Karen Winkler,
"The Distance Traveled: Reading Leinaweaver and Castañeda on Politics,
Privilege, and Race in Transnational Adoption"
(page 3 of 4)
In his analysis of Deanne Borshay Liem's personal documentary,
First Person Plural (2000), David Eng points to "the dearth of
vocabularies to investigate this critical juncture of private and
public," and asks us to sustain a discussion of "the ethics of
multiculturalism in relation to the current emergence of what [I] call
the 'new global family.'"[20]
Eng's elaboration of the figures of two
mothers considers what psychic and political space must be opened up to
take in the presence of both adoptive mother (or parent—though his
psychoanalytic argument rests on the position of the mother) and birth
mother (and more figuratively, homeland).[21]
His question brings to
mind three oft-cited feature films that address the contradictory (and
political) ways love and inequality circulate between the "two mothers"
in adoption: The Official Story (1985), Casa de los Babys (2003), and
Losing Isaiah (1995).[22]
These films viscerally demonstrate what I
would suggest is at stake in Leinaweaver's and Castañeda's
papers: the urgent possibilities of recognition of the
transnationally and/or transracially adopted child's independent origins
and subjectivity outside of the (usually) white nuclear family, and of
the Third World mother's own subjectivity, recuperation of what
Castañeda calls a "relation to her conditions of birth,"
restoration of collective history, and reparation—both
psychic and material (i.e. transfer of capital to support robust
programs to support women, children, and families, promotion of ethical
adoption practices, and support for global movements for economic and
social justice [e.g. fair trade, women's rights]).[23]
In the exquisitely powerful Argentinian film, The Official
Story, an adoptive mother, Alicia, married to a military official
slowly realizes that her beloved young daughter is the child of a
"disappeared" mother, whose grandmother has searched for her since her
own pregnant daughter's abduction and "disappearance" by the murderous
military junta. The elderly woman is part of the Madres de la Plaza de
Mayo, the group that has marched against the abuses of the dictatorship,
demanding to know the fates of their disappeared children. She tells her
own daughter's story to the adoptive mother, after they've met as each
searches for the truth about their child. The horror of Alicia's
realization that her husband knew, was complicit, and may have been
directly involved in torture, and the ethical, intimate implications of
her child's originary theft, are devastating—to the characters, and to
viewers. A previously apolitical high school history teacher, Alicia's
consciousness changes irrevocably through her search, with her
recognition of the suffering of her child's other mother. "What will we
do if it's true?" she asks the child's likely biological grandmother.
John Sayles' film, Casa de los Babys brings us to an unnamed
Latin American country, where a group of women from the U.S. are waiting
in a small hotel (known by locals as Casa de los Babys) for children to
be referred (assigned) to them for adoption. For all the differences of
place and personality among them, they are a group bathed in white
privilege, in contrast to the poor maids and laborers that stream into
town in the pre-dawn hours to work. Sayles gives voice to a direct
critique of transnational adoption through the rather comical,
no-goodnik figure of the hotel owner's son, who rails against the
imperialists who demand native babies like so many natural resources, as
his sharp-tongued mother reminds him that their livelihood is dependent
upon the gringas' money. However, it is the private exchange between two
mothers that brings home the unbearable, complicated sadness of this
unequal distribution of political, economic, and affective capital.
In an achingly painful scene, an Irish woman from Boston (Eileen),
and a young Latin American maid in her room to clean (Asuncion), listen
uncomprehendingly to each other describe (one in English, the other,
Spanish) her hopes for her child. Eileen dreams out loud of the snow
day she will spend with her daughter, full of the pleasures of making
snow angels and drinking cocoa together. Asuncion responds with her own
dreams that the baby daughter she relinquished has found a happy life in
America with a mother like this one. Later, Eileen decides to name her
adopted daughter "Esmeralda"—the name Asuncion had given her own
daughter at birth. The sharing of these two mothers' fantasies of their
daughters forges a delicate emotional link between them: each mother's
private dream depends symbolically, politically, and unequally, upon the
other.
I would argue that even Losing Isaiah, a notoriously
problematic film about the politics of transracial adoption, contributes
productively to our conversation about "ethical multiculturalism." The
film's weaknesses are tremendous (and all the more galling because it
works as a tear-jerker): among other things, it exploits the fears of
white parents that if they adopt domestically, their children might be
taken back by birth mothers who've had a change of heart, or gone
through "recovery." The narrative raises the sensational specter to
white audiences of Black people with nationalistic agendas hijacking
domestic adoption to prevent well-meaning, financially well-off white
parents (like the couple played by Jessica Lange and David Strathairn)
from providing families for needy Black children relinquished by their
crack-addicted, neglectful mothers. But it also raises questions about
the white family's exclusively (and typically) white social networks,
and their complete lack of familiarity with important aspects of African
American culture (e.g. the long list of African American children's
literature intoned in court). And it demands that its liberal, white
social worker-mother remake her material and psychic bonds with her
adopted son's "conditions of birth," acknowledging his "blackness"
through acceding to his African American mother's claims. The traumatic
rupture of his addicted birth mother's inability to care for him, and
the failed recuperation of their bond through his court-ordered return
to her, are uneasily resolved when she decides to hand him back. The
film leaves us wondering not only whether Isaiah's African American
mother (Halle Berry) will recover an authentic place in his life, but
what sort of space will open for Isaiah to recognize himself in the
history of two mothers.
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