Discusses the issues related to race, class, and gender involved in adoption based on in-depth interviews with 22 adoptive mothers. This text compares and contrasts the experiences of white women who adopted Asian, black, or biracial children. The bulk of the book is dedicated to presenting the women’s words as they talk about their perceptions of fertility treatments, birth mothers, other mothers, adoption processes, and outsiders’ reactions, among other matters. Feminist discourse is used to examine the applicability of these theories to women’s self-characterizations. Beginning with an overview of the theoretical basis of the book, discussions of becoming an adoptive mother and the realities of being an adoptive mother follow. Each chapter presents feelings and experiences of adoptive mothers, in addition to analysis that brings these feelings into broader societal context. This honest portrayal will offer adoptive families, adoption professionals, and social workers important insights into mothers’ adoptive experiences. Scholars of women’s studies, social work, and sociology will find this volume useful as well.

The author and her husband fought a battle against all odds to adopt their children. They faced inconceivable adversaries—their own court system, State legislature, the Federal Indian Child Welfare Act, and a biological parent and his family, members of a powerful Indian Tribe—and in the end, changed Oklahoma law so the road to adoption would be smoother.

From the Back Cover: For over thirty years, Rita J. Simon and Howard Altstein have been studying transracial and intercountry adoptions. The families they have studied include white parents; African American, Hispanic, and Korean children; and Jewish Stars of David families, among others. This book summarizes their findings and compares them with other studies. It is an invaluable source of data on the number and frequency of transracial and intercountry adoptions and on the attitudes toward them. Moreover, it strongly advocates and demonstrates the positive effects of transracial and intercountry adoptions, countering public policy initiatives that emphasize “same race” adoption practices.

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About the Author: Rita J. Simon is a sociologist who earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1957. Before coming to American University in 1983 to serve as dean of the School of Justice, she was a member of the faculty at the University of Illinois, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and at the University of Chicago. She is currently a “University Professor” in the School of Public Affairs and the Washington College of Law at American University.

Professor Simon is the author and editor of numerous books and is currently the editor of Gender Issues.

Howard Altstein earned his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1959 and his M.S.W. in 1962 from New York University. He has worked as a social worker in corrections, foster care, and education. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1971, he became a lecturer at the Hebrew University School of Social Work. He has been with the University of Maryland School of Social Work since 1972, and is currently a professor, having served as dean for one year. Professor Altstein is the author of several books on transracial and intercountry adoption. Two additional books are forthcoming.

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By the Same Author: Transracial Adoption (1977, John Wiley & Sons); Transracial Adoption: A Follow-Up (1981, Lexington Books); Transracial Adoptees and Their Families: A Study of Identity and Commitment (1987, Praeger); Adoption, Race, and Identity: From Infancy Through Adolescence (1992, Praeger); and The Case for Transracial Adoption (1994, American University Press), among others.

The adoption of black children by white couples is, inevitably, a controversial area of social policy. Opponents of the practice—including some black community groups—have argued that blacks have always serviced whites and are now servicing them in the ultimate fashion by providing children for them. Equally, it is argued that such children will face major difficulties of integration and, in adolescence, an “identity crisis”: not knowing who they are—black or white—will result in a debilitating sense of confusion and major behavioral difficulties. This study tests these assumptions by looking in detail at the effects of transracial adoption once the children have reached adolescence. The authors interviewed a large group of white parents and talked at length to the children, now aged between 13 and 15, about their experience of adoption. Thus, much of the evidence presented here is based on the direct testimony of the parents and, for the first time in British adoption research, of the children themselves. The result is a fresh and illuminating account of family integration in practice, family attitudes and policies towards adoption and racial identity, the children’s own conception of their racial identity and their experience of being black in a white family. These detailed findings are then placed in the context of the wider political issues surrounding transracial adoption. The book will have much to say to social workers, policymakers and prospective adoptive parents seeking up to date information on which to base their own discussions, practice and decisions.

From the Back Cover: Recent adoption policy changes are based on assumptions that race is no longer relevant and that if government officials and activists would just get out of the way, adoption would provide one means of eradicating the fixation on race and racism. Adoption in a Color-Blind Society examines adoption agency websites and chat room “race talk” to lay bare the lie of color-blind discourse and reveal that rather than eroding, the meaning of race is shifting. Drawing also on popular adoption literature and information in the public domain, this book argues that despite the current discourse of equity in contemporary adoption, African American children continue to be marginalized as bargain basement deals. The myth of color-blind individualism extends beyond the United States to the transactional marketplace of adoption, where children are simply another commodity in our new global reality.

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About the Author: Pamela Anne Quiroz is associate professor of Policy Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also a research fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy.

This book is about a group of children who have no family at all, until they are adopted. It is also a book about racial discrimination—discrimination which occurs in a variety of ways. Discrimination occurs when all an agency’s resources are put into placing white children; when black mothers are not permitted to give up their babies for adoption and white women are; when no one takes the legal steps necessary to free for adoption a black child abandoned in a foster home; when qualified black people apply but are not permitted to adopt; when a black child is denied a permanent home because the only available adopters are white and the agency does not place black children with white adopters; and when relatives refuse to accept an adopted child, just because the child is black and has been adopted by whites. This book is also a study of adoption as a system, for only by understanding the pressures on social agencies and adoption workers can one hope to change those pressures and improve the adoption opportunities of black children. About the Author: Dawn Day is an associate project director at Response Analysis Corporation in Princeton, New Jersey. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Oberlin College, and a master’s degree in social work and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan. She has had a continuing concern with racial discrimination in the United States. She is author of The Negro and Discrimination in Employment and co-author of Protest, Politics and Prosperity and the American Energy Consumer.

From the Publisher: Can adoptive homes be found for non-white children? Will the children and their new families be happy together though of different race? Will they feel like a family? This book is an account of a four-year project in which International Social Service of Great Britain joined with Bedford College, London University, to provide a first-class adoption service for babies born in Britain of diverse racial origins, and to study the outcome of the adoptions. In addition, a survey sought to determine the number of these children needing adoption homes, and a nationwide Adoption Resource Exchange was established to co-ordinate the efforts of the numerous agencies seeking parents for them.

The author examines the project’s experience of interracial adoption and relates it to all good adoption practice. Adoption of Non-White Children is a welcome addition to the literature on adoption. It will be indispensable to social work practitioners and to students and lecturers on social work courses, but it is more than a handbook for those professionally involved. The book is well-informed and written with style and compassion: many readers will be fascinated by the way in which children of Asian, African, West Indian and mixed parentage became integrated into English families in spite of racial differences. It is a success story.

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About the Author: Lois Raynor is an American who chooses to live and work in Britain. She has an M.A. in Sociology and a Graduate Diploma in Social Work, and has many years experience as caseworker, supervisor, and director of adoption agencies and other child welfare services in the USA and Britain. She is now on the staff of the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children (The Foundling Hospital) as Consultant for Development, and also directs adoption research for the Association of British Adoption Agencies.

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By the Same Author: The Adopted Child Comes of Age (1980).

From the Publisher: For Jackie Kay, growing up in Scotland as a black child adopted by white parents has nurtured a rare insight into the complexities of gender, racial and sexual identity. This insight informs all of her work, and her first poetry collection, The Adoption Papers, is no exception as Kay takes on the contradictions in human society that many writers would rather ignore.

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About the Author: Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. She was adopted by a white couple at birth and was brought up in Glasgow, studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stirling University where she read English. The experience of being adopted by and growing up within a white family inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (1991). The poems deal with an adopted child’s search for a cultural identity and are told through three different voices: an adoptive mother, a birth mother and a daughter. The collection won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award and a commendation by the Forward Poetry Prize judges in 1992. The poems in Other Lovers (1993) explore the role and power of language, inspired and influenced by the history of Afro-Caribbean people, the story of a search for identity grounded in the experience of slavery. The collection includes a sequence of poems about the blues-singer Bessie Smith. Off Colour (1998) explores themes of sickness, health and disease through personal experience and metaphor. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies, and she has written widely for stage and television. Her first novel, Trumpet, published in 1998, was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Inspired by the life of musician Billy Tipton, the novel tells the story of Scottish jazz trumpeter Joss Moody whose death revealed that he was, in fact, a woman. Kay develops the narrative through the voices of Moody’s wife, his adopted son and a journalist from a tabloid newspaper. Her books, Why Don’t You Stop Talking (2002) and Wish I Was Here (2006), are collections of short stories, and she has also published a novel for children, Strawgirl (2002). Her latest collection of poetry is Life Mask (2005). Jackie Kay lives in Manchester. In 2006, she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

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By the Same Author: Trumpet: A Novel (1998, Picador) and Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey (2010, Picador).

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Compiler’s Note: Four poems from this collection—“Black Bottom,” “The Seed,” “The Telling Part,” and “The Waiting Lists”—were anthologized in A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption (1999, North Atlantic Books).

From the Back Cover: Adoption, Race, and Identity is a long-range study of the impact of interracial adoption on those adopted and their families. Initiated in 1972, it was continued in 1979, 1984, and 1991. Cumulatively, these four phases trace the subjects from early childhood into young adulthood. This is the only extended study of this controversial subject.

Simon and Altstein provide a broad perspective of the impact of transracial adoption and include profiles of the families involved in the study. They explore and compare the experiences of both the parents and the children. They identify families whose adoption experiences were problematic and those whose experiences were positive. Finally, the study looks at the insights the experience of transracial adoption brought to the adoptive parents and what advice they would pass on to future parents adopting children from different racial backgrounds. They include the reflections of those adopted included in the 1972 first phase who are now adults themselves.

This second edition includes a new concluding chapter that updates the fourth and last phase of the study. The authors were able to locate 88 of the 96 families who participated in the 1984 study. Bringing together all four phases of this twenty-year study into one volume gives the reader a richer and deeper understanding of what the experience of transracial adoption has meant for the parents, the adoptees, and children born into the families studied. This landmark work will be of compelling interest to social workers, policy makers, and professionals and families involved on all sides of interracial adoption.

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About the Author: Rita J. Simon is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the Washington College of Law at American University. She is editor of the journal Gender Issues and author of The American Jury, The Insanity Defense: A Critical Assessment of Law and Policy in the Post-Hinckley Era (with David Aaronson), In the Golden Land: A Century of Russian and Soviet Jewish Immigration, Social Science Data and Supreme Court Decisions (with Rosemary Erickson), and Abortion: Statistics, Policies, and Public Attitudes the World Over.

Howard Altstein, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Maryland, is the co-author of Intercountry Adoption: A Multinational Perspective. He has also collaborated with Rita Simon on their twenty-year study of transracial adoption.

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By the Same Author: Transracial Adoption (1977, John Wiley & Sons); Transracial Adoption: A Follow-Up (1981, Lexington Books); Transracial Adoptees and Their Families: A Study of Identity and Commitment (1987); The Case for Transracial Adoption (1994, American University Press); and Adoption Across Borders: Serving the Children in Transracial and Intercountry Adoptions (2000, Rowman & Littlefield), among others.

Abstract: This descriptive report covers the first phase of a 20-year longitudinal study of black children under three years of age adopted by black couples, white couples, and single persons. The sample of three groups of approximately equal size was selected from the adoptive placements of two private child welfare agencies between June 1970 and June 1972. The longitudinal study will be an assessment of the family’s capacity to form close relationships and handle stress. The material presented in the first phase report was gathered from case records and interviews before, immediately after and two months after placement. Descriptions of the applicants, the children they adopted, and their early adjustment as a family are included. Interesting differences among the experimental groups are revealed in this report. For the most part, the children in the study have had few problems and seem to be developing well. Children and families with problems are described. Statistics on interview-item reliability are given. From the Foreword: The publication of “Adoption: Three Alternatives” represents the first four years of an adoption research project which we hope will be extended through sixteen and possibly twenty years of the lives of the adopted children and their families who have consented to participate in this effort. Questions related to raising a child in a single parent family and in a family where the racial background of the parents differs from that of the child prompted the interest in undertaking this study. It is designed to encompass a long enough time span to measure changes that may occur as the child develops from the earlier years to young adulthood. Read It Online.

From the Dust Jacket: This is the story of an American family—Jan and Joe Rigert and their children. Joe is a newspaperman and Jan a housewife, and like most families their lives are filled with work and school and home and meals and weekend outings, with church on some Sundays and PTA meetings now and then, with friends dropping in and letters from distant relatives.

It sounds familiar enough—but let Joe tell it, talking of the day their last child arrived and they toasted her with champagne in paper cups: “And so it came to be that we were a multi-racial mix of ten, whereas in the beginning we had been three of a kind.”

“In the beginning” was 1961, in the state of Washington. Joe and Jan lived there with their small daughter Marie. First they adopted Linda, who was six (and had initially been adopted by Jan’s parents), because Jan’s mother had died and they felt Linda might be happier in a two-parent home. But soon they wanted to adopt more children, and there was a long waiting list. It was then Joe and Jan learned that parents were needed for youngsters of other races. Interracial adoption was a new idea in those days—especially for conventional middle-class Americans—but it was also a welcome one, and, with the arrival of Douglas—lively, black, and fourteen months old—they were on their way.

At that time, neither Joe nor Jan had reckoned with the depth of Jan’s hunger for more babies, but hunger it was and as each new arrival became part of the family she longed for just one more. So by 1971 there were eight young Rigerts—Linda, Marie, Douglas, Rebecca, David, Dominic, Rachel, and Annie—their heritages including mixes of black, Mexican, East Indian, Japanese, Irish, and American Indian. By then they were living in Minneapolis, in a sprawling old house in the inner city.

The children are loving and contentious, high-spirited, hardy and individual. We meet them under ail kinds of circumstances: at school, with friends, around the dinner table, on shopping trips, bugging their parents or hugging them, reasonable or outrageously demanding.

All this is customary, human, and universal. But race is special. Naturally, that particular awareness is strong in the Rigert parents and perceived, usually casually and occasionally through hurt, by their children. What began for Joe and Jan as a sincere but naïve experience has matured into something much more complex, for their youngsters must grow up with secure pride in their differences as well as confidence in their togetherness. The world outside still makes that hard some of the time. It has not been easy to strengthen confidence at the same time that the matter-of-factness of normal family life is preserved.

But the earthy common sense of their young has taught Joe and Jan Rigert much, and this odyssey of one lively, spunky, and engaging American family promises hope as well as pleasure for the readers who share it in the pages of this book.

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About the Author: Joseph Rigert was born on a farm in Beaverton, Oregon, in 1931, the oldest in a family of thirteen children. He received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Oregon, and an M.A. from Georgetown University. He began his career in journalism as editor of a high school newspaper; he has since gone the long route as a copy boy, U.S. Navy photographer, Congressional press secretary, news editor for a weekly, staff writer for a wire service, reporter, and finally city editor of the Minneapolis Tribune. He and his wife helped establish the Open Door Society of Minnesota, a voluntary organization interested in interracial adoptions.

Joe married Janice Cecelia Larson in 1956 and they began the proud and happy acquisition of a family of eight children. Their co-authored column on their family experiences, “All Together,” ran in the Minneapolis Tribune and made them and the kids local celebrities. Joe wrote this book over a period of about a year on weekends, at nights and on vacation time, writing in a third-floor nook of their sixty-year-old house, with Jan and the kids supplying coffee and encouragement.

From the Back Cover: American Family takes one family’s heartbreaking personal story about racism and homophobia and turns it into a much-needed catalyst to reopen the dialogue about racial prejudice in America. It is a book for:

• Anyone who cares about understanding and healing racism in America

• Anyone who loves someone who has faced discrimination or racial prejudice

• Any parent who has had to fight the system to get their child treated fairly

• Anyone who has faced discrimination or racial prejudice themselves

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About the Author: Barbara Waugh, Ph.D., is the author of Soul in the Computer: Story of a Corporate Revolutionary. She recently retired from Hewlett-Packard after 25 years, where most recently she was Director of University Relations for Africa and the Middle East and for women globally.

Stacy Cusulos, M.Div., is a consultant on work force diversity, the author of two published case studies examining issues of race and gender, one of which was filmed, and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

From the Dust Jacket: When nurse, educator and activist, Lynda Arnold, was asked by her three-year-old son, David, about how they became a family, she had a hard time finding the right words. For that reason, she decided to put into writing the hopes and dreams of one mother and one child striving to understand adoption—in this case “transracial” adoption—and the lack of understanding and appreciation that exists in many communities for these kinds of families.

Angels of Love is a children’s story that encourages dialogue about adoption, ethnic diversity and the values of love, compassion and understanding which help to strengthen every family unit. This is a touching story but one that is far from unique. With over half a million children in America already waiting for adoptive parents, and many more seeking families every day, adoption exists as a viable choice and experience for many qualified couples and individuals.

Hopefully. someday all children will find a home and family to call their own. Right now, despite all the teaching, public awareness and interest, that day is still not here. Therefore, it is important for each and every one of us to remember that children everywhere are the educators and leaders of tomorrow.

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About the Author: Lynda Arnold is the author of two children’s books including Angels of Love and My Mommy Has AIDS. She took an active part as organizer and promoter in the production of the award winning documentary, A Higher Standard: The Lynda Arnold Story. She is founder and president of a national non-profit organization, the National Campaign for Healthcare Worker Safety, Inc.

In 1992, Lynda suffered an accidental needlestick while performing her nursing duties in the intensive care unit of a small community hospital. Six months later she tested positive for the HIV virus. Since then, Lynda has become an internationally-acclaimed speaker. Adoption was the answer for Lynda Arnold and her husband, Tony, when they decided to start a family.

Together with her husband and their two adopted children, David and Ashley, Lynda continues to inspire and educate listeners of all ages.

From the Back Cover: One night after midnight, social workers brought a baby girl to the author’s home, and her life as a foster mother began. A social worker herself, Sarah Gerstenzang discovered that raising Cecilia, despite all the personal joys, would be a complex and frustrating process of “co-parenting” with the foster care system in New York City.

Foster parents are in great demand, but they are not necessarily treated well. We follow the author through the home visits, the Early Intervention evaluation, the WIC program that (with much bureaucratic hassle) provides free formula and cereal, and the mandatory parenting training sessions.

Central to Another Mother is the issue of transracial placement. Gerstenzang remembers, “That first day the contrast between my pale skin and Cecilia’s brown skin seemed glaring. Not only did I feel that I had someone else’s child, I felt that I had a child from another culture. Would I owe someone an explanation?” Her account is full of anecdotes and reflections about race: acceptance and prejudice from others; the feelings of her two children about having a sibling of a different race; and efforts to maintain links to the culture of the child’s origin.

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About the Author: Sarah Gerstenzang is an Assistant Project Director of the Adoption Exchange Association, an organization dedicated to finding adoptive families for the 119,000 children who wait in foster care. She was formerly a Senior Policy Analyst at Children’s Rights and holds a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She and her husband live with their three children in Brooklyn.

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By the Same Author: A Critical Assessment of Concurrent Planning: What Is Its Role in Permanency Planning? (with Madelyn Freundlich; 2006, CWLA).

From the Back Cover: In At Any Cost, for the first time Mike and Hayley Jones share their remarkable, chaotic, intercontinental story of adopting eight siblings from Sierra Leone. Facing doubts from within, character assaults from without, and a mind-numbing bureaucratic jungle, the Joneses and their two young biological sons embarked on a 34-month heart-wrenching odyssey that gave birth to “The Jones Dozen.”

At Any Cost is the story of a couple who not only believe God calls each of us to trust Him more than we ever thought possible, but are living proof of God’s immeasurable grace and unfathomable love. Join Mike and Hayley on their inspiring journey of faith and obedience to the call God placed on their lives. You might just discover where God is leading you next.

For Kirrali, life in 1985 was pretty chill. Sure, she was an Aboriginal girl adopted into a white family, but she was cool with that. She knew where she was headed—to a law degree—even if she didn’t know “who she was.” But when Kirrali moves to the city to start university, a whole lot of life-changing events spark an awakening that no one sees coming, least of all herself.
Story flashbacks to the 1960s, where her birth mother is desperately trying to escape conservative parents, give meaning to Kirrali’s own search for identity nearly twenty years later. And then she meets her father...

The true headlined story of baby Byron and one foster family’s fight for the child’s best interest.

From the Publisher: Can white parents teach their black children African-American culture and history? Can they impart to them the survival skills necessary to survive in the racially stratified United States? Concerns over racial identity have been at the center of controversies over transracial adoption since the 1970s, as questions continually arise about whether white parents are capable of instilling a positive sense of African-American identity in their black children.

Through in-depth interviews with adult transracial adoptees, as well as with social workers in adoption agencies, Sandra Patton, herself an adoptee, explores the social construction of race, identity, gender, and family and the ways in which these interact with public policy about adoption.

Patton offers a compelling overview of the issues at stake in transracial adoption. She discusses recent changes in adoption and social welfare policy which prohibit consideration of race in the placement of children, as well as public policy definitions of “bad mothers” which can foster coerced aspects of adoption, to show how the lives of transracial adoptees have been shaped by the policies of the U.S. child welfare system.

Neither an argument for nor against the practice of transracial adoption, BirthMarks seeks to counter the dominant public view of this practice as a panacea to the so-called “epidemic” of illegitimacy and the misfortune of infertility among the middle class with a more nuanced view that gives voice to those directly involved, shedding light on the ways in which Black and multiracial adoptees articulate their own identity experiences.

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About the Author: Sandra Patton is Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is a former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota.

In Bitterroot Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her “real” parents. He replied that they had died in a car accident not long after she was born—except they hadn’t, as Harness would learn in a conversation with a social worker a few years later.
Harness’s search for answers revolved around her need to ascertain why she was the target of racist remarks and why she seemed always to be on the outside looking in. New questions followed her through college and into her twenties when she started her own family. Meeting her biological family in her early thirties generated even more questions. In her forties Harness decided to get serious about finding answers when, conducting oral histories, she talked with other transracial adoptees. In her fifties she realized that the concept of “home” she had attributed to the reservation existed only in her imagination.
Making sense of her family, the American Indian history of assimilation, and the very real—but culturally constructed—concept of race helped Harness answer the often puzzling questions of stereotypes, a sense of non-belonging, the meaning of family, and the importance of forgiveness and self-acceptance. In the process Bitterroot also provides a deep and rich context in which to experience life.

From the Publisher: It is only three months following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the nation is burning. Black and White America are locked in the tense grip of massive change. Into this inferno steps an unsuspecting young White couple. Neither significantly knew even a single African American person while growing up. Now, a child will change all of that forever. In this fateful moment, a Black baby becomes perhaps the first in the history of New Mexico to be adopted by a White family. Here is a brazenly honest glimpse into the mind and heart of that child, a true story for the ages.

Jaiya John has opened the floodgates on his own childhood. Black Baby White Hands, a waterfall of jazz splashing over the rocks of pain, love and the honoring of family. Magically, this book finds a way to sing as it cries, and to exude compassion even as it dispels well-entrenched myths. This classic is sure to find itself well worn, stained by tears, and brushed by laughter in the lap of parents, adolescents, educators, students and professionals. Here comes the rain and the sunshine, all at once.

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About the Author: Jaiya John is the founder and Executive Director of Soul Water Rising, an educational mission devoted to improving human relations, eradicating prejudice, and fostering spiritual growth. For over a decade he has traveled the nation as a professional speaker, poet, author and youth mentor. Jaiya’s passionate, poetic presentations combine spiritual and social science insights. This work is truly his mission, ministry and life. He has appeared on CNN, B.E.T., Fox Television and National Public Radio. Jaiya also spent four years as a professor of social psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Jaiya was born in Albuquerque, NM. Immediately placed in foster care and eventually adopted, Jaiya lived as an African American in a predominately Caucasian American environment. This childhood branded in him a burning passion for giving his life to improve the way human beings relate to each other. Jaiya studied psychology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, and earned his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in social psychology. He lived and studied during 1988 in the nation of Nepal, where his research on Tibetan medicine instilled within him an appreciation for holistic concepts of physical, emotional and spiritual health. Being of not only African but Seminole, Blackfoot and Cherokee descent; and having grown up in the midst of the Southwest’s American Indian and Latino communities, Jaiya has an appreciation for the spiritual and communal passions that spring from these worlds. This spirit he ingrains in his own beliefs and messages about our social world. Jaiya believes that in every moment of life, each of us is a teacher and a student. He is faithful to his purpose: fostering relations among humankind living in a world where we have learned to let the differences in our divine nature divide us.

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By the Same Author: Beautiful (2008), Legendary (2008) and Reflection Pond (2007).

From the Back Cover: “I grew up feeling like a cuckoo in somebody else’s nest. Unfortunately, my family didn’t consider it a problem. Well, it wasn’t, for them.”

Born in 1953 of Anglo-Jewish/Nigerian parents, Pauline Black was adopted by a white, working class family in Romford in the fifties.

Never quite at home there, she escaped her small town background, and discovered a different way of life, making music, exploring politics and eventually changing her name to own her heritage.

Lead singer for platinum-selling band The Selecter, Black was the Queen of British Ska. She toured with The Specials, Madness, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and all the top bands of that generation when they were at the top of the charts ... and on their worst behaviour.

From childhood to fame, covering singing, acting and broadcasting, and her recent search for her birth parents, Black By Design is a funny and enlightening story of music and roots.

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About the Author: Born in Romford, Pauline Black is a singer and actress who gained fame as the lead singer of The Selecter. After the band split in 1982, Black developed an acting career in television and theatre. She won the 1991 Time Out Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in the play All or Nothing at All.

The Selecter reformed in late 2010 and recorded a new album, Made In Britain, released in 2011. Pauline Black has added a new final chapter to cover The Selecter’s hugely successful 2011 tour.

From the Publisher: This study was designed to provide information about the outcomes of transracial adoptions in response to a growing trend among adoption agencies to place children across racial lines. The study focused on 125 adopted black children and their white adoptive families. The children ranged in age from 5 to 19 years (median of age=8.8 years) and had lived with their adoptive families from 2 years and 10 months to over 18 years (median length of stay=7.2 years). The success of the transracial adoptions was assessed by a series of 15 measures including test scores, indices developed from different types of data supplied by the parents, teachers’ evaluations, and interviewer ratings. Two interviews were held at one-year intervals to obtain the data. Success findings are reported in terms of test scores, symptom scores, interviewer, parent and teacher evaluations, peer relations, and attitudes toward blackness. A typology of white families who adopt black children is also presented. The general findings indicate that 77 percent of the transracial adoptions may be seen as successful—a rate approximately equal to that found in studies of conventional white adoptions as well as those of older children and other racial groups.

From the Back Cover: Just like any other parents, white parents of black children want to raise their children to be happy, healthy, and comfortable in their own skin. Unfortunately, many white parents don’t have the resources and information they need to care for their kids. A desire to be politically correct and not step on any toes may keep white parents from asking the questions they want and need to ask from the very people who can answer them—black people. This book looks at those questions and offers answers based on real-life experience. Topics include:

• Hair and skin care, including what kinds of products to look for and how to use them. There are several pages of photos of real hairdos that most parents can do at home.

• Racism—yes, it still exists and it comes from both sides, so let’s look at how to face it and how to give our kids the tools they need. Includes answers to that burning question: “Who’s that white lady?”

• Stepping out of your comfort zone—where and how to find positive black role models for you and your children.

• Interviews with interracial families offering insights for adoptive parents.

• Soul food recipes that your entire family will enjoy.

It is Tonya’s desire that this book will not only provide necessary information but also open an avenue of dialogue between parents of all races.

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About the Author: Tonya Moore and her husband, Bezell, are the proud parents of two daughters through adoption. Since the adoption of the girls and her subsequent friendships with other parents of adopted African American children, she became aware of the issues that white parents face in raising their black children. What started as an informal effort to help those parents has grown into this book and into a business.

From the Dust Jacket: She always gets the last laugh—usually at her husband’s expense.

I do try to be considerate. Some years ago when we had a 12-seater van and about ten school-age children plus several preschoolers, I thought with all those kids underfoot, Bonnie really ought to have a vacation, lest she get burned out. I said to her “Bonnie, you’re getting burned out. You really need some relaxation. You need a little rest. Why don’t I watch things here at the house, you throw a few things into the van that you might need for a few days—Take the kids and go.”

This is a story about a serene, mysterious, and slightly eccentric woman—and her slogging, well-intentioned husband. She knows her husband is totally enchanted with her, and she blithely takes advantage. He bears his scars reasonably well. Both of them were profoundly influenced by their 21 children, who came from a dozen different cultural backgrounds.

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About the Author: Fred Cappuccino, born in 1926, was a professional musician for eleven years as an autoharpist at a geriatric wing of a hospital in Cornwall, Ontario. One day he was entertaining patients, strumming autoharp chords and singing his heart out with Beautiful Dreamer, wake unto me, when suddenly one dear sister screeched, “Will someone PLEASE let that cat out!” Fred’s musical career deteriorated somewhat from that point.

He is a retired Unitarian minister, having served ten congregations in his long ministry. The first ones were Methodist, followed by Unitarian. He had to leave three of them due to illness—the people were sick of him.

Fred is the highly respected author of the quarterly “Bonnie Lore” column in the Child Haven International newsletter, the most eminent, erudite and educational newsletter in Canada.