Marianne Novy, 'Adoption Memoirs'

Join us at The Book Cellar to celebrate the release of Marianne Novy's new book Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories!

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Adoption Memoirs tells inside stories of adoption that popular media miss. Marianne Novy shows how adoption memoirs and films recount not only happy moments, but also the lasting pain of relinquishing a child, the racism and trauma that adoptees such as Jackie Kay and Jane Jeong Trenka experienced, and the unexpected complexities of child-rearing adoptive parents Emily Prager and Jesse Green encountered.

Novy considers 45 memoirs, mostly from the twenty-first century, by birthmothers, adoptees, and adoptive parents, about same-race and transracial adoption. These adoptees, she recounts, wanted to learn about their ancestry and appreciated adoptive parents who helped. Birthmother Amy Seek shows why open adoption is not simple, and many other memoirs tell stories that continue past reunion.

Adoption Memoirs will enlighten readers who lack experience with adoption and help those looking for a shared experience to also understand adoption from a different standpoint.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marianne Novy taught English at the University of Pittsburgh for 45 years, first as a Shakespearean, then focusing on women writers, and most recently on how adoption is represented in literature. An adoptee in contact with her birthmother since 1976, she wrote Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama, showing the influence of myths about adoption that often differ from what happens in real life. Her new book, Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories, is about published memoirs by 45 people who actually experienced adoption, whether as birthmother, adoptee, or adoptive parent.