Dealing with the "otherness" of your own children: Spanish children's books about transnational adoption

Abstract

Over the last two decades, a considerable number of books featuring adoptees have been published in different Western countries. These books present characters meant to serve as models for identification for young adopted children, who are believed to be in need of stories about their origins to explain how they belong to their families and to their adoptive countries, in order to be framed in a broader social and cultural context in which their personal stories and biographies are emphasized. Children who do not look like their parents are recurrently asked to explain this difference (which in most cases of transnational adoptions is also a difference with the symbolically white context in which they grow up). It may well be the case that the numerous books having internationally-adopted children as protagonists not only cater to the needs of these children, but they also cater to those of their parents. The books may be regarded as being targeted to those White middle-class couples who feel unable to navigate the complexities of ‘race’ in society and experience the need to understand, justify, and culturally construct their adoptive bonds with their children.