rredhead
Senior Member
Registered: April 2005
Location: California
Posts: 452
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Review Date: Sun August 13, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? No |
Total Spent: None indicated| Rating: 2
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Positive aspects of the product (pros):
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perspective from a black boy raised by white parents
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Negative aspects of the product (cons):
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self-pitying, repetitive
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My husband read Black Baby, White Hands, and loved it. It also prompted him to buy several jazz CDs, as well as comedy CDs of Chris Rock and Richard Pryor, so that we could have positive black role models for our son.
I find Black Baby, White Hands to be self-indulgent, and more than a little repetitive. Jaiya John says the same thing in every chapter: He had a good life, with good parents, but felt disconnected from his family and friends because his race wasn't something he could talk about. This book would have been an excellent memoir, and an important piece of literature for those adopting black children, if it had been better edited.
The poetry in this book is beautiful, and it may be worth reading just for that. Jaiya John overdoes the prose, however, continually using several adjectives, adverbs, metaphors, and similes to describe each detail of his life. A person cannot just say something, he or she "tenderly tells" or "let [words] pass through their lips." The same points are hammered page after page. Somehow, the childhood he conveys is one in which he suffered pain, shame, embarassment, and low self esteem. He writes that his brother Greg (also black) must have had the same thoughts too, but Jaiya John apparently either didn't ask him or Greg didn't want his opinions in the book. Jaiya John often speaks for other people, and we're left with an incomplete picture of his life.
This book is not the best one about transracial adoption. Other than this man's self-pity, there are maybe a dozen salient points put forth. The rest is redundant and overdone.
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-Robyn
mom to Jackson, b. 17 January 2006
private, domestic, open adoption
Antioch, CA
Child #1: Is that your mother?
Child #2: Yes.
Child #1: Why is she white and you are black?
Child #2: Because I am adopted, and black people have more melanin than white people do.
Child #1: Oh, let's go on the high bars.
-Unknown
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