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Adoption novels raise questions about the sanctity of biocentric normative models of family, community and the self. Indeed matters of national and cultural roots, birthrights, citizenship and bloodlines are pivotal concerns of modern societies – concerns that become complicated when, as John McCleod observes that ‘This imaginative synchronizing of the birth of the body with the origins of identity is both disrupted and confirmed by adoption, because the meaning and the experience of adoption is always circumvented by the norms it seems to dispense with’ (McCleod 2015: 15). Adoption could be read as a rite of passage from one mode of belonging into another, where memories of former natal contexts are embedded in traumatic experiences of separation and loss. This seminar investigates how adoption is implemented in a number of novels from the United States which address relations to new home spaces which may or may not facilitate realignments of kinship patters and connected strategies of self-definition.
Students are required to have acquired the novels listed and read them before class takes place (they are available on amazon.de as used books at affordable prices). Do consider getting the text editions specified below to facilitate text references for class work. A reader with secondary material will be made available. Class presentations are a requirement for attendance in this seminar.
Texts:
Eleanor H. Porter. Pollyanna. Sterling Unabridged Classics. 2013 [1913]
Monique Truong. Bitter in the Mouth. Chatto & Windus. 2010.
Barbara Kingsolver. The Bean Trees. HarperTorch. 1998.
Bharti Kirchner. Shiva Dancing. Dutton Adult. 1998.
Toni Morrison. Jazz. Vintage International. 2004.
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