Her entry begins:I’m a browser. I’m reading Fred Myer’s edited volume, The Empire of Things. I find myself thrilled to be pushed to think in new ways about material culture and to pay renewed attention to how the simple transactions of people giving gifts, and trading, and buying and selling things carry with them all sorts of complex economic, political, and...[read on]About Broken Links, Enduring Ties, from the publisher:
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 culturalLearn more about Broken Links, Enduring Ties at the Stanford University Press website.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.
The Page 99 Test: Broken Links, Enduring Ties.
Writers Read: Linda Seligmann.
--Marshal Zeringue
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