The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be
A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
A Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven from her true story of growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents and the fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth by the white woman who gave her up for adoption. At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience. The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.
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I was like “what is a speculative memoir?” and now I understand–it's both a memoir of her actual life as an adoptee and a fictional account of what she imagines her life might have been with her birth mother, plus some extra narrative twists. Wow. This is the kind of mind-widening book that will stay with me for a long time.
