Tama Janowitz is apparently raising a “Mongolian” daughter named ‘Willow’ along with six poodles and a husband in Brooklyn.
Well, today in the NYT’s “Relative Choices” blog she had her first post published and, boy, is it insulting in so many ways.
Not only does she characterize her daughter’s ethnicity as “Mongolian”, but she disqualifies her daughter’s birthparents by elevating herself to sainthood and nominating herself as Willow’s “real mother”. I guess, to paraphrase her attitude, Janowitz was the only the person who gave a shit about this little girl and she better realize that this is the only shot she’ll get to live a “normal” life.
How would you take, for instance, this pithy remark that Janowitz apparently is fond of saying to her daughter: “Well, you know, if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!”
It’s no wonder that she alludes to the anthology Outsiders Within as a book “in which many Midwestern Asian adoptees now entering their 30s and 40s complain bitterly about being treated as if they did not come from a different cultural background.”
The real freakin’ scandal, though, is that the person pulling the strings behind this blog is cherry-picking comments that, en masse, tilt heavily toward placid, ‘gee-willickers’ statements by APs that applaud Janowitz’s piece [don't take my word for it, read all 100+ comments and judge for yourself]. By Harlow Monkey’s most recent estimate, comments from 13 adult adoptees and/or adoptive parents critical of Janowitz’s post have been passed up for more agreeable fare. I’ve submitted my own comment this evening and reasonably suspect that it, too, will be passed over for more gleeful parental pulp.
I know this is the Opinion section of the NYT’s website, but in order to fully inform its readers about a serious subject, such as adoption, wouldn’t it not only be necessary, but also admirable, to include everyone’s constructive comments, no matter from which side they swing? Isn’t that the point of a newspaper?
There’s more that’s rankling me about Janowitz’s post, but it’s not fit for polite company.
So, I’ll leave you with the outstanding thoughts on this outrage by these fellow adult adoptee bloggers:
November 28, 2007 at 9:06 pm |
Janowitz is funny and talented. You should lighten up and get over yourself.