Sunday, June 04, 2006

Death By Adoption: Joss Shawyer (1979)

If you ever get a chance to read this book, get it. Out of print now, it woke up a lot of people when it was first published (1979) and it is just as true today as it was then. This is the opening paragraph of the first chapter:
"Adoption is a violent act, a political act of aggression towards a woman who has supposedly offended the sexual mores by committing the unforgivable act of not suppressing her sexuality, and therefore not keeping it for trading purposes through traditional marriage. The crime is a grave one, for she threatens the very fabric of our society. The penalty is severe. She is stripped of her child by a variety of subtle and not so subtle manoeuvres and then brutally abandoned." - Joss Shawyer, Death by Adoption, Cicada Press (1979)

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