| The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the DecadesBefore Roe v. Wade |  | Author: Ann Fessler
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Seller: cbobooks
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 74,893
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143038974
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.8298
EAN: 9780143038979
ASIN: 0143038974
Publication Date: June 26, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade. An adoptee who was herself surrendered during those years and recently made contact with her mother, Ann Fessler brilliantly brings to life the voices of more than a hundred women, as well as the spirit of those times, allowing the women to tell their stories in gripping and intimate detail.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
Gone but not forgotten September 27, 2007
William S. Grigsby (Chillicothe, OH USA)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
I got this for a family member who was/is one of the 'Girls Who Went Away'. Turned out that my younger brother had already sent her a copy. She rated it 5 stars as an accurate depiction of the subject in that era (I remember her going passing through the extremities of the family structure on her way to a Salvation Army home).
Read this if you don't understand why reproductive freedom is so important.
The Girls Who Went Away March 3, 2008
Woman Anon (Akron, OH)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Every heart rending story is told by a birth mother who was made to feel ashamed and guilty about her pregnancy before marriage. Most of these young women were coerced into giving their babies up for adoption. These are eye-opening accounts of young women abandoned by their families, lovers and the social systems of the time.
Blown away by this "unspoken" part of our past..... August 4, 2007
D. Midgett (Tennessee)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This in an incredible book written about a period in time that is truly difficult for someone of my generation (age 42) to comprehend. The author does an excellent job of weaving her interviewing experiences with facts of the times and these incredible life stories. I would highly recommend this book to everyone (and have).
my story May 31, 2008
li-ky (australia)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I bought this book to validate the feelings I experienced surrendering my daughter 37 years ago - although it took my breath away reconnecting with the pain, I also found I wasn't alone. A wonderful complimentary tool to those seeking therapy to cope with the loss of a child through adoption.
Baby, Come Back March 9, 2009
Caryss Wood-Behan (PA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
In "The Girls Who Went Away," Ann Fessler interviews several women who surrendered their babies for adoption in the years before Roe v. Wade (1973). Fessler spares the reader historical fill-in facts and avoids covering the pages with interview-style "Q&As." Instead, she points her recorder in the direction of the women, and lets them talk. Their accounts, spoken candidly and without self-pity, left me with a sense that they had actually sat with me at my table, sipping tea, when not wiping away bitter tears. What makes these stories and, indeed, the entire book so special is the author's personal familiarity with the subject (her own story's reveal comes at the end).
The women recall the moments they first discovered they were pregnant and then relate the shock, disgust and, often, condemnation expressed by their parents after being told the news. Some of these memories include accounts in which the boyfriend or lover of the unwed mother demonstrated a desire to marry his pregnant girlfriend, only to have the request refused by one or both sets of parents.
One woman remembers aloud the afternoon her father arrived home early from work to find his daughter and her boyfriend making love on the rec room floor, and goes on to tell the repercussions.
In most of the accounts, after the girls revealed their pregnancies, they had no choice but to comply with their elders' decisions to send them away. Some of the girls' parents permitted them to live at home until their pregnancies became physically obvious. At some point, however, all of the girls went away to give birth, and returned with empty arms. Once home, parental and societal expectations called for the young women to resume living their lives as though nothing had happened, while enduring placating reassurances that they would have other children some day.
The book is a testament to the closed-minded, "only one way out" system that once existed in the adoption business. It examines adoption workers' dismissive attitudes toward birthmothers who desired to keep their babies, and the persuasive tactics they employed to convince such women to change their minds.
The common themes are many, but none so wrenching as the one in which a birthmother recalls savoring each second with her newborn before he leaves with his new family. One woman recalls going to the nursery to see her baby a few days after giving birth. Instead, she finds the baby's empty cot, a seering visual confirmation of the permanence of adoption and the infinite nature of her loss.
Perhaps the most enduring footprint left behind by the majority of the birthmothers was one that time could not erase: The desire to see their babies again, no matter that those infants had grown up. The mothers go on to explain the decision to enroll in an adoption search registry system, as they relive the nail-biting wait for answers. Although the first reunions of birthmothers and adoptees are not covered in great detail, the author does capture the universal emotions that precede, accompany and occur after the process.
The "Girls who Went Away" answers questions that evidently no one but the birthmothers deemed important enough to ask in the years before 1973. Thankfully, Ann Fessler has pushed those questions out into the spotlight while the courageous women in her book supply all of the answers and more. A compelling, stunning expose' about a formerly exploitative industry and the women who became its unwitting victims.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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