Posts Tagged ‘book clubs’

Book club

Monday, March 14th, 2016

I’m grateful to live in an area with an active adoptive parent community. Yesterday, Olivia and I drove an hour for “book club”–no matter how many times I drive to my friend Marie’s house, I always get lost–and met with moms and kids we’ve known for years. (Shout out to Marie’s husband who watched the kids while the moms talked. Thank you, Ralph!)

The book discussed was Separated @ Birth: A True Love Story of Twins Reunited, a memoir about two young women now in their 20s, born in Korea and adopted to two different families, in France and the US. The conversation veered, as it always does, from the book to other topics: this time, the impact of social media on finding biological family; the impact of social media on our kids; birth family reunions; trips to Guatemala; adoption and how our kids approach it now, as tweens and teens; how our own views of adoption have developed as we grow as adoptive parents. And on and on.

What a comfort it is to be in a roomful of people who understand the very specific experience of being an adoptive parent. Who “get” what you’re saying, with insight and without judgement, because they live it, too. Thank you, friends. xo

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“Mamalita” now in a bookstore near you

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Yesterday morning I heard from my friend Paula that my book, Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir, was in stock and on the shelf at our favorite local indie bookstore, Book Passage in Corte Madera, California. As soon as I got the kids off to school and did everything else that needed to get done before I could do anything as self-indulgent as go look, I grabbed my car keys and drove over.

The bookseller at the store was very nice and pointed me to the table in front where the appealing cover of Mamalita might catch the eye of someone standing in line on the way to the cash register. (Thank you, Book Passage!) After that, he directed me to the “Parenting” section, where my book was shelved with other books about adoption: Susan Caughman’s You Can Adopt, Janis Cooke Newman’s The Russian Word for Snow, and Scott Simon’s recent Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other. Very good company, I’d say.

One of my goals in writing Mamalita was to tell a real story about adoption, and in doing so, to contribute something lasting to the conversation about the subject. The thought was subconscious, but strong:  “This is what happened to us. What does our experience tell us about the experience of international adoption?” My book existing on the shelf is the first step to our story, and the story of others like us, being heard.

Please forgive me if I’m a little too excited to see Mamalita, finally, out in the world. It’s my first book, and I’m not a young writer bursting onto the scene. As the Book Passage bookseller said, when he saw me tearing up, “Publishing your first book is like giving birth.”

So I’ve heard. Or, for many of us, adopting your first baby.

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