An ambitiously authentic adoption story where fiction does the work of truth, and archives, correspondence, and health records provide the roots of fantasy.When she was 19, Shannon Elaine Gibney met Erin Rebecca Powers via a letter from Child and Family Services of Michigan. Yet their existences had already been deeply and intimately interwoven. Shannon was adopted by middle-class White parents Jim and Susan Gibney soon after her birth in 1975, but her alcoholic White birth mother, Patricia Powers, had named her Erin. Narratively, time and space become impressively distorted as Gibney relays autobiographical accounts of Shannon and Erin that complicate her conceptions of self as a transracial adoptee, biracial Black woman, writer, and science-fiction fan. Erin is imagined at dinner tables with extended family whom Shannon would never know well, if it all, facing the racist familial microaggressions she can't quite avoid in any timeline. Biographical elements are similarly reconfigured: A maternal genetic predisposition to cancer and discovering parts of her Black biological father and his family tree that had all but been erased help flesh out Shannon and Erin in fuller, more embodied ways. Gibney invokes poet Audre Lorde as a sort of third mother, a source of creative inspiration and guidance. As both Erin and Shannon proceed through the spiral wormhole that threads this text together, Gibney offers up the singularly essential connective tissue of a robust and personal body of work.An innovative and captivating reflection on identity and self. (author's note, further reading) (Speculative nonfiction. 14-adult)

An ambitiously authentic adoption story where fiction does the work of truth, and archives, correspondence, and health records provide the roots of fantasy.When she was 19, Shannon Elaine Gibney met Erin Rebecca Powers via a letter from Child and Family Services of Michigan. Yet their existences had already been deeply and intimately interwoven. Shannon was adopted by middle-class White parents Jim and Susan Gibney soon after her birth in 1975, but her alcoholic White birth mother, Patricia Powers, had named her Erin. Narratively, time and space become impressively distorted as Gibney relays autobiographical accounts of Shannon and Erin that complicate her conceptions of self as a transracial adoptee, biracial Black woman, writer, and science-fiction fan. Erin is imagined at dinner tables with extended family whom Shannon would never know well, if it all, facing the racist familial microaggressions she can't quite avoid in any timeline. Biographical elements are similarly reconfigured: A maternal genetic predisposition to cancer and discovering parts of her Black biological father and his family tree that had all but been erased help flesh out Shannon and Erin in fuller, more embodied ways. Gibney invokes poet Audre Lorde as a sort of third mother, a source of creative inspiration and guidance. As both Erin and Shannon proceed through the spiral wormhole that threads this text together, Gibney offers up the singularly essential connective tissue of a robust and personal body of work.An innovative and captivating reflection on identity and self. (author's note, further reading) (Speculative nonfiction. 14-adult)

Gr 11 Up —Given the enormous amount of literature dedicated to the good fortune or tragic-torn stories of orphans, Gibney hits hard with her part-memoir, part-speculative fiction, pastiche-approach to set the record straight and unravel the everyday pain of growing up biracial, adopted, with people who are not her birth parents. There is rage, there is research, there is speculation of what could be. Gibney tells her own story, with old photographs, letters from Children's Services, unfamiliar artifacts for outsiders (such as a letter of "non-identifying information" about her birth parents), holiday cards from mom, and a detailed family tree. Fans of Girl, Interrupted will be primed for this journey. Some segments are written in strike-through; others analyze pop culture depictions of other adoptees, such as Loki in The Avengers . But throughout the exploratory, experimental text, there is the narrative thread of a young person figuring out the real story, finding a center of truth in a pile of documents, a heroic journey to find home, a place to belong, an endeavor to re-inhabit the lost love of a tragically creative, mentally ill birth father and well-meaning, flawed birth mother. VERDICT An authentic journey for adoptees who are not allowed to feel sad but thrust into a stance of gratitude for a life they were given and for all readers who, after a loss, are reconstructing their identities.—Sara Lissa Paulson