By the way, I had a great reading at the Wisconsin Book Festival last week. The event was well-attended, followed by thought-provoking discussion, and I got to meet Laura, an 11-year-old adoptee who lives in Madison and is one of the most insightful and curious kids I’ve ever met. The reading felt like a success because of the connection with Laura, alone: it was one of those moments that confirmed the reasons I wrote Between Light and Shadow.

Montalbano bills this particular show as “a not-to-be-missed program, and especially timely because of the recent court ruling in the adoption of Karen Abigail Monahan Vanhorn (which I’ve written about here), who was adopted from Guatemala when she was two years old by an American couple. It was later discovered that the child was kidnapped from her Guatemalan family, and the Guatemalan court ruled that she should be returned to her natural mother. Karen Abigail is now six, and an American court has now also ruled that she must be returned to her Guatemalan family.”

According to Montalbano’s website, the impetus for her show is this:

“Just about every American is somehow touched by adoption personally or professionally. Under the umbrella of modern adoption are triad members of course: adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents; along with the triad’s extended family circles. Foster parents and foster children (the kids in limbo) are front and center too. Along with the forgotten band of children whose numbers are growing every day: the children who are born through surrogates or egg/sperm donorship. Behind them stand the professionals and educators, the authors and movie-makers, the politicians, doctors, lawyers and social workers. The adoption agents and the leaders of the huge variety of national and international adoption organizations and support groups. They all have something to say, and in order to understand the evolution and revolution now taking place in the world of adoption, we must listen.”

“Globalization, immigration and social justice come together in these three powerful works of nonfiction. Acclaimed journalist Jacob Wheeler examines the ethical implications of the international adoption industry in Between Light and Shadow, with a special emphasis on the troubling relationship between Guatemala and the United States. In No Word for Welcome, Wendy Call examines the effects of globalization on a small Mexican fishing community, portraying the lives and struggles of its inhabitants with a deft and poetic touch.These questions – and more – will be examined in this event.”

In advance of my trip to Madison, I was interviewed yesterday by the local community radio station, WORT during their pledge drive. You can listen to the interview here — which begins around the program’s 30-minute mark.

Casa Quivira was run by Clifford Phillips, an American who now lives in Florida, and his wife Sandra Gonzalez, a Guatemalan adoption attorney. They were among the first to capitalize when Guatemalan adoption became a booming business in the ’90s. …

In 2006, I helped reunite a teenage adoptee named Ellie with her biological mother in Guatemala—seven years after her relinquishment. During the emotional reunion, Ellie’s adoptive mother, Judy, learned from the biological mother, Antonia, that Casa Quivira’s Gonzalez had offered to pay for Ellie, then refused to pay once the girl was in the home’s custody. Antonia had a change of heart and returned to Antigua three months later to try and reclaim Ellie but was ridiculed and refused access to her daughter. In the adoption dossier, Sandra Gonzalez wrote, “Mother of child presents a troublesome and conflicted personality that makes her interpersonal relationships difficult.”

Fast forward to now. Investigative journalist Erin Siegal, whose forthcoming book Finding Fernanda also deals with corruption in Guatemalan adoption (I’ve pre-ordered, and can’t wait to read it!), published on her blog a record she received through the Freedom of Information Act from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala. This particular document on Casa Quivira and Clifford Phillips reveals that, 14 years before Casa Quivira met its demise in Guatemala, Embassy personnel weren’t “totally convinced that the current problems only reflect naivete.” Siegal provides the full document here.

I should add that, since writing Between Light and Shadow, I’ve encountered numerous adoptive parents of Guatemalan children who shared unsavory stories of their interactions with Phillips, and suspected foul play on his end.

Here’s my perspective, in the Huffington Post:

Honorable Guatemalan Judge Angelica Noemi Tellez Hernandez’s ruling in late July that 26-year-old mother Loyda Rodríguez Morales’ stolen daughter must be returned to her arms was a groundbreaking decision.

On its own merits, it was perhaps an obvious one. The decision sought to right an awful wrong by re-linking the maternal bond that was broken on Nov. 3, 2006, when Anyelí Rodríguez (then two years old) was stolen from Morales’ arms in Guatemala City.

It sought to reassert order in a land where disorder, mayhem and bloodshed have prevailed for decades. And the decision presupposed that, in a just world, the child could simply be handed back to its natural mother, in a sequel to wise King Solomon’s biblical judgement.

But there’s nothing simple about the practical implication of Judge Hernandez’s historic ruling. Anyelí Rodríguez, who turns seven on Oct. 1, now lives in a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., with her American adoptive parents, Timothy James Monahan and Jennifer Lyn Monahan. The Monahans have given her the name Karen Abigail, and likely had no idea that their daughter was stolen from her birth mother’s arms when they returned to the United States with her on Dec. 9, 2008.

The culprits behind this crime appear to be the nine Guatemalans who have been criminally charged, including Judge Mario Peralta Castaneda, who signed off on the adoption — and not the American couple. The Monahans won’t talk to the media and have instead hired a Washington D.C.-based spokesman, Peter Mirijanian, to represent them.

Through Mirjanian’s public relations agency, they issued the following statement: “The Monahan family will continue to advocate for the safety and best interests of their legally adopted child. They remain committed to protecting their daughter from additional trauma as they pursue the truth of her past through appropriate legal channels.”

“Their legally adopted child.” Those are powerful words.

Judge Hernandez has given the Monahans 60 days to hand over the girl, and threatened to call the international police agency Interpol if they do not. And that’s where the linear story ends. The Monahans’ intentions are unknown, but if you honestly think that a judge in small and powerless Guatemala can successfully order a family in the mighty United States to relinquish their child, then you haven’t studied the grotesquely one-sided history of U.S.-Guatemala relations.

It was we yanquis who executed a coup d’etat in 1954 to remove democratically-elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz; used the beautiful countryside as our own banana republic during the Cold War; armed and trained its right-wing military during the brutal, 36-year civil war to further our own foreign policy goals; and forced the CAFTA free trade deal down the throats of Guatemala City’s powers-that-be last decade.

The most recent chapter in the unequal relationship between the United States and Guatemala is about international adoption. Last decade, Guatemala became the largest “sending country” in the world for adopted children. Nearly 20,000 Guatemalan children were adopted by American families between 2004 and 2008, and a full 1 percent of all babies born in 2007 in “the land of eternal spring” were relinquished by their birth mothers and adopted abroad.

Guatemala’s “notary” adoption system was the only privatized system in the world at the time. That is, “notary” judges and attorneys controlled the flow of children out of her borders, and not the government itself. The financial incentive for Guatemalans working in international adoption led to allegations, and actual cases of theft, birth mother coercion, even rumors of “fattening houses” where sex workers were encouraged to become pregnant and then sell their babies to adoption lawyers. The Guatemalan government effectively shut down international adoption in 2008.

I explore this morass in Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey Through Adoption (University of Nebraska Press, April 2011). During my time in Guatemala, I met corrupt and unsavory lawyers, honorable women who had given up children out of the goodness of their hearts, rural Guatemalans who believed that Americans adopt children to use their organs… and everyone in between.

In the book, I retraced the steps of a girl who was coercively relinquished by her biological mother at the late age of 7 and then adopted by a loving and unsuspecting Michigan family. At the adoptive mother’s urging, I facilitated and chronicled a dramatic reunion with the girl’s birth family in 2006, during which we learned that the biological mother had repeatedly given up children — for money. The realization was bitter, and yet, around no turn did this story appear black and white. Had Antonia not given up five of her 10 children for adoption, today they would probably be as desperate and poor as she is — perhaps resorting to sex work, perhaps joining violent street gangs.

My book leads to an unexpected showdown in the jungle where the adoptee suddenly must choose between her Guatemalan family and her American family. Reading this month’s upsetting news about the Missouri girl Karen Abigail, and the inevitable fight to come over her custody, I thought of how a similar battle played out in Between Light and Shadow:

“Of course the girl will return to the United States with Judy on Thursday… The match today here in this jungle in Central America was not going to be fair. In fact, it was fixed to begin with. Two poor Guatemalan boys with no money, no resources, and no valuable passports never really stood a chance against a middle-class white woman from the United States when it came to fighting over the 14-year-old girl they all love and need so badly. At the end of this week Guatemala’s most valuable natural resources, its children, will still be leaving the country on airplanes for El Norte, and this particular case will be no different. At the end of the month, Guatemala’s role will still be one of subservience to the United States of America.”

As a writer, I appreciated Jacob’s ingenious two-part structure unified by this singular and deeply personal adoption story. The structure exemplified the sentiment of the story: the duality of loyalty and love set against the harsh realities of survival, illegal trafficking, and emotional triage. His writing style is straightforward, without much ornament — and in this case, little is needed. His description of the natural beauty and desperate poverty of Guatemala, his careful depiction of the human situations, his thorough analysis of the legal and illegal aspects of the adoption system, and his faithfulness to both families, tells it true in clear and lucid prose.

You can read more of Anne-Marie Oomen’s review here.

I’m also excited to report that I’ll hold a book reading next Friday, Aug. 12, from 3-5 p.m. at the Cottage Book Shop in my hometown of Glen Arbor. Please stop by if you’re in the neighborhood. I’ve also been accepted to read at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison this coming October.

Here’s a video of my reading at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis in May. Thanks to my colleague Chuck Olsen at TheUpTake.org for holding the camera. I am reading from the chapter titled “Searching for Antonia” — about my search for Ellie’s birth mother, which takes me to the back roads of a town named Tiquisate.

Here’s the rest of the review in the Star-Tribune:

Fascinating story of adoption reunion raises questions

In the 1990s and 2000s, Guatemala was one of the biggest sources of international adoptions. In 2007, the Central American country of 13 million sent nearly 5,000 of its children to be adopted by U.S. families, 1 percent of all babies born there that year.

Unfortunately, Guatemala’s adoption system was rife with corruption, including a network of jaladoras (from jalar, to grab), who persuaded poor women to give up their children, and lawyers and other intermediaries who were reaping huge profits from the baby trade. Because of this, the impoverished nation put a stop to international adoptions in 2008.

After providing some background on Guatemalan adoption, Twin Cities author Jacob Wheeler tells the story of 14-year-old Ellie Barrett, adopted at age 7 by a Michigan family. Ellie’s adoptive mother was eager for Ellie to meet her birth mother, so she took the step of hiring someone to research and locate the birth family.

Instead of engaging an experienced Guatemalan birth family researcher, the Barretts hired Wheeler, a freelance journalist, whose stated goal was “documenting a reunion between an adopted Guatemalan child and the biological mother for my book.”

Wheeler’s research on Guatemalan adoption in general and Ellie’s situation in particular is both fascinating and prodigious. After much digging he ultimately did find Ellie’s birth family — a compelling tale — including an older brother with whom she quickly re-formed an intense bond. His descriptions of the crushing poverty that led to Ellie’s relinquishment, and the family’s joy at their reunion, make this a can’t-it-put-down book for any family touched by international adoption.

However, I do have one caveat: I was bothered by a journalist who made himself an integral part of the story he was covering. At the book’s end Wheeler shows some self-awareness of this journalistic conflict of interest when he asks, “Was it reckless … to facilitate a climactic and sensitive reunion between a lost girl and the mother who abandoned her?” To answer that, we may need to wait for Ellie’s book.

For those of you in or near Traverse City, Michigan — please join us for a book reading at Horizon Books on Front Street, this Saturday, May 21, from 5-7 p.m. This event will be particularly special because the book’s main character, Eleanor Patricia Berenice Ortiz, aka “Ellie” Walters, will attend along with her adoptive mother Judy Barrett. Saturday’s reading promises to be an emotional and thought-provoking celebration.

Adoption, Guatemalan Style

By Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

Jacob Wheeler may be too honest. He may be too perplexed by a heartbreaking reality. He may be so torn by the state of Guatemalan adoption that he can’t morally bring himself to make a definitive statement. All of that and more is evident in his book, “Between Light and Shadow: A Guatemalan Girl’s Journey through Adoption.”

From wanting to applaud American couples saving children from poverty and early death to decrying the loss of a country’s babies, it is evident that Wheeler is torn.

On one hand there is the story of 14-year-old Ellie, a teenager from Traverse City, adopted at the age of seven from Guatemala. She was seemingly sought out by corrupt facilitators when an older child, rather than a baby, was sought after. Whether her birth mother gave her up knowingly with the expectation of being paid, or was tricked and tried to get her back—truth lies somewhere in a murky middle.

The story’s center swirls around Ellie at 14, after seven years still feeling ‘the hole in her heart’ where her other family lives. And there is her adoptive mother, Judy, who wants to help heal this child she’s come to love as her own through reuniting Ellie with her Guatemalan family—at least for a visit.

CRIMINAL ADOPTIONS

Woven through the story of this reunion with brothers who once chased the car that took Ellie away from them and a mother torn between her feelings and a life lived in hell, is the story of the kinds of adoption that in the United States would be called criminal.

Whether the poor women of Central America are duped into giving up their children, offered money that might save their other children from starvation, or contracted with to produce babies for wealthy people who can’t have a child of their own, the adoption scene in Guatemala is ugly. On the one hand, as Wheeler points out, children are being saved from lives of abuse and starvation, being brought to America to lives of iPods and plenty. On the other hand—does anyone have the right to the children, the future of another country?

Wheeler writes of adoption facilitated by corrupt lawyers who will bend what little government oversight is in place, leaving a child without a birth certificate, with forged papers, without knowledge of where it was they came from, who their people were, and nothing of their own culture. It is the story of inhumanity and women being treated as baby factories.

Some of the adoptive parents, as Wheeler points out, are well intentioned. Some of them, seen through Wheeler’s eyes, are abhorrent: babies on demand, of the right gender, the right sort. In one case a hopeful parent looks at the photo of a prospective child and asks only, “What’s that?”

SOUTHERN SEARCH

Wheeler, a journalist and publisher of the Glen Arbor Sun, offered to help Judy find Ellie’s mother and brothers. He set off for Guatemala with the idea of writing a book about the adoption business in that country, but ran into one conundrum after another as the lives of the children; the state of the country — recently torn by civil war and now at odds with much of the modern world; the mind-numbing poverty, corruption; cruelty; misogyny, all form questions impossible to deal with easily.

Without papers that defi nitively said whether Ellie came from El Salvador or Guatemala, Wheeler set off to fi nd her family with only a seven-year-old’s memories to guide him. From there on it becomes a detective story of unearthing a relative here, a neighbor there, until the mother and brothers are found.

This is nothing like a feel-good fairy tale. Nothing will be as we expect, just as nothing that happens is expected by Judy or Jacob. They face unwanted challenges, and then new realizations of who they, as Americans, really are. What the book brings out is the worst, and then the best, in everyone—all sides: Guatemalan and American.

Always, at the heart of the story, is a seven-year-old snatched from the only home and people she knew to be taken to a foreign land, to live with foreign people, in a culture not her own. If a culprit is needed—it is the country itself. If there was employment for the poor, if there was government support for families, if the Catholic Church didn’t frighten women away from birth control, if women weren’t degraded by downtrodden men… if life weren’t other than it is… the babies of Guatemala, the future, might survive, even thrive, where they are born.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Jacob Wheeler has written a book that should be an eye-opener for any American couple seeking to adopt in that country. There is responsibility for their actions that might go far beyond providing a home for a needy child. There are actions that have far-reaching consequences for them and for their adopted child.

On the other hand, where is the morality in being able to save one child from early death and a life of misery and not doing it? I think this unanswerable question is what Wheeler so deftly handles. It is refreshing to read a book where the writer doesn’t supply dishonest answers or takes an untenable stand. Maybe what he’s accomplished here is to open eyes, to make us look beyond our borders not for children—used as a commodity, but for ways to help other countries lift themselves up; help save an entire people, many children, rather than one child at a time.