Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter

Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter is the first of a trilogy I have written on what it means to be adopted. I set out to write a different book about my experiences as a writer living in the Far East and working as a correspondent in Vietnam. But as I struggled with the manuscript, I realized that the story I had to tell was my own. I needed to articulate my experience of growing up as an adopted person who had been told that her birth parents were dead, and then learned by chance that they might be very much alive. I woke up from the strange dream I had been living, and went on an uncharted journey to find my birth mother. I found not only her, but myself.

It’s hard to remember that in 1975, when the book was published, societal attitudes were as tightly sealed as the adoption records. Most adoptees were still in the closet. The book was considered shocking to some critics and revolutionary to others. It was still unthinkable that an adopted child (who has ever heard of an adopted adult?) would not only search for her birth family, but write about it as well.

There was still no adoption reform movement then, no support groups, no adoption therapists who one could consult. I was a pioneer, improvising as I want along. I hadn’t planned to search for my birth mother (still called the "natural" mother in those days), and I was filled with guilt toward my adoptive parents. "Who, me, search?" I would think. "I would never do such a thing."

Yet I was like someone on one of those airport moving sidewalks. You don’t feel that you’re moving, but some force is propelling you forward even while you are standing still.

I was unprepared to find my mother, and she was unprepared to be found. That was our tragedy. We didn’t understand the trauma we had each experienced after our separation or the defenses we had developed in order to survive. We didn’t understand anything. By writing this book I hoped to understand.

But I got more questions than answers. How was it that I had been as if sleep walking all those years growing up? If I believed that my birth parents were dead, why didn’t I ask their names or to see their pictures? Why didn’t I wonder if they had brothers or sisters? Why did I act as if dead people have lost their identity as well as their lives?

There were other mysteries to be solved. I received hundreds of letters from adoptees who told me that I had told the story of their lives, that my experience growing up was a mirror image of what they had been through. What did I share in common with these adopted men and women, who came from different backgrounds, yet recognized me as a kindred spirit? I sought answers by interviewing adoptees who lived in the New York area, holding bimonthly rap groups at my Manhattan apartment, and sending essay questionnaires to those who lived in other areas. I limited my subjects to adoptees who had been separated from their birth mother at an early age and were raised by non-blood-related people. Out of this research came my next book: Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience.