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THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

Name: THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW
Author: Janis Cooke Newman
ISBN: 0-312-25214-5

A TRUE STORY OF ADOPTION

by Janis Cooke Newman ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2001

Although of some interest to would-be adoptive parents looking outside the US for a child, this falls mostly flat.

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An undistinguished account of an American couple’s travails in adopting a Russian baby.

First-time author Newman pads the bits and pieces of her adoption saga that have appeared in magazines and Internet publications (among them Salon) to make a sometimes genial, sometimes arch narrative. She writes affectingly of her failure to conceive naturally and of her decision to seek a child for adoption in Russia, a country her adoption agency’s brochure warned was "bleak and degenerating. Delays are to be expected. . . . It is not uncommon for adoptions to be stalled or never completed.” Newman and her husband found those words to be resoundingly true as they filled out mountains of forms, paid bribes and tips, and blundered from one bureaucrat’s desk to another. Eventually they found a candidate, an undernourished infant boy who had been abandoned in a Moscow hospital three days after his birth to a Ukrainian mother and immediately placed in an orphanage. “Because it was still winter,” Newman writes, “they chose for his last name the Russian word for snow.” Led through the process of bringing young Grisha (renamed Alex) out of the orphanage by a guide whose hand constantly reached for the American couple’s hard currency, the Newmans came close to losing their patience and giving up on the whole project; in the end, Newman’s story nearly collapses under the weight of the couple’s frustration at the unfamiliar intricacies of an alien adoption system—and Newman seems to consider it an injustice that the Russian government prefers to place the orphaned or abandoned infants under its charge in the care of Russian families rather than of foreigners, no matter how well-intended.

Although of some interest to would-be adoptive parents looking outside the US for a child, this falls mostly flat.

Pub Date: March 7, 2001

ISBN: 0-312-25214-5

Page Count: 224

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

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AMERICAN MOM

ON MOTHERHOOD, POLITICS AND HUMBLE PIE

by Mary Kay Blakely ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

Still, American moms of the post-Kennedy era will recognize—and even admire—themselves here.

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A memoir of a woman in progress, this volume describes the 20 years spent raising two sons to be sensitive, responsible, independent—and, hopefully, to pick up their socks.

"Do you mistake me for June Cleaver?'' says Blakely (Wake Me When It's Over, 1989) with heavy irony to a member of the adolescent male pack that moved in and out of her house chomping on Oreos as her sons were growing up. Not a chance. In these reflections, Blakely often mirrors the experiences of middle-class women who were reinventing themselves and their roles during the feminist wave of the 1970s and '80s. Married, working first simply to bring in money and then to build a career (as a writer and lecturer), divorced, strategizing as a single mother (never kite checks on the grocer, advised a more experienced friend), Blakely early on refuses to accept the burden that mothers are solely responsible for the behavior of their children. "Even if I had managed to prevent my sons' exposure to sexist or violent images at home, I could not have prevented encounters [in]...locker rooms...movies...newsstands that displayed women as cheesecake every day,'' she says. Among the best chapters is the dramatic recounting of Blakely's own mother's metaphorical shock treatments at the hands of the psychiatric establishment as she sought help for her manic-depressive son, Blakely's brother. Also thought-provoking are telling discussions of the economic and societal obstacles facing single (or would-be-single) mothers and surprisingly empathetic observations about the surge of physical power in the adolescent male. Yet Blakely frequently refers to her sons as "jocks,'' to many, a term as derogatory as "airheads'' would be for daughters. Parallel to that, she seems to regard sports as a male prerogative—a serious lapse of the feminist consciousness she eloquently espouses.

Still, American moms of the post-Kennedy era will recognize—and even admire—themselves here.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994

ISBN: 1-56512-052-3

Page Count: 348

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994

Categories:

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS

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FATHERALONG

A MEDITATION ON FATHERS AND SONS, RACE AND SOCIETY

by John Edgar Wideman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1994

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Six discursive, stirring autobiographical essays wrestle with the social definitions foisted on the author as a black man and situate him within his own personal experiences and the collective history of his kin. Grief, hope, and contemplation fill these pages as Wideman (Philadelphia Fire, 1990, etc.) unburdens his heart on the subjects of manhood, racial prejudice, fatherhood, and family heritage. Deceptively short and readable, these are not simple essays. Each is structured around the same two-part process: identifying the ways in which the "paradigm of race" destroys African-American pride, love, communication, and history, creating distance between fathers and sons; then addressing the ways this distance ought to be overcome. "Because we don't talk or can't talk father to son, son to father, each generation approaches the task of becoming men as if no work has been accomplished before," writes Wideman. "Imagine how different we might be if we really listened to our fathers' stories." His own parents were divorced, and he describes his relationship with his father as by turns estranged, distant, painful, and loving. The best piece by far is the title essay, which incorporates his finest thoughts on subjects discussed in the other five and achieves a clarity they sometimes lack. In it, Wideman explains that as a boy wanting to be closer to his dad he always heard the church hymn phrase "farther along we'll know more about you" as "father along." Among the highlights is a description of a pilgrimage he and his father made to South Carolina to search for family roots. In his prose, Wideman displays an uncanny gift for conjuring up a potent single image: "My mother's open arms. My father's arms crossed on his chest." This book will frustrate readers, however, as Wideman fails to do more than allude to his own son, who killed a teenage camp mate. Earnest, artful, hopeful, angry, and proud, Wideman's lovely book contains the seeds of promise for a world where black children have a rich wellspring of history to draw from, and where there's "enough love for everybody."