The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts

Rating:
Summary: What a life!
Review: Catherine McKinsley utilizes her never sentimental to write this wonderful memoir. In this book, Catherine tells her true story. As a transracial adoptee, Catherine has spent eight years to search her "true" families, including her " mother and father, sisters and half-sisters. It is a wonderful book. A review says that "Catherine takes us through the tortured labyrinth of American racial and ethnic divides and miraculously makes us glad we took the trip." I disagree. I don't think it is a book about American diversity issues in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is just a book about Catherine's search of her "true" family history. I admire her persistence to search and her courage to tell the world about her experience. However I feel extremely sorry for the McKinsleys, Catherine's adopted parents and brother (William). They love her by heart, but it is so hard for them to show their love to her. Catherine refuses to accept their love. I think it is not easy to be an adopted parents, especially Catherine's adopted parents. She refuses to accept them. When I read the chapters about the confrontations and conflicts between Catherine and her adopted mother, I almost cry out and tell her, "Stop it! Why aren't you be nice to your mother? Why are you so hard on her? What do you want from her? It is OK for you to look for your birth mother, but you don't have to be so hard on your adopted mother." It is so unfair to her adopted parents. Catherine is now a renowned writer. I hope that she feels thankful to her adopted parents. It is them who gave her a very wonderful life and chance to be an educated person.

Rating:
Summary: Searching for Reality
Review: Catherine went searching for the truth and she found it. It was reality and not a made up story with a happy ending. I believe that she was very self serving in telling the story. I felt she did not really appreciate the parents who raised her, until the very end. I wondered how they felt after reading this book. She certainly laid out all her complaints about them. I personally could relate to her mother, who was doing the very best she could for a rather unappreciative daughter.
On the other hand, I think I gained some insight to what it was like to grow up black in a white world, not easy at all. I'm glad she was able to tell this story with as much depth and clarity as she did.
This story also brings to light the plight of the children of a middle class woman who had several children and didn't choose to acknowledge or care for them. What about birth control? Yes, she was mentally ill, but I wonder if we can excuse her for that.

In the last several years I have done the research that reunited my husband (in his 60's) with the birth mother who gave him up. The search was very interesting and it was a miracle how it all came together. The story has a bittersweet ending, since his birth mother passed away within a year of their reunion.

This is a great story and I couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: An Honest, Candid Memoir
Review: I beg to differ with some of the other customer reviews posted for The Book of Sarahs. Reality is messy. Members of the adoption triad--birthparents, adoptees, and adoptive parents--share a complicated, emotionally charged relationship from the moment the adoptee is born. There are one thousand and one reasons why birthmothers feel that relinquishment is the best possible choice for their child; there are just as many reasons why adoptive parents choose to raise a non-biological child. But the adoptee has the most to gain or lose. In my twenty-six years as a birthmother, I am continually amazed by the infinite variety of paths triad members have traveled, yet we're all connected by the same feelings of uncertainty, wistfulness, and longing for what might have been. Thankfully, adoption today is much more open, kinder, gentler; many studies have documented the impact of adoption on all triad members, and there are fewer black holes than there were a generation or more ago. Catherine McKinley's personal story of life as an adopted Black child raised in a white family and predominately white community will captivate readers. One does not have to a member of the adoption community to appreciate her search for self. Ms. McKinley's prose is a pleasure to read, a beautifully, richly written story of relationships that readers will find hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: An Honest, Candid Memoir
Review: I beg to differ with some of the other customer reviews posted for The Book of Sarahs. Reality is messy. Members of the adoption triad--birthparents, adoptees, and adoptive parents--share a complicated, emotionally charged relationship from the moment the adoptee is born. There are one thousand and one reasons why birthmothers feel that relinquishment is the best possible choice for their child; there are just as many reasons why adoptive parents choose to raise a non-biological child. But the adoptee has the most to gain or lose. In my twenty-six years as a birthmother, I am continually amazed by the infinite variety of paths triad members have traveled, yet we're all connected by the same feelings of uncertainty, wistfulness, and longing for what might have been. Thankfully, adoption today is much more open, kinder, gentler; many studies have documented the impact of adoption on all triad members, and there are fewer black holes than there were a generation or more ago. Catherine McKinley's personal story of life as an adopted Black child raised in a white family and predominately white community will captivate readers. One does not have to a member of the adoption community to appreciate her search for self. Ms. McKinley's prose is a pleasure to read, a beautifully, richly written story of relationships that readers will find hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: very Real
Review: I couldn't put this Book down it dealt with so many subjects&Challenged the Reader into thinking of so thoughts within the Context of Race&class.I Applaud the Author for the Direct Honesty&letting everything hang out&Open.it's a strong testimony of Her Overcoming&dealing with the Cards She was dealt with in Life&finding Her place&Voice in this Society.

Rating:
Summary: One from the heart.
Review: It can be hard enough to come to terms with family and identity when one is not adopted. Imagine growing up the transracial adoptee of a white family in a tiny working class town in rural Massachusetts (read: all white). Moreover, you are biracial and subject to putdowns and jibes by "full-blooded" members of your race. This background makes up the first part of Catherine McKinley's compulsively readable memoir. The second part is her search for her roots, and her reckoning when she finds those roots and they are not quite what she expected.

McKinley has a superb ear for dialogue and mood. Moreover, The Book of Sarahs is so full of suprises that sometimes it's like reading a thriller. McKinley starts out by giving us her fantasy of her birth mother that carried her through her youth (most adoptees have one)...and part of the fun of the book is seeing just how different reality is from her fantasy, again and again. McKinley also writes with wonderful humor and subtle characterizations that make it difficult to dislike anyone in her book despite their foibles. Finally, I can't agree with other reviewers that McKinley was cruel to her adoptive family. Her adoptive parents clearly understood her journey, and by the end of the book she intimated that she had resolved her issues with them.

Don't miss this one...one of the best I've read this year!

Rating:
Summary: One from the heart.
Review: This book tells the tale of Catherine McKinley's search for her birth parents. McKinley, who is biracial, was adopted at birth. Brought up in a White family, she found herself drawn towards African American culture in her search for building her own identity. As an adult, questions about who she was and how she came to be gradually took over the focus of her life. In this book, she details how she searched for her birth parents and eventually found them, as well as other family members.

From reading the blurb on the back cover of the book, I had expected the book to focus more on McKinley's experiences of growing up as an adopted biracial child. I have very little experience myself with issues relating to adoption, and I had no idea how consuming the questions of identity and family can be for an adopted child. Prospective adoptive parents might learn quite a bit from this book about how adopted children may have an unquenchable thirst for knowing their birth parents, a thirst that can taint relationships between them and their adopted family members if not handled appropriately. Adoptees, on the other hand, may be quite interested to read how McKinley proceeded in her search, and how the results of her search compared with her dreams. The emotional issues concerning adoption are never easy to reconcile; after all, every adoption starts with a tragedy that has resulted in parents having to give up their children. The children and all of their parents, both adopted and birth, must spend the remainder of their lives putting the pieces back together.

Rating:
Summary: Eye-opening
Review: This book tells the tale of Catherine McKinley's search for her birth parents. McKinley, who is biracial, was adopted at birth. Brought up in a White family, she found herself drawn towards African American culture in her search for building her own identity. As an adult, questions about who she was and how she came to be gradually took over the focus of her life. In this book, she details how she searched for her birth parents and eventually found them, as well as other family members.

From reading the blurb on the back cover of the book, I had expected the book to focus more on McKinley's experiences of growing up as an adopted biracial child. I have very little experience myself with issues relating to adoption, and I had no idea how consuming the questions of identity and family can be for an adopted child. Prospective adoptive parents might learn quite a bit from this book about how adopted children may have an unquenchable thirst for knowing their birth parents, a thirst that can taint relationships between them and their adopted family members if not handled appropriately. Adoptees, on the other hand, may be quite interested to read how McKinley proceeded in her search, and how the results of her search compared with her dreams. The emotional issues concerning adoption are never easy to reconcile; after all, every adoption starts with a tragedy that has resulted in parents having to give up their children. The children and all of their parents, both adopted and birth, must spend the remainder of their lives putting the pieces back together.

Rating:
Summary: Spoiled little girl with a sense of entitlement
Review: This is a very interesting, readable account of a biracial adoptee's search for her birth parents. Growing up, she fixates on the idea of an imaginary but vividly detailed African-American birth mother. Finding out that her actual birth mother is white is only the first shift she must make in her outlook. Subsequent revelations shatter some other expectations, but there are some happy surprises too. Every step of the way, though, the relatives she turns up are actual people, with histories and flaws and good points and bad points, not one-dimensional characters ecstatically welcoming the lost sheep.

It wasn't a major point in the book, but I just had to laugh when the author described her lack of enthusiasm for the adoptive family's hiking and birdwatching expeditions, even though she was adopted as a baby. A very funny nature/nurture case study.