Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee.
Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian.
At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.
The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.
Resources. Black-and-white photographs and reproductions.
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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