Prompt: Comment on how adoption is portrayed in fiction, either
as a fiction reader or writer. Adoption in classic fiction often centers on the
orphan experience, from Oliver Twist and Little Men, to orphan Jane Eyre living
with her aunt and cousins.
Today there’s the Twilight series
and others that use adoption to explain “families” comprised of various
vampires. Talk about other examples of adoption used as a plot device in fiction.
Laura: Well, there’s Christian
Grey, who’s “fifty shades of f---ed up” according to EL James ... because he’s adopted. Talk about
perpetrating adoption
stereotypes! With Christian, we have psycho/messed up/damaged adoptee all
rolled into one. Oh yeah, and he’s super controlling to boot.
Then there’s popular fiction
(eh hem, Twilight) which uses
adoption as a cop-out, for example, explaining how it is that vampires create
families to live among humans.
Seriously? Writers
ought to inspire, surprise, and even educate their audience, and using adoption
as a quick method to explain away such a complicated, emotionally wrought issue,
is sloppy writing.
That’s right, I went there.
Adopted Characters
Prompt: What types of adoption stories or adopted characters
have resonated with you? Or haven't? Are the feelings and experiences described
authentically, accurately? Discuss.
Laura: Honestly, I can’t say that I’ve read many fictional adopted characters, and
thought, “Wow that makes a lot of sense to me, I never seen the adoptee
experience described in such a thoughtful, eloquent way.” I feel like we just
have those Harry Potter-orphan types who are oppressed, whose foster parents
are awful, and that’s it. One-dimensional.
Prompt: As a writer, do you have a fictional adopted character?
What issues is this character dealing with? What is their deepest secret or
desire? If you have a desire to educate your readers about adoption, what do you want them to learn?
Laura: Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. No, I haven’t written
a fictional adopted character, not yet. That’s because I had a more compelling
true story to write about.
·
An adopted protagonist ... flawed, with a secret past.
·
A biological
family reunion = instant subplot.
·
The complex
antagonist comes in the form of a loving adoptive mom, conflicted about her
daughters’ biological reunion. Our adoptee protagonist feels guilty, wondering how
to reunite without seeming ungrateful to the woman who raised her.
·
What about a birth
father who wants nothing to do with the adoptee. Facing rejection, how will our
protagonist cope?
If all this sounds a lot like women’s fiction, or even memoir ... You got me; those ideas above are true stories, told in Adopted Reality, A Memoir. I think many of us adoptees could draw on our personal experiences to tell compelling stories, memoir or fictionalized.
For me,
“adding conflict and drama” was fairly straight-forward: a few months after
I reunited with my birth mom, I entered a
paranoid delusion that I was a bionic spy responsible for 9/11.
No joke.
I certainly don' t want to imply that my reunion caused my breakdown, or otherwise perpetrate adoptee
stereotypes as adoptee as damaged? Like most things in life, the reasons for my break with reality were
and are a lot more complicated than that. In fact, I’m still figuring it out.
What fictional stories have you read that had interesting, fully realized adopted characters? Is fiction even the place to try to change how popular culture looks at adoption? What are your thoughts?
