The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
A Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far)
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.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far)
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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Community Reviews
This creative speculative memoir provides a glimpse into an adoptees’ ghost kingdom, termed by the late adoptee activist and psychologist Betty Jean Lifton, PhD. The ghost kingdom is the place where the you that never was exists/existed. The secrecy in adoption leads many of us to fantasize about what would have, could have been. Shannon masterfully brings us down both paths - of her as Shannon and of her as the maybe-Erin who never was. I particularly loved the artifacts (documents) included in the book.
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