janinebaer.bsky.social
An #adoptee, I published a 🏳️🌈 feminist newsletter on the politics of adoption & a book on how OBCs were sealed. https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/572366-growing-in-the-dark
https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/chainoflife/index.html
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You were paying attention. I didn't notice that. Thanks.
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"The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of letters poured in from across the country, and the Adoptees Liberty Movement Association (ALMA, the Spanish word for soul) came into being."
🎉
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Thank you! A 1972 NY Times article.
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...but society usually has a counter-interest in exposing them, and the historian can often obtain information about them by consulting legal records. But what of something everyone wanted to hide?"
— John Boswell, (quoted in "Growing in the Dark")
🌿 7/7 🌿
www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore...
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From "The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance":
"Would it be possible to obtain information which not only individuals but society as a whole might wish to hide? Criminals have an interest in disguising their activities...+
6/7
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...and society at large most of my life, including in the form of our sealed records law. (I did meet my birth parents, no thanks to the state of California.) Martin is unequivocal in acknowledging the unfairness of separating people from our own information. +
5/7
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Violence aside, stories like this feel validating in a society that says we have no right to our own history. I've spent much of my life arguing for these rights and doubt I will ever hear enough understanding to make up for the resistance I faced from everyone—my adoptive parents... +
4/7
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The Sisters of Charity argued against opening records of foundlings to those who came back to ask for them by citing his violence.
Here is part of that story from "The Sun Won't Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood," page 121: +
3/7
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...a man who was enraged at not being able to see his records—in 1902.
We know his story because Henry J. King committed a crime, shooting two Sisters of Charity (and himself) when they refused to give him the records they had about his birth. Thankfully, they all survived their injuries. +
2/7
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Good quote. Do you have the source?
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with gift link to article:
bsky.app/profile/jani...
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us.macmillan.com/books/978146...
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It's fascinating how the people described in both studies later spoke directly about their experiences. In Solinger on p 65 of Beggars: "For months...I got almost daily phone calls and letters from white women, most just about my own age, who had years before surrendered their babies for adoption."🥚
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Solinger later wrote in "Beggars and Choosers" (2001):
"Most historians never experience the shock of having their subjects—the men and women they've unearthed in the archives ...—come looking for them. After my book "Wake Up Little Susie..." was published...though, that is what happened to me." +
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Do you know Rickie Solinger's books? Your discussion of how "orphan train" riders asked the Foundling about their original families reminded me of Solinger's "Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy & Race before Roe v. Wade" (1992). It's based on letters by pregnant women & relinquishing mothers. +
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Thanks for this. Here's more about Ms. Rachel:
bsky.app/profile/jani...
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Thanks for this. Here's more about Ms. Rachel:
bsky.app/profile/jani...