Hoping
It was very good news to learn that The Girls Who Went Away was nominated for a Nonfiction award by the National Book Critics Circle. It's good just to know that Ann Fessler's book appeals to a general audience. I read it with mounting obsession, but, then, I'm an adopted child.
The ball is in my court on the reunion front. I've received the "non-identifying" information that the New York Foundling Hospital could release, and I've been notified by the New York State Department of Health that when each of my parents registers with the Adoption and Medical Information Registry, then we can all get in touch.
I'm sorry, but that's profoundly unacceptable. The state has no business here. One of my parents is supremely unlikely to be alive - he would be one hundred ten years old - while the other is in her late eighties, living who knows where. Thanks to The Girls Who Went Away, I no longer believe that the State of New York had or has the right to hand me over to biological strangers while denying me access to information about my birth family, which may, as it happens, include as many as three half-siblings and their children. My daughter has a right to know her not-so-distant cousins.
That's why I'm happy about the nomination. The success of The Girls Who Went Away will be a step toward the repeal of New York State's inhuman adoption-records statute.
