What I'm Writing/What I'm Reading
On the historical lessons we should heed about baby drop boxes and more
For the past few years, I’ve been frustrated by news coverage of the safe haven baby drop box movement—a conservative, anti-abortion scheme—that fails to identify the historic precedents of anonymous infant abandonment and its devastating lessons. I touch on this phenomenon in The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow, but I was so glad to have the opportunity to zero in on it a new essay for Time magazine’s Made by History vertical. Here, I highlight a fresh story from the archives, one with a connection to Unsolved Mysteries (seriously!!!). We should listen to the voices of foundlings from the past—and of current adoptees and birth parents who are highlighting the dangers of anonymous relinquishment—rather than fall for the rhetoric of anti-abortion activists.
In other recent work related to my book, for The New Republic, I reviewed journalist Mary Annette Pember’s remarkable book Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools. Pember’s mother, a citizen of the Bad River Ojibwe tribe, was sent to a Catholic-run Indian boarding school at age five, and lived there until she completed eighth grade. Those eight years forever scarred her, and Pember and her siblings grew up in the shadow of their mother’s trauma. In Medicine River, Pember uses her family’s story as a touchpoint for exploring the larger history and aftermath of the assimilationist Indian boarding school system, and how Natives have resisted and persisted through centuries of attempts to eradicate their people. I hope anyone who was interested in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School chapter of my book will read Medicine River.
And in recent work not related to my book, I have two hits for NPR. The first is a review of Katie Goh’s Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange, a paradigm-shifting look at citrus, hybridity, and identity that made me really want to eat tangelos. The second is a contribution to NPR’s book critics’ roundup of anticipated summer reading, an antidote to the AI chum that ran in print (!) in the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer recently. Say no to ChatGPT and call your reps to protect funding for public media!
Speaking of calling your reps, I’ve been really thankful that The Imprint has been covering how the Medicaid cuts in the House’s budget reconciliation bill—as well as other recent cuts to HHS—could impact child welfare in clear, cogent reporting on their website and podcast.
Finally, a quick ask: if you’ve read my book, perhaps you’ll consider reviewing it on Goodreads, StoryGraph, or Amazon (ugh)? I am doing my best to treat these reviews as none of my business, but they do make a difference for folks looking for new books to read.