their own village, to look up to, that they can relate to. I’m so grateful.” —Keia Jones-Baldwin, founder of Raising Cultures

Be the first to submit a review on this product!
Review and Rate this Item

You might also be interested in: