Susan Devan Harness, born Vicky Charmain Rowan, is a member of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes and was raised from age two by white parents in a predominantly white community in Montana. This memoir recounts her experience growing up visibly Native surrounded by white people and their racism, the abuse and neglect she suffered at the hands of her alcoholic father and mentally ill mother, and her experience trying and finally succeeding at connecting with her birth family. Though in large part her personal story, this book also discusses her research into transracial adoptee experiences, which became a focus of her academic study. ⁣⁣
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This is a really excellently put together book, Harness tells her story in a not quite chronological order that allows her to dive deep topically, unravelling complex dynamics of her transracial adoption experience, such as being visibly Native but raised white and unknowledgeable about her own culture, which leaves her feeling out of place everywhere. She thoughtfully delves into her fraught relationships with her parents, as well as with her large birth family. I was impressed with this book’s nuanced layers, as well as how she draws together a larger picture than simply her own.⁣⁣
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Her experience and the compiled stories of other transracially adopted Indigenous kids drives home a point Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott makes in her brilliant essay collection A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, about how the system in place privileges white neglect over Indigenous love. Harness encounters this mindset again and again from friends, and even heartbreakingly from her birth family, but it was hopeful to see her research and public speaking join with others trying to make changes in adoption policy. ⁣⁣
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This is a book that swept me up in Harness’s story, and taught me a lot along the way. Definitely recommend, especially to those who enjoy memoir or nonfiction more broadly. ⁣⁣