We’ve had great responses to the Adoption STAR Book Club that we introduced last week, and today we’re announcing that the first book the club will be reading is “Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother.” This memoir from adoptive mother, Jana Wolff, comes highly recommended by staff members.
The book is a quick read at only 163 pages, and can be found easily at tapestrybooks.com or amazon.com. You may also want to check if it is available at your local library.
For this first book we will be checking in on Facebook in three weeks for an official online “meeting” where we will discuss our thoughts on the book. I will also write a longer “book review” post on the blog. Starting Thursday, August 4, we will start discussing the book in detail on Facebook. This should give everyone enough time to find the book and finish it. If you would like to discuss the book before August 4, I will create a message board on Facebook where you can leave your thoughts on the book without “spoiling” the book for others who are at different parts of the book.
Here is what amazon.com and tapestrybooks.com had to say about “Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother”
Tapestry: “What a great book! SECRET THOUGHTS OF AN ADOPTIVE MOTHER reveals the hidden emotions that so many adoptive parents are afraid or embarrassed to share, believing they are alone in feeling this way–feelings of amusement and terror, surrealism and sarcasm, familiarity and alienation. This book discusses the author’s fears, concerns, and questions about adoption. You won’t be able to put it down until you’ve read it from cover to cover.”
Amazon (From Publishers Weekly):The author and her husband, both Jewish, adopted a male baby at birth. Their child, whom they named Ari, was the birth son of two 18-year-olds, a Mexican-American mother and an African American father. In this candid memoir, Wolff relates her mixed feelings about bringing up a child from a different cultural background. Although she deeply loves her son, she is concerned that a biracial adoption may have made his future life harder. She also discusses her fears–groundless, it turns out–that Martie, the birth mother, would return to claim her child. Although the author’s frankness is disarming and she has bravely made the decision to maintain contact with Martie and to allow her to visit Ari, she makes sometimes harsh or patronizing judgments about Martie’s life choices. Wolff’s commitment to her son comes across here as absolute, but she makes clear she harbors many ambivalent emotions about the adoption that will be of interest to other adoptive parents of biracial children.