By Martha Nichols for Adopt-a-tude
Try googling “Aimee Louise Sword.” The top hit is a compilation of news stories and commentaries about Sword pleading guilty this week to having sex with her 14-year-old birth son. At the moment, there are "533 related articles.
Yet one of the other top hits will be a ten-month-old story from the Huffington Post, complete with an embedded Fox News video: “Aimee Louise Sword Raped Son She Gave Up For Adoption.” A hit of the same vintage from ABC News opens this way: “A Michigan mother is facing a trial after being accused of having a summer romance with the teenage son she gave up for adoption.”
Unusual and disturbing as this story was when it broke in September 2009, there’s a big leap between rape and summer romance.
Let me be clear: Sexual abuse is never OK. Because parents have the power in a relationship, they are always at fault. Yet there are tricky angles on this story. Sword was not raising this boy in the caregiving sense. She claims to have initiated contact with him through Facebook only after she stopped hearing from his adoptive parents. What happened is repellant; it also pushes all the wrong buttons, just as so many stories about adoptions gone terribly awry do.
Last year, I wrote about the online response to Sword's arrest (click here). The story swirled through the blogosphere with a wild array of facts; some reports said her son was only 10 years old. Most said little about his adoptive parents. While the original news story from the Oakland Press in the Detroit area was a standard journalistic account, almost none of the subsequent commentaries paused to question why Sword might have done what she did.
A "MILF" in her mid-thirties, Sword has become both a pariah and an object of prurient interest. Her MySpace photos still appear all over the Internet. She's also been married and has five other children.
Advocates for birth mothers—or adoption in general—are not shaping this discussion, and that's a bad thing. Some recent media commentaries, like Tracy Clark-Flory's piece in Salon, have at least addressed the fact that reunions between birth parents and children can be fraught with all sorts of intense emotions. The UPI account includes a quote from Sword at her sentencing: "I am remorseful for everything that occurred."
But then we get all the ugliness oozing up through the cracks. A quick review of recent online headlines gives us, among others "INCEST MUM" and "Yummy Mummy Heads for Jaily Waily."
Now she's been sentenced to jail for at least nine years. More facts are on the record, although Sword herself admitted in court that she still doesn't know how it happened. It's not at all clear that she "tracked" or "stalked" her son on the Internet. The UPI story notes in passing that the prosecutor (not Sword's lawyer) said "it was the son who got in touch with her."
Last September, the site You Can't Make This Up did stick up for Sword, noting that a social worker representing her son's adoptive family “asked his permission to find her, because he was getting unmanageable at home….” In this version, he’s a “gangbanger” who may have coerced his birth mother into having sex. She supposedly complied “partly due to guilt, partly out of fear of losing contact with her son forever and last but not least, partly because she was asked by his adoptive parents…[to help].”
Again, we don't know. Some of this doesn't square with reports from her sentencing this week. Although this unfictional.com story is one of the top hits for Aimee Louise Sword, its sources aren't clear.
So we are left with all the scary stereotypes about what happens to adoptees: the son is either a victim raped by a depraved, sexually loose birth mother or an irredeemable gangbanger. There's way too much heat and no light.
We humans will always be compelled by this kind of sensationalism. But the first kneejerk responses linger online in a way they didn't used to. They continue to float before readers' eyes, courtesy of Google, all those 530-plus headlines that trumpet some variation of "guilt" and "sex" and "mom."
I hate it all—what Aimee Sword did and the feeding frenzy that's followed.
This piece also appears in Martha's blog on Open Salon.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Podcast on "What's My Heritage?" and Other Adoption Topics
By Martha Nichols for Adopt-a-tude
Today I was interviewed by Mary Beth Wells on "Adoption—Journey to Motherhood." We talked about Artyom, the adoptee who was sent back to Russia this past spring—what Mary Beth termed the issue of "good child-bad child"—and also the push-and-pull of culture-keeping with international adoptees, based on "What's My Heritage?", my article in Brain, Child magazine last year.
It was a wide-ranging conversation. To listen in, click here (it's the July 12, 2010 show). You can also download it for free.
And for those who can't get enough of The Last Airbender, click here for my review. I finally watched the thing with my son and assorted children and adults last Friday. Lord have mercy. A preview:
Today I was interviewed by Mary Beth Wells on "Adoption—Journey to Motherhood." We talked about Artyom, the adoptee who was sent back to Russia this past spring—what Mary Beth termed the issue of "good child-bad child"—and also the push-and-pull of culture-keeping with international adoptees, based on "What's My Heritage?", my article in Brain, Child magazine last year.
It was a wide-ranging conversation. To listen in, click here (it's the July 12, 2010 show). You can also download it for free.
And for those who can't get enough of The Last Airbender, click here for my review. I finally watched the thing with my son and assorted children and adults last Friday. Lord have mercy. A preview:
"I left the theater feeling jangled, as if somebody had spit up on me. As one of my fellow adult sufferers, a scriptwriter, described the waterbending special effects: 'Yuk. Death by spit and icicles...'"
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
"The Last Airbender": Do We Take Our Kids?
By Martha Nichols for Adopt-a-tude
As I watched the trailer last weekend for The Last Airbender with three eight-year-olds, two of whom were Asian adoptees, I knew I was doomed. Even as they hissed at each other that Aang's tattoo was wrong—where's the blue arrow??—they were hooked by the special effects, just as they were meant to be.
M. Night Shyamalan's summer action extravaganza is set to open July 1, gunning for a big holiday weekend. The first review I read this morning was in the Boston Globe, and others are popping up online as I type. What's the initial verdict? Ty Burr of the Globe writes:
Today Roger Ebert tweeted a link to what he calls "The best writing I've seen on the racist casting of 'The Last Airbender.' Devastating." It's by Vietnamese blogger Q. Le at Floating World.
We should feel vindicated.
Well, of course I do. It seems that Shyamalan's auteurish blindness about casting white actors in Asian roles represents benighted moviemaking throughout. Burr says of Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone, who play the brother-sister heroes Katara and Sokka, that their "crime, again, isn't that they are Anglo but just painfully dull."
Here's the thing: My son—an adoptee born in Vietnam—broke into tears two weeks ago when he thought I was going to forbid him to see the movie. He knows I've been railing in print against the racism implicit in the casting, so he assumed he'd be sitting at home while his friends all streamed to the theater and Airbender parties.
This is one of those unlovely damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't, white-adoptive-parents-trying-to-be PC quandaries.
I assured him he could see it if he wanted to; that anything else would be unfair. I have strong opinions about it, I told him earnestly, but they don't have to be your opinions. It's OK, it's OK, it's OK.
No, it's not.
In fact, I wonder what his opinion will be. We'll do our best to boycott the film this opening weekend—Racebending.com activists and others are calling for a boycott of at least the first two weeks in order to put a dent in Airbender's take—but I doubt we'll make it past July 4, considering that he wants to go with friends.
Or as my husband wryly put it this morning, "If it's a real dog, we better not wait more than one weekend."
Here's the other thing, though: It won't just be a matter of suffering through a reeking mess for two hours. The main media spin will be the trials of M. Night Shyamalan—so gifted! so much potential!—what curse is the great director suffering under?
Burr's review begins like so: "The Last Airbender has had more bad karma than almost any movie deserves." He details its "litany of disasters," from the cartoon's main title (Avatar) being ripped off by James Cameron to pissed-off fans to the last-minute 3-D forced on the film to the director's string of flops. Burr notes that it would have been great if Shyamalan had overcome the odds, perhaps like young Aang himself, to produce a winner.
Scott Mendelson writes in his Huffington Post review, "As a film from the man who once wrote and directed such films as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, it is a heartbreaking tragedy, a 'sign' that perhaps the once-great M. Night Shyamalan is truly 'broken'."
So Shyamalan the Fallen looks like the main review focus, rather than the persistent whitewashing of Hollywood films. I confess to my own secret hope that The Last Airbender would be good, even awe-inspiring. At least then my Asian son and I—not to mention other parents and fans of all races and creeds, adoptive or bio—could have had a real discussion about whether casting decisions should reflect the racial and cultural referents of source material.
If Peltz, for example, had turned out to be a great Katara, then I'd be willing to eat a few words. But given that it sounds like "great" doesn't describe anything here—as Christopher Kelly ends his review in the Miami Herald, "It's a little early to be saying this, but I'd wager good money that you won't see a worse movie this year"—I'm left with the utter cluelessness and cynicism of Hollywood. Of the lousy 3-D, Burr of the Globe writes, "I've got winking-Jesus postcards that look better."
Which means The Last Airbender deserves every bit of its rotten karma. I'd lead with "One bad decision begets another...and another...and another."
Like Fire Lord Ozai and his evil daughter Azula, give me some real opposition, please. Otherwise, where's the fun?
The best outcome may be that a few of the money-people behind movies wake up. When I watched the trailer with my son and his friends last weekend, we were in a theater to see the re-make of The Karate Kid—a movie with people of color in all the main roles.
My advice? Despite the postcard-romantic scenes of China in the new Kid, it had a lot to offer my kid. If you can avoid the Airbender juggernaut, don't let it give Jackie Chan a run for your money.
This is a revision of a post that also appears on Open Salon.
As I watched the trailer last weekend for The Last Airbender with three eight-year-olds, two of whom were Asian adoptees, I knew I was doomed. Even as they hissed at each other that Aang's tattoo was wrong—where's the blue arrow??—they were hooked by the special effects, just as they were meant to be.
M. Night Shyamalan's summer action extravaganza is set to open July 1, gunning for a big holiday weekend. The first review I read this morning was in the Boston Globe, and others are popping up online as I type. What's the initial verdict? Ty Burr of the Globe writes:
"The Last Airbender is dreadful, an incomprehensible fantasy-action epic.... The film probably should have stayed a cartoon; live-action kills it dead."I should be doing a gleeful air-dance like twelve-year-old Aang, the movie's namesake and Dalai-lama stand-in. In Salon and elsewhere, I've been writing for months about the casting controversy—three of the four main characters from the anime-inspired Nickelodeon cartoon series are played by white actors in Shyamalan's movie—as have many Asian-American activists, including cartoonists like Gene Yang.
Today Roger Ebert tweeted a link to what he calls "The best writing I've seen on the racist casting of 'The Last Airbender.' Devastating." It's by Vietnamese blogger Q. Le at Floating World.
We should feel vindicated.
Well, of course I do. It seems that Shyamalan's auteurish blindness about casting white actors in Asian roles represents benighted moviemaking throughout. Burr says of Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone, who play the brother-sister heroes Katara and Sokka, that their "crime, again, isn't that they are Anglo but just painfully dull."
Here's the thing: My son—an adoptee born in Vietnam—broke into tears two weeks ago when he thought I was going to forbid him to see the movie. He knows I've been railing in print against the racism implicit in the casting, so he assumed he'd be sitting at home while his friends all streamed to the theater and Airbender parties.
This is one of those unlovely damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't, white-adoptive-parents-trying-to-be PC quandaries.
I assured him he could see it if he wanted to; that anything else would be unfair. I have strong opinions about it, I told him earnestly, but they don't have to be your opinions. It's OK, it's OK, it's OK.
No, it's not.
In fact, I wonder what his opinion will be. We'll do our best to boycott the film this opening weekend—Racebending.com activists and others are calling for a boycott of at least the first two weeks in order to put a dent in Airbender's take—but I doubt we'll make it past July 4, considering that he wants to go with friends.
Or as my husband wryly put it this morning, "If it's a real dog, we better not wait more than one weekend."
Here's the other thing, though: It won't just be a matter of suffering through a reeking mess for two hours. The main media spin will be the trials of M. Night Shyamalan—so gifted! so much potential!—what curse is the great director suffering under?
Burr's review begins like so: "The Last Airbender has had more bad karma than almost any movie deserves." He details its "litany of disasters," from the cartoon's main title (Avatar) being ripped off by James Cameron to pissed-off fans to the last-minute 3-D forced on the film to the director's string of flops. Burr notes that it would have been great if Shyamalan had overcome the odds, perhaps like young Aang himself, to produce a winner.
Scott Mendelson writes in his Huffington Post review, "As a film from the man who once wrote and directed such films as The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, it is a heartbreaking tragedy, a 'sign' that perhaps the once-great M. Night Shyamalan is truly 'broken'."
So Shyamalan the Fallen looks like the main review focus, rather than the persistent whitewashing of Hollywood films. I confess to my own secret hope that The Last Airbender would be good, even awe-inspiring. At least then my Asian son and I—not to mention other parents and fans of all races and creeds, adoptive or bio—could have had a real discussion about whether casting decisions should reflect the racial and cultural referents of source material.
If Peltz, for example, had turned out to be a great Katara, then I'd be willing to eat a few words. But given that it sounds like "great" doesn't describe anything here—as Christopher Kelly ends his review in the Miami Herald, "It's a little early to be saying this, but I'd wager good money that you won't see a worse movie this year"—I'm left with the utter cluelessness and cynicism of Hollywood. Of the lousy 3-D, Burr of the Globe writes, "I've got winking-Jesus postcards that look better."
Which means The Last Airbender deserves every bit of its rotten karma. I'd lead with "One bad decision begets another...and another...and another."
Like Fire Lord Ozai and his evil daughter Azula, give me some real opposition, please. Otherwise, where's the fun?
The best outcome may be that a few of the money-people behind movies wake up. When I watched the trailer with my son and his friends last weekend, we were in a theater to see the re-make of The Karate Kid—a movie with people of color in all the main roles.
My advice? Despite the postcard-romantic scenes of China in the new Kid, it had a lot to offer my kid. If you can avoid the Airbender juggernaut, don't let it give Jackie Chan a run for your money.
This is a revision of a post that also appears on Open Salon.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Adoption Secrets
By Martha Nichols for Adopt-a-tude
Since the late 1990s, most parents in the English-speaking world (and by now, far beyond) have met Harry Potter.
At least ten years ago, before my adopted son entered our lives, I read the first book in the series—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone—just to see what all the fuss was about. I enjoyed it. But I decided to wait to read the rest of the books until my own child came along and was of an age when we could go through them together.
Now my eight-year-old son is ready to jump in, and we've begun the great Harry Potter reading marathon. But revisiting the first book has confronted me with a familiar challenge: How much should I protect my son from negative images of adoption and orphans—and how much, in general, should I censor his access to popular culture?
Harry is not strictly an adoptee; he's the poor orphan, fostered and mistreated by his remaining biological ( or "Muggle") relations. But there's much in his story that real-world adoptees will recognize.
Early on in The Sorcerer's Stone, for example, his aunt lies to him, saying his parents died in a "car crash." Harry learns "the first rule for a quiet life": "Don't ask questions."
My son is still young for reading these books. More to the point, he doesn't want to read them by himself. If he had his druthers, he'd just watch the movies. But I want to slow this process down. I figure that if we read through the books before he sees each movie, then he'll be older as the series proceeds and becomes more disturbing.
He's predictably hooked on The Sorcerer's Stone. We're halfway through after a few days. But the first night, he also had nightmares.
It's not that I was clueless about the orphan theme when I originally read this book. Yet now I'm seeing it through my son's eyes—and author J.K. Rowling's handling of this standard plot device seems deeply satirical—and wonderfully unvarnished—and also unexamined.
Whether that lack of examination is a problem is the question. Ultimately, I don't think so, but I've been doing some pondering as we race through the chapters, and Harry is confronted with one secret after another about who he really is.
This past weekend, I had a bit of an "ah-ha" moment when I attended an academic conference at MIT put on by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture. The topic was "Adoption: Secret Histories, Public Policies." An array of historians, social scientists, memoir and fiction writers, and documentary filmmakers were on hand. (Click here for the program and participants. It was a terrific conference.)
Of many fascinating sessions I went to, "Adoption in Film," with panelists Kim Park Nelson (a multicultural studies scholar) and Joyce Maguire Pavao (a well-known clinician), had me leaping back to Harry. The Harry Potter movies figured in neither of the panelist's presentations, yet his orphan status is connected to their discussions.
Kim Park Nelson's topic was "The Horror of Adoption," in which she detailed pernicious images in some recent horror films that involve an adoption premise. She didn't focus on more well-known fiascoes like last year's Orphan, which generated a letter-writing protest campaign, but on genre movies like The Ring and Silent Hill.
In her analysis of these films, adoptees are either bad seeds or shattered beings trapped between their good and evil selves. Birthparents are evil incarnate or victims of fate. Indeed, almost anyone connected to the triad seems to be a victim of fate, driven to discover the horrible secret of a child's identity. Adoptive parents are victims, too, walking into danger to save their kids.
Compare this with Harry Potter, who begins not knowing he's a wizard and certainly has to grapple with his fate but is allowed an active part in the process. For example, when students first arrive at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they're "sorted" into houses (dormitories) in front of everyone. They put a sorting hat on their heads. Here's an except from The Sorcerer's Stone:
But I think orphans also serve a basic story function. From the Boxcar Children to Harry Potter, kids without parents are the protagonists. A few reassuring adults may pop in, but the kids get to have adventures. Harry does come to terms with his birthright as a wizard, but his actions very much determine the story. He is not acted on in the same way as the helpless bad seeds of those horror movies.
It's a compelling image: a lonely orphan, who feels different from all the Muggles around him, learning he has power within. Harry Potter confronts many barriers in discovering his birth history—just as adoptees do—but he always feels he has a right to do so.
At past non-academic adoption conferences, I've gone to sessions in which speakers talk about which books are "good" or "bad" for young adoptees. I've bristled at the censorship implied.
While I may cringe at the image of Harry stuck in a cupboard in his aunt and uncle's house, and while my son may ask how they could treat him that way, I think talking about our responses can be more illuminating than any spoon-fed message.
I suggest another test: Are the main characters of a story or movie in charge of their own fates? Are they determined to learn the truth?
If yes, then let the Muggles parade and stinking potions brew, the secrets revealed may well be magic.
Since the late 1990s, most parents in the English-speaking world (and by now, far beyond) have met Harry Potter.
At least ten years ago, before my adopted son entered our lives, I read the first book in the series—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone—just to see what all the fuss was about. I enjoyed it. But I decided to wait to read the rest of the books until my own child came along and was of an age when we could go through them together.
Now my eight-year-old son is ready to jump in, and we've begun the great Harry Potter reading marathon. But revisiting the first book has confronted me with a familiar challenge: How much should I protect my son from negative images of adoption and orphans—and how much, in general, should I censor his access to popular culture?
Harry is not strictly an adoptee; he's the poor orphan, fostered and mistreated by his remaining biological ( or "Muggle") relations. But there's much in his story that real-world adoptees will recognize.
Early on in The Sorcerer's Stone, for example, his aunt lies to him, saying his parents died in a "car crash." Harry learns "the first rule for a quiet life": "Don't ask questions."
My son is still young for reading these books. More to the point, he doesn't want to read them by himself. If he had his druthers, he'd just watch the movies. But I want to slow this process down. I figure that if we read through the books before he sees each movie, then he'll be older as the series proceeds and becomes more disturbing.
He's predictably hooked on The Sorcerer's Stone. We're halfway through after a few days. But the first night, he also had nightmares.
It's not that I was clueless about the orphan theme when I originally read this book. Yet now I'm seeing it through my son's eyes—and author J.K. Rowling's handling of this standard plot device seems deeply satirical—and wonderfully unvarnished—and also unexamined.
Whether that lack of examination is a problem is the question. Ultimately, I don't think so, but I've been doing some pondering as we race through the chapters, and Harry is confronted with one secret after another about who he really is.
This past weekend, I had a bit of an "ah-ha" moment when I attended an academic conference at MIT put on by the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture. The topic was "Adoption: Secret Histories, Public Policies." An array of historians, social scientists, memoir and fiction writers, and documentary filmmakers were on hand. (Click here for the program and participants. It was a terrific conference.)
Of many fascinating sessions I went to, "Adoption in Film," with panelists Kim Park Nelson (a multicultural studies scholar) and Joyce Maguire Pavao (a well-known clinician), had me leaping back to Harry. The Harry Potter movies figured in neither of the panelist's presentations, yet his orphan status is connected to their discussions.
Kim Park Nelson's topic was "The Horror of Adoption," in which she detailed pernicious images in some recent horror films that involve an adoption premise. She didn't focus on more well-known fiascoes like last year's Orphan, which generated a letter-writing protest campaign, but on genre movies like The Ring and Silent Hill.
In her analysis of these films, adoptees are either bad seeds or shattered beings trapped between their good and evil selves. Birthparents are evil incarnate or victims of fate. Indeed, almost anyone connected to the triad seems to be a victim of fate, driven to discover the horrible secret of a child's identity. Adoptive parents are victims, too, walking into danger to save their kids.
Compare this with Harry Potter, who begins not knowing he's a wizard and certainly has to grapple with his fate but is allowed an active part in the process. For example, when students first arrive at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they're "sorted" into houses (dormitories) in front of everyone. They put a sorting hat on their heads. Here's an except from The Sorcerer's Stone:
"The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.Rather than horror films, Pavao focused on a list of her ten favorite movies in which adoption is part of the storyline.* She noted that orphans appear in many children's stories and movies because the experience of family loss can feel so universal. Readers and viewers identify with such loneliness.
"'Hmm,' said a small voice inside his ear. 'Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There's talent, oh my goodness, yes—and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting.... So where shall I put you?'
"Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.
"'Not Slytherin, eh?' said the small voice. 'Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it's all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that—no? Well, if you're sure—better be GRYFFINDOR!'"
But I think orphans also serve a basic story function. From the Boxcar Children to Harry Potter, kids without parents are the protagonists. A few reassuring adults may pop in, but the kids get to have adventures. Harry does come to terms with his birthright as a wizard, but his actions very much determine the story. He is not acted on in the same way as the helpless bad seeds of those horror movies.
It's a compelling image: a lonely orphan, who feels different from all the Muggles around him, learning he has power within. Harry Potter confronts many barriers in discovering his birth history—just as adoptees do—but he always feels he has a right to do so.
At past non-academic adoption conferences, I've gone to sessions in which speakers talk about which books are "good" or "bad" for young adoptees. I've bristled at the censorship implied.
While I may cringe at the image of Harry stuck in a cupboard in his aunt and uncle's house, and while my son may ask how they could treat him that way, I think talking about our responses can be more illuminating than any spoon-fed message.
I suggest another test: Are the main characters of a story or movie in charge of their own fates? Are they determined to learn the truth?
If yes, then let the Muggles parade and stinking potions brew, the secrets revealed may well be magic.
*A Few of Joyce Maguire Pavao's Top Adoption Movies
- "The Miracle"
- "High Tide"
- "The Official Story"
- "Coco"
- "Second Best"
- "Catfish and Blackbean Sauce"
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