ISBN:
978-0-8047-8606-5
,
978-0-8047-8605-8
Language:
English
Pages:
VIII, 336 S.
,
Ill.
DDC:
362.7340973
Keywords:
USA Adoption
;
Familie
;
Kind
;
Ausländer
;
Beziehungen, interethnische
Abstract:
Family-making in America is in a state of flux-the ways people compose their families is changing, including those who choose to adopt. Broken Links, Enduring Ties is a groundbreaking comparative investigation of transnational and interracial adoptions in America. Linda Seligmann uncovers the impact of these adoptions over the last twenty years on the ideologies and cultural assumptions that Americans hold about families and how they are constituted. Seligmann explores whether or not new kinds of families and communities are emerging as a result of these adoptions, providing a compelling narrative on how adoptive families thrive and struggle to create lasting ties. Seligmann observed and interviewed numerous adoptive parents and children, non-adoptive families, religious figures, teachers and administrators, and adoption brokers. The book uncovers that adoption-once wholly stigmatized-is now often embraced either as a romanticized mission of rescue or, conversely, as simply one among multiple ways to make a family.
Description / Table of Contents:
Power and institutions. Fate and faith : adoption and popular religiosity -- China : culture and place in imaginaries of exoticism -- White Russians -- Black and white crossings -- Broken links and adoption narratives : the power of storytelling -- Doing school : family trees and playground banter -- The anchors of virtual communities -- The children's search and the formation of diasporic communities -- Conclusion : ties that bind.
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