As an adoptee Welcome Home is a refreshing and touching anthology. These stories not only feature adoption at the center, but they open up a space for our adopted heroes to take the center stage. They are not reduced only to this part of their identity and many stories feature them in out of the ‘ordinary’ settings.
Summary
So this is an anthology of stories that are focused on love and adoption. They vary in point of view from the adoptee to the parents to others in between.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this free book from the editor. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
Welcome Home features stories that blur the magical with the ordinary with the thread of adoption connecting them all. There’s mermaids, moments stuck in 1985, and superheroes. The collection features short stories of various lengths, and I do mean short. They pack a punch in few words.
There is hope and heartbreak within one story. All in all this was an emotional read for me about the difficult relationships we have with our parents, the struggle we have with ‘the search’, our mythical origin stories, and the ways we can feel alone.
Some of my favorite stories were: Up By a Million, The Inexplicable Weight of Mountains, Webbed, Twenty Seven Days, Broken Stars, The Snow Covered Sidewalk, Happy Beginning. Now what I really want is a collection of chinese american adoption stories because that will basically break my heart into a million pieces and, hopefully, put them back together again.
This anthology is a perfect beginning point for anyone who wants to learn more about adoption, but to also see some much needed representation. I’ve always been saying that I wish there was more adoption rep and this is a fantastic place to start!
You can find Welcome Home on Goodreads.
This sounds like such a good topic for an anthology. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one. I need to check it out.
Yes, it’s so heartfelt 🙂
Good to see more diversity out there. On a lighter note, my sister was utterly convinced she was adopted till she was well into her teens! She just didn’t ‘fit’, to use her expression.
Yes it was a great collection! Is she younger or older? I find a lot of siblings feel that way – mine too, except she also was adopted lol
She’s 18 months younger & just the two of us (now ‘mature’ women). We also went to school with & were friends with 3 children who were adopted so that might have sparked it off – who knows!
Ah 18 months is hard! I’m 11 months away and that’s like…too close lol