WEAVING A FAMILY: Untangling Race and Adoption

Rothman's caveat—that she'll "slide back and forth between memoir and sociology"—is disarming, even inviting. The author, a sociologist at the City University of New York, distinguishes between personal memoir, where "the driving force is the story: you want to tell your life," and the sociologist's autoethnography, where "your life is your data." Her work, she explains, is "closer to the latter, but not quite." But for readers, sticking with Rothman's stream-of-consciousness approach is trying as the white adoptive parent of a black child creates a sprawling mosaic of professional expertise and personal experience. The byways, to name a few, include home birthing, international adoption, genetics, slavery, consumerism in birthing and parenting, whiteness studies, biomedics and Jewish-black relations. The social scientist in Rothman develops a typology of black children raised by white parents—"Protégés, Pets, and Trophies"—and plunges into genomic detail. The memoirist in her surfaces to recall handling her daughter's hair ("I developed a bit of an eye, an aesthetic sense for black hair"). Comforted as readers may be by the author's general avoidance of jargon and impressed by her interdisciplinary breadth, this occasionally absorbing book too often seems an idiosyncratic grab bag. By the end, we know a little about a lot of sociological concepts and a little about the personal experience that was the book's catalyst. (May)