NYU Press; 2000

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Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America, by the sociologist and adoptee Sandra Patton, is a multilayered synthesis of interviews conducted with 22 transracial adoptees. The majority of Patton’s subjects are African American or biracial people who were adopted by white parents.

The author wears many hats in this book. At times we see her as the interviewer, “Sandi,” who establishes an intimate rapport with her subjects. In the interviews, she freely offers her own biases, experiences, and emotions as she discusses issues of birth origin, the complex terrain of searching, and the difficult facets of race and class. Readers will be moved by the honesty and range of experience that comes through the open, uncensored voices of the interviewees.

Patton reveals that while researching this book she learned that her birth mother was searching for her, adding an interesting twist to her perspective as investigator and subject of her own complex journey.

Patton is not only a friend and understanding adoptee, she is also a professional, a sociologist and a professor, and her probing academic voice is a strong element in this book. She questions the very debate of nature vs. nurture in developing identity, preferring to widen the scope to include the larger influences of public policy and social institutions. She takes on the controversial issues of “legitimate” vs. illegitimate families, class hierarchies and welfare reform, the deep and disturbing influences of the media, and the idea of the “salvation narrative”-white middle-class parents “saving” society by socializing the children of troubled black women. Patton handles these delicate issues deftly and with much insight and sensitivity.

Some of Patton’s academic language may seem dense to laypeople. Yet, as an adoptee, I was very interested in the broad social and political context of transracial adoption. Transracial adoption has existed far too long with neither academic attention nor practical support, and it should be a subject of serious discourse in universities, in public-policy forums, and throughout the adoption world. Patton’s book adds an important, thoughful, and provocative voice. Birthmarks, along with the practical and compassionate Inside Transracial Adoption, by Beth Hall and Gail Steinberg, is a welcome addition to adoption literature.

Reviewed by Susan Ito, an adult transracial adoptee, co-editor of A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption (North Atlantic Books, 1999), and a member of the advisory council for Project Understanding.