Hair New Era

If you wanna live in London like a real londoner like me (haha..) you need always have a great book with you to read inside the bus... the tube... in the park... drinking a coffe somewhere... etc!

Recently in Pittsburgh I met Barbara Katz Rothman, sociology professor at CUNY and author of Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption. Her book is part personal story part sociological study of transracial adoption. She and her husband adopted their African American daughter as an infant.

I had the opportunity to hang out briefly with Barbara one-on-one. Our first interaction happened via e-mail, as I told her I'd be picking her up from the airport.

Me: "My hair will help you recognize me [in the airport]--it's big and curly."

Barbara: "and my hair will help you -- it's grey with a purple streak."




Sure was. She said she dyed it for fun with her daughter years back, then she became fascinated with folks' reactions of shock and wonderment and kept it. "Women with gray hair aren't expected to celebrate it," she said.

True. Rather, it seems to me, they are to pretend there's no gray by dyeing their hair some "fake natural" color. Because women aren't supposed to age, right?

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Adoption Studies, Barbara gave a talk called "What White Adoptive Parents of African American Children Should Know." She also discussed her work at a luncheon in Pitt's Social Work Department, where she revealed some particularly interesting insights about adoption, race, and hair.

She hates how the photo on the cover of her book--depicting a White mother's hands braiding a Black daughter's hair--shows sloppy braiding technique.



"That's not me and and my daughter!" she declared at both events. "I would've had that part straight!"

Following this comment at the luncheon came a discussion about hair, the stereotype of the White mom and her mixed or Black child wearing a wild head of kinky hair.

It's not simply ignorance, Barbara pointed out. Letting the hair be its "big beautiful self" is a well-meaning sentiment from White mothers but the problem is they don't have the historical context to know what that really means. It's one story when an African American woman walks around with her Afro'd child but an entirely different story when a White woman does it. She said she was certain to groom that hair and groom it right because she knew the significance of what she was doing.

I sat quietly during the conversation. One part of me glad that this time I didn't have to be the one to bring it up or the one people think is crazy for making so much out of hair. (I always feel this comfort around African Americans, particularly in the salon.) Perhaps another part of me felt vindicated for my own hair experience. Yet another part of me--the core--was sad that this is still an issue.

One of the soc. professors said that in the field it remains a source of anguish that Black kids are being fostered in White homes. One prof said it was a form of cultural genocide, implying that hair could be a marker of this.

"Genocide" is a strong word. Not sure if I agree. But another word often comes to mind when I think of adoption--especially considering the high rates of cross-race adoption and economic circumstances that typically cause relinquishment in the first place: Colonization. Because, like Barbara went on to point out, adoption always happens from a position of power. Homeless people don't adopt. I've wondered if it's possible to adopt without that colonizing power dynamic. I might-possibly-maybe want to adopt one day, but this troubles me. I don't want to colonize.

But then...really what can you do? Leave the child in foster care because you don't want to participate in that model? Adopt the mother too? This is something Barbara said she'd questioned herself about: "If I'd given the money I spent on my kid to her mother, could I have kept a family intact?" Impossible to answer.

Impossible. Many questions about these subjects elicit this word, as socially constructed issues like race and systemic issues like adoption are nearly impossible to change on an individual level.

Luckily, hair is not. 

Last week I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in DC, and was surprised to find a panel on writing about adoption. Normally I only see those discussions at adoption-specific conferences, so it had me wondering if adoption writing is becoming more mainstream. The panel was called "Finding Identity in Cultural Margins: A Reading and Discussion on Transracial Adoption" and featured Korean-American poets Dana Collins, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, and Lee Herrick. (Two AA memoirists were scheduled to participate but couldn't make it due to weather.)

Dobbs read from her book Paper Pavilion, containing poems written before and after she visited Korea. Dana Collins read poems about connecting with her family abroad, specifically a sister. The essence of poetry, of course, lies not in what it's about but rather in its words, the images it conjures, the emotion it renders. Dobbs poetry to me is like a breath. It is ethereal, imaginative, stern. She dreams about pulling back a curtain and seeing her own conception. Collins poetry describes contrast and bright colors--it is a painting, a bright red cherry atop a white cupcake.

Why are so many adoptees drawn to write? The writers explained that "For transracial adoptees, separation from biological lineage leads to searching for what defines family and home." Keyword: search. To write is to search. To search for answers, to make real an experience of unremembered separation. In many ways we are blocked from searching for our families, due to sealed records, rules/regulations, or even our own emotions. But nothing can block someone from searching on the page for answers, for an image to rest against when you can't find your mother's arms. 

Overall, I think Moore deals with the adoption in a nuanced way, creating believable characters that are all deeply flawed but doing their best. That is often the conclusion I come to in adoption stories--it's full of fathers and mothers and children who are flawed and hurting but doing their best in a situation of loss.

The little adopted girl grieves her losses and bonds with the new people around her, though it is not without complications. Her life is shifting and changing constantly, much like the life of her country bumpkin nanny whose world is expanding at lightening speed.

My friend and fellow adoption advocate Kate interviews the author on her blog, where she dispels the notion that Britian is "racism-free." (I hate when people from other countries say to me "America has such issues with race--we don't have that" Please!) She articulates the connection between colonialism and transracial adoption:

Check out the full interview here. 

I've heard Heidi talk about Nella Larsen's work, and I can definitely tell she channeled her. Here is a new classic to add to the canon. Heidi is coming to Pittsburgh to give talks and readings at UPitt (and hopefully a bookstore or two) April 12-13, while on her book tour. Read her book and check her out!