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On The Outskirts Of Normal: Forging A Family Against The Grain (2010)

by Debra Monroe(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0870745603 (ISBN13: 9780870745607)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Southern Methodist University Press

review 1: I would've scored this higher, but I was too distracted by the timeline jumpiness. The author appeared to have organized the book into chapters by general topic. However, the impact of the book was lost when the daughter's age would flip flop between 2 years old and 5 years old and back to newborn. It wasn't really following her life; it was a more of narrations about specific topics (dating as a single mom, white people doing black hair, awful relatives, etc.)I will say that I was extremely pleased to read her account of what happened in the hospital when her daughter was born - that she didn't have the "I'll be a better mother than you, so hurry up and sign the papers" or the "thank you for getting knocked up and living a crap circumstance so that you can gift this ch... moreild to me" attitude I see in a lot of adoption tales told from the perspective of the adoptive parent.
review 2: White professor and author Monroe hangs her story on the peg of her adoption of a newborn black baby, but this book is about so much more than that. Why do smart women make so many bad relationship decisions? Are they doomed to repeat history?Monroe examines her fractured childhood and adolescence (a drunken dad, a loutish, racist, brute of a stepfather)and her denied relationship with her abused, long-suffering mother. She struggles to make her own way after two failed marriages and countless no-count boyfriends, finally sinking love into her adopted daughter, Marie. She dotes on her child, her career, and their home, yet all but ignores her own life-threatening illness.Monroe writes with a droll sense of clarity found in hindsight, a voice that will remind readers of a blend of Anne Lamott and Mary Karr. less

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