Adoption can be loaded with secrecy and, in some cases, guilt, confusion and shame. Speaking out can sometimes feel taboo for adoptees, birth families, and adoptive families.
Next month, three award-winning writers – Nancy McCabe, Phil Terman, and Lori Jakiela – will come together to break that silence, read from their work and talk about their own experiences as members of the adoption triad during a special event Saturday, August 18 at White Whale Bookstore in Bloomfield. The evening begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow.
The reading coincides with a day-long writing workshop – “Finding Family: Writing the Adoption Experience” with Lori Jakiela at Creative Nonfiction Foundation, 5119 Coral Street in Pittsburgh, from 10-4:30 p.m., also on August 18. To register for the workshop, visit: https://www.creativenonfiction.org/products/finding-family.
Nancy McCabe’s work about adoption includes the books Meeting Sophie: A Memoir of Adoption and Crossing the Blue Willow Bridge: A Journey to My Daughter’s Birthplace in China (both from The University of Missouri Press), as well as the essay “The Boby Room.” That essay appeared in Oh Baby! True Stories about Conception, Adoption, Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Labor, and Love – Tales of Tiny Humans from In Fact Books and was reprinted in Littsburgh. An excerpt from Crossing the Blue Willow Bridge was published in Prairie Schooner, anthologized, and made notable lists in both Best American Essays and Best American Nonrequired Reading. McCabe is the author of three other books, including the novel Following Disasters (Outpost 19) and the nonfiction book From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood. Her work has also appeared in Newsweek, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Fourth Genre, and more. She has received a Pushcart Prize and been recognized an additional four times on the Best American Essays notable list.
Philip Terman is the author of five books of poetry and five limited chapbooks, including, most recently Our Portion: New and Selected Poems. A selection of his poems, My Dear Friend Kafka, has been translated into Arabic by Saleh Razzouk. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Sun Magazine, and 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. He teaches at Clarion University and is director of The Bridge Literary Arts Center in Franklin, PA. On occasion, he performs his poetry with the jazz band The Barkeyville Triangle.
Lori Jakiela is an adoptee and the author of the adoption memoir, Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe (Atticus Books), which received the William Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University. She is also the author of four other books — including the memoirs Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette/Grand Central) and The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious (C&R Press/WPA Books); the poetry collection Spot the Terrorist! (Turning Point); and the essay collection Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker (Bottom Dog Press). Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Quarterly, LitHub, Electric Literature and more. She directs the undergraduate creative and professional writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and is the founder and co-director for Veterans Write, a volunteer organization that offers free creative writing workshops for veterans. She and her husband, author Dave Newman, were featured in a documentary by Pittsburgh’s Rick Sebak, “People Who Write Books Around Here,” which recently aired on PBS.
THEY SANG HER A NAME
Mourning doves and robins
And the school bus
Slowing down and patiently
Pausing and picking up
Our child, who once
Was so distant
We wouldn’t know how
To imagine her. Remember
Traveling across the world
To gather her in our embrace
And claim her as our own?
Where are those who birthed her,
Without whom she would be
As unfamiliar to us
As everything else we will
Never love? Do those parents
Who made her call her
In a language this chosen one
Still hears in her sleep?
They sang her a name,
Then, because of forces
Beyond comprehension,
Set her down in a public place
And hurried away, heavier
In their absence. And we
Appeared. And lifted her up.
And sang her another.
— Phil Terman
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