TWICE BORN: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter

by Betty Jean Lifton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1975

The double shock of discovering, first at seven, that she was adopted and, later at age 30, that her parents were not dead as she had been told, set Betty Jean Lifton on a lifelong journey to fred her real identity and the meaning of being an adoptee. Her marriage to psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, her young people's books on the orphans of Hiroshima and Vietnam, and her activism in ""adoptee liberation"" groups are all background to the personal search. Contrary to official policy and apparently because of her husband's position, Betty Lifton won access to her own fries and tracked down both the relatives of her late father, a womanizer and colorful but unsuccessful bootlegger, and her natural mother, a timid woman in ill health whose refusal to tell her legitimate son about Betty Jean's existence was a traumatic rejection for her. Lifton's painful memories of the lies that separate adoptive parents from their children, and of the fantasies about ""real"" parents which interfered with her own development, make a strong case that, however others may feel, people in her position have the right to demand the truth once they are adults. Curiously however, Lifton is more convincing intellectually than emotionally; somehow in the end one feels that she never completely resolved her resentment and guilt towards her adoptive mother or understood why Bea, the natural mother, would not acknowledge her. Proving her own contention that ""the adopted child can never grow up. Who ever heard of an adopted adult?"" Lifton is caught between the ""myth and the reality"" of her own childhood. Still, she brings outsiders about as close to the problem as they are ever likely to come. And one would be surprised if these memoirs--an effort of will and an act of courage as much as a completed quest--fail to inspire other twice born children to tell their stories.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION