Novedades

Home. What does it mean to an adopted child? We are like water. We flow in, we flow out -- discovering where we belong in a world of absolutes. These are your parents. Your name. Your siblings. Your religion. Maybe. Maybe not. Before Raven E. Black became a reader of others (The Reluctant Tarot Reader, The Last Painting), she had to find out where she belonged in the world, despite the heartache and struggle of the search. Home reveals the answers she finds in the eternal questions: Who am I? Why am I here? This is her story as an adopted child.

Evan and Mary Ward had their hands full with four small children, trying to make ends meet, when the call from Social Services came. Unfortunate circumstances led them to take custody of a niece and two nephews, making theirs a family of nine. Evan sees an opportunity to improve their financial situation, and through a series of astute moves, perseverance, and friendly demeanor, the family prospers.

Wards of the State by journalist and author Claudia Rowe widens an eye-opening case from a true-crime lens to an exploration of the foster care-to-prison pipeline. The system is broken—hundreds of thousands of children every year leave America’s $30 billion dollar foster care system and enter its prisons, where in some cases, 75 percent of inmates are former foster kids. Through the stories of eight former foster kids, Rowe illustrates exactly where, when, and how the system is failing the children that it parents.

On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother’s home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away.