Motherhood So White

July 22, 2019
In this timely, insightful memoir, novelist Austin (Eternity) examines adoption and child-rearing as a single black woman confronting gender and racial bias. At age nine, Austin was taken in by her maternal grandparents, who provided a life that “mirrored white middle class America: a secure household, church, piano lessons” yet lacked legal recognition; it was an informal black adoption, “the practice of raising nieces, nephews, cousins, and grandchildren” that “followed an established cultural tradition.” At 36, eager to become a mother, she trained as a foster parent and learned that “Black boys were least likely to be adopted.” The notion “awakened my Black Power roots. Adopting a baby boy would allow me to lift as I climbed.” Matched with a six-month-old in 2007, she renamed him August and legally adopted him in 2009. Throughout, Austin pegs her son’s daily life to such events as Obama’s election (Obama “was the manifestation of my hopes and dreams for my son”) and the murder of Trayvon Martin (black boys “will be perceived as hypermasculine” and therefore a threat). Juxtaposing tender mother-child moments with the dangers facing African-American boys, Austin captures both the love and fear of her parenting experience in this powerful, spirited narrative.

Starred review from August 1, 2019

Austin, a single black mother of two adopted black children, begins her debut memoir with a lesson. One night, she changes up her son August's routine of play, reading, and bath time to attend a Black Lives Matter rally in Beverly Hills. For the author, it's a gathering of like-minded people to vent their frustrations and show solidarity. For her son, it's an education in social mores: he is black and male and will be seen by others as a threat or nuisance; he is also at risk of harsh treatment by law enforcement or society in general. Therefore, Austin uses the rally as a survival lesson in navigating the world. These issues, along with many others like them, are why the author wrote this eye-opening, trenchant book, which helps to bolster the scant literature for African American adoptive parents that Austin has pioneered by blogging for publications such as MUTHA magazine and the Huffington Post. VERDICT Austin's experiences, both positive and negative, are recounted in this fast-paced, heartwarming memoir of motherhood and adoption told through an African American lens. Essential for all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, 3/17/19.]--Leah Huey, Dekalb P.L., IL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

What does it mean to be a single black mother in America? In her debut memoir, Austin (Abandon, 1996, etc.) examines what it means to legally adopt a black child through the foster care system as a single black woman. The book opens with the author taking her 5-year-old adopted son, August, to a Black Lives Matter rally "just outside the Beverly Hills hub," where they live. Austin palpably recounts the urgency of this current moment, especially regarding the constant possibility of lethal danger for black people in America. As she notes, innocence is a currency that black children cannot afford. Austin explores how this has been a recurrent theme throughout American history, one that has always created deep trauma within the black community and family structure. She seamlessly weaves her adoption story into discussions of her ideas of motherhood, which are particularly relevant because she was raised by her grandparents after being abandoned by her own birth mother. Austin challenges readers to question the ideal of motherhood as being synonymous with whiteness. Along the way, she tackles the inherent sexism, classism, and racism within the adoption system and the broader community, and she forcefully pushes back against the vilification of the single black mother and the idea of the unwanted black child in the adoption system. Austin also addresses the lack of literary work focused on stories of black motherhood in general and black adoption in particular. During her research, much of what she found centered on white adoption and ignored her unique challenges. Austin closes with first-person interviews with other black mothers who share their individual parenting journeys, helping to further bolster the author's argument that black motherhood is not monolithic. An essential addition to the literature about adoption, reflecting a viewpoint that is sorely lacking.

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August 1, 2019
Austin was a career-focused, single, African American woman with the mama jamas, a desire not only to parent, but to mother an African American boy from the foster care system. Inspired partly by her own childhood, raised by loving grandparents who stepped up when her unstable parents could not, Austin confronted a juggernaut of barriers and hurdles: Black cultural resistance to raising a stranger's child, inaccurate racist perceptions of Black foster children as defective crack babies, and the ever-present stereotype of the irresponsible Black single mother. Despite a dearth of literature or support services for Black adoptive parents, Austin persevered, finding community among other foster parents, developing an extended network of Black men as role models for her son (despite their often archaic views on gender roles), and successfully negotiating the hurdles of bureaucracy, unpredictable birth parents, and societal disapproval in order to create a family. A moving and necessary corrective to the primarily white narrative on adoption.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)