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| In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption
ISBN: 9780231540483
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Interracial adoption -- United States; Adoptees -- Family relationships -- United States; African Americans -- Race identity;
Who better than Roorda, "proud of being both African American and the product of a white family," to traverse the sometimes rocky terrain of transracial adoption? Roorda, whose three previous books (most recently, In Their Siblings' Voices) centered on interviews with transracial adoptees and their family members, here speaks to 16 black Americans whose lives illuminate the practice in the eras of Jim Crow, civil rights, and the present day. The interviewees have varied roles: non-adoptees interviewed include a sociologist, a social worker, one adoptee's great-grandmother, another adoptee's wife, and adoptive parents, while the adoptees include a former NFL player, an entrepreneur, a charter school principal, and a former mayor of Philadelphia. They are of many ages, locations, and levels of education and income. The interviews are addressed especially to white adoptive parents of black and biracial children, but they are also relevant to non-adopted siblings, social workers, adoption agents, and therapists. Roorda's expressed goal, "to prepare white adoptive parents to raise culturally aware, self-confident, and centered children of color," is admirably served by the book's diverse viewpoints. An introduction briefly critiques previous research, and an appendix lays out specific and practical guidelines for transcultural and transracial adoption. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Rhonda M. Roorda, M.A., was adopted into a white family and raised with two nonadopted siblings. She is a national speaker on transracial adoption and a recipient of the Judge John P. Steketee Adoption Hero Award from the Adoptive Family Support Network (MI). With Rita J. Simon, she coauthored a landmark trilogy of books on transracial adoption ( In Their Own Voices , In Their Parents' Voices , and In Their Siblings' Voices ). She works as a fund administrator at an educational advocacy organization in Lansing, Michigan. |
