Family Wanted: Adoption Stories

A powerful collection of pieces by writers on adoption, from all three sides of the issue: writers who are adopted, those who have given up children for adoption, and those who have adopted. AM Homes writes about finding her birth father, Bernard Cornwell about being adopted by members of a strange religious sect; Tama Janowitz describes meeting her Chinese daughter for the first time, and Martin Rowson reflects on meeting his long-lost siblings; Daniel Menaker explores what adopting his children has taught him about life, and Sandra Newman and Robert Dessaix, both adopted, explore what difference blood ties make to a family; Jonathan Rendall finds and then falls out with his birth mother; and Paula Fox writes about the joy of being reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption decades before. There are very modern stories of international adoption: from China, Chile, Thailand, Russia and Mali. And also stories about the outdated morality of 1950s and 1960s, when many young women were forced to give up their children. There is humour and heartbreak, profundity and slapstick.
Honest and deeply felt and thought, Family Wanted sheds a fascinating and surprising light on identity, family, love and belonging.