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Four Things That This Adoptee Wishes You Understood
A children’s collection of cliches and misperceptions I wish I’d never have to hear of again
Since we’re in a bit of a lull in terms of my own story, I’d like to take a moment to address a personal bugaboo: People writing adopted characters. Most of you are insultingly bad at it.
It’s not that it comes up all that often, mind you, but any time I do find myself eyeballing a story in which any of the characters are adopted, I can’t help but flinch. Writing such a character should not be that hard — after all, every adoption story is different, so there’s nothing you are obliged to do except, perhaps, avoiding some of the more egregious cliches.
So guess what people do? Hit every cliche on that list like they’re aiming for them. And I know why you do it — you likely believe that these things are true in real life as well. It’s not really your fault, though, as you likely picked this up from badly-written fiction, and thus the cycle continues.
My intent here is to address just a few of these cliches and contrast them with my own experiences — not so much to show that these are wrong (most cliches are on point some of the time), but to demonstrate how they are overly simplistic. And while I originally wrote this with writers…
