GIFT CHILDREN: A STORY OF RACE, FAMILY, AND ADOPTION IN A DIVIDED AMERICA

In 1970 Doug and Gloria Bates adopted a 4 year old black girl as a sister to their 2 biological white sons. 2 years later they adopted another black girl. GIFT CHILDREN is the story of the 23 year interracial journey that ensued, a story that helps illuminate race relations in America today while depicting both the harsh difficulties as well as the heartwarming rewards that followed. GIFT CHILDREN is an intimate portrait of race relations told through the history of the Bates family. It is a deeply American story about bringing up children (in this case, in Eugene, Oregon), about celebrating and growing together, about coping with family tensions and dilemmas, and about negotiating the difficult years of adolescence and young adulthood. While casting a sharp light on the racism that lies all about us--and often within us as well--it is preeminently a book about caring, trusting, loving, and working together. GIFT CHILDREN describes the problems, setbacks, and pain of a family's attempt to live interracially, but ultimately it tells of a signal success hard won in an imperfect world. All who are interested in families, adoption, and race relations in America will find GIFT CHILDREN an important and moving book.

This tender memoir about the trials and triumphs that follow an interracial adoption, written by the white father of two adopted black daughters, has much to teach a society wracked with racial tension. In 1970, Bates and his wife Gloria, a Eugene, Ore., couple with two sons, adopted Lynn, a four-year-old black girl, and, two years later, Liska, another black girl. While most members of their extended family came to love the girls, Bates does not flinch from revealing the racism displayed by certain relatives, neighbors, schoolmates and other individuals of both races in their city. Bates ( The Pulitzer Prize ), a former editor for the Seattle Times , writes with directness and candor about the difficulties faced by all members of the family. Their struggles demonstrate that in a family love may overcome racism, but that color remains a dividing issue in our society. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sincere account of how Bates (The Pulitzer Prize, 1991), who's white, raised two adopted black daughters alongside two biological sons. In 1970, Bates (then a 23-year-old Eugene, Oregon, newspaper reporter) and his wife--already parents but influenced by 60's ideals as well as by friends' plans to adopt a minority child- -adopted four-year-old mulatto Lynn. The author recalls with amazement how blithely he and his wife made the decision: ``[We] would expend far more time...a decade later researching the purchase of our first VCR.'' The Bateses never discussed their plans with any blacks (inhabitants of an overwhelmingly white town, they didn't know any), and they anticipated no problems. And two years later, the couple, deciding that Lynn should have a sister like herself, adopted three-year-old Liska--also a neglected and abused longtime foster-care child of mixed-race parentage. Readers will admire the Bateses' determination to nurture their girls' black identity, and they'll sympathize with the couple's struggles, such as their early embarrassing attempts to make black friends and their later pain as their daughters' lives came to include illegitimate children and welfare dependency. But Bates's memoir lacks the complex discussion of race and adoption that would make the family's story more illuminating. Whether the daughters' personal problems stem mainly from their adoption or from their racial environment isn't explored adequately, and the sons' experiences are given short shrift, as are those of the friends whose adoption plans inspired the Bateses: A comparison of their experiences would have been interesting. Glaringly omitted as well is a thorough look at the state of ``transracial adoptions'' and at why many blacks oppose them even as thousands of black children languish in foster care. An affecting memoir that lacks the probing and context to make it the revealing work about America's troubled race relations that it might have been. (Photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gloria and Douglas Bates, both white, adopted two black girls in the early 1970s as sisters to their two sons. This is the biography/history of the family's time spent on the West Coast, where they attempted to deal with the sociological and psychological problems this arrangement created. Bates, a former newspaper editor and author of The Pulitzer Prize ( LJ 7/91), tells of his attempts to instill black pride in his adopted daughters within their white Oregon environment. He also recounts how the Bates boys bonded with and defended their adopted sisters on matters of race, and why the National Association of Black Social Workers did not approve of this transracial adoption. Readers will learn the coping strategies of a biracial family and the associated joys, latent (and not-so-latent) racism, and a society that just doesn't get it. Expect to be upset, frustrated, relieved, and entertained by this biography of unresolved race relations. For most collections.
- Scott Johnson, Meridian Community Coll. Lib., Miss.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.