34 Days Before Pub Date (revised): Oprah's Reveal, Adoption, and…Me

Jennifer Lauck's new memoir, Found (Seal Press, March 2011) is available for pre-order on Amazon. She is the New York Times Bestselling author of Blackbird, Still Waters, and Show Me the Way. Follow her musings each week as she stares down her pub date, creatively engages the community, and embarks on the quest to spread the word.

Oprah Winfrey’s mother had a child and put her up for adoption when Oprah was nine. The news is out, the show is run, and in response—adopted people, birth mothers and countless other fans toss emails around the internet and scramble to their computers to watch the show that “tells all” about this star-studded reveal.

In thirty-four days Found: The True Sequel to Blackbird will come out. Thank you to Seal Press. This book is the story of my own search and finding of my birth mother, and with the Oprah reveal of this week, Found is likely well timed. In fact, friends are writing about how lucky I am that Oprah is releasing this story at this time. It’s free publicity. Go. Go. Go.

Free publicity? Perhaps. Good timing? Yes, indeed.

As I straddle this line between a truth seeker and now, a book marketer, I find that I struggle. As an artist in a world where the buck funds my process and my creative venture, I must be tuned to want and seek a coveted slot on Oprah Winfrey’s program--and any other program that will have me. But what if this never happens? What if my work never sees the light of day and more, what if, when it does, the work I've spent so many years of my life on is not given the depth of consideration? And more, can a talk show, a review or an interview ever really bring out the essence of a book and make it shine?

These are truly haunting questions, are they not?

As a seeker of healing and of truth, I have to admit that I am very happy someone of Oprahs stature is “in” the story of adoption via first hand experience. Considering the number of people who have been adopted in this country, I am not surprised at all. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute tells us that something like 80% of the people in this country are impacted, in some way, directly or indirectly, by this phenomenon of adoption.

In researching and writing Found, I have learned first hand about this least spoken of and yet the most mind-boggling sorrow of these last one hundred years. Women, countless millions, due to economic, social and family pressures, were (and continue to be) forced to make impossible soul-shredding decisions to part with their children.

Like William Styron showed us in his stunning novel Sophie’s Choice, when that woman was forced at gun point—by a Nazi—to chose between one of her children or both would be killed, the outcome was beyond grim. Both children died and Sophie was haunted until taking her own life. Styron portrayed this global epic tragedy—where cultures force woman make these kinds of choices daily—perfectly.

Think of our poor sisters in China, Vietnam, Korea, Russia, Africa, here in the U.S., and countless other countries, imagine their children, and see how we, as a race of supposed higher beings, chose not to take action. We look the other way, we speak in generalities and platitudes and in some cases we pluck the babies from the arms of another and say “ho hum” she is too poor, too ignorant, too too too, in order to get what we want—a solution to infertility.

Let me state, emphatically, that there are children who need to be adopted and there are good, no remarkable and enlightened adoptive parents out there who place the needs (and sorrows) of their adopted children first. This is true. And there are others who don’t give a nit for the fate of the original mother who bore their child or the deep sorrows contained in the child herself. In far too many cases the original mother has been forgotten, psychically annihilated and in some cases legally obliterated. The child is assimilated, adapted and called "lucky" for her new family and worse is often denied access to ancestry.

It is time to talk, with heartfelt candor, about adoption. So bravo Oprah. Bravo. And I have to also say this is a subject that aches to be looked at, very closely, from the perspective of the adoptee--who let's face it--has the least heard voice in the many conversations being held around the nation. We are hearing from one popular commentator on the radio that his experience of adoption (as an adoptive father) is nothing but a blessing. We hear from Oprah how she is honored that her 1/2 sister had integrity enough not to sell her (O) out and of course, get a deep view in how this woman feels now that she has Oprah as a sister. And we have heard more than enough about a woman in the U.S., fed up with her adopted child, puts him on a plane back to Russia.

But where is the adoptee's voice in all of this media?

Found took eighteen years to write and I used to beat myself up over the snail like pace it seemed to take me to "figure" myself out. But in watching all this media around adoption and seeing how the adoptee experience isn't figured into the conversation in a real way, I see a different view. Perhaps it took me eighteen years of earnest effort to dig through the many layers of cultural and family denial around the issue of my adoption and the importance of my ancestory.

So all this is a long way around to the very big question. Will this book, this heartfelt, true and achingly honest book, be understood? Will Found ever make it to the talk show circuit? And, will my journey be any less valid if the answers are no?

Of course, these are the most troubling questions I ask myself in the dark of the night as I wait out these final days. I am, like all writers, all artists, caught in that place between what I've created and the delivery of the creation to the world. And so, sister-writer, here comes another question: As a writer, artist, truth teller, how much would you do to get on Oprah? And how much more valid do you believe your work would be with that kind of public recognition?

Jennifer Lauck lives in Portland, Oregon with her two kids, thirteen-year-old Spencer and eight-year-old Josephine. She mentors, teaches memoir writing and is just wrapping her MFA with Pacific Lutheran University.

Connect with Jennifer at her SW profile page, via Twitter , or Facebook.

Tags: #countdown to publication, #jennifercountdown, #marketing, #nonfiction, #publishing, Jennifer Lauck, book publishing, memoir

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Comment by Dangerous Old Woman on February 1, 2011 at 1:53pm: What would I do to get on Oprah? Nothing. In fact, even if offered the opportunity, I might turn it down. How's that for counterculture? I have outlived my time, and at 79 years of age, am likely to be accused of being old-folks reactionary. And perhaps that's true. I not only would not appear on Oprah, I will not Tweet or Facebook.

I'm not against self-promotion if it is done in a dignified and writerly manner. I believe in book tours and readings and participating in writers' conferences, where I can interact with readers as real people, as acceptable ways to get myself and my work known. Blogs are OK if their primary purpose is something other than selling myself or my books.

All this is partly because I was first coming into literary consciousness during the decades when Hemingway, Anais Nin, Jack Kerouac, Doris Lessing, Truman Capote, Henry Miller, Carson McCullers, Norman Mailer, and many others who are still read and remembered came to fame - these are just the first names that popped into my head. They succeeded mainly on the substance and quality of their work. Today we have trash making best seller lists simply because a publisher has pre-ordained it and then invested huge amounts of money to make it happen. That is, sometimes (I am NOT saying always) best seller status is simply bought.

I've wandered a bit from the point here (I'm old, you see, and we get to do that). I think it is degrading to scramble for publicity, to work three hours a day (as I have read some writers do) to hustle Twitter and Facebook users, collecting as many 'friends' as possible on social network sites such as this one only with the purpose of getting people to read your book, to waste emotion and energy hoping to be on Oprah or the Today show (PBS is another matter).

Now here's the thing: I am totally conscious of how unrealistic this attitude is in today's market. But when my autobiographical novel Sing Soft, Sing Loud came out I did a tour of radio talk shows and a couple of TV interviews and every one of them was a nightmare experience. And had hardly any effect on sales. It wasn't worth it - not the money the publisher spent and not the cost to me in time and energy and emotional stress. Things have changed since then. Radically. But self-promotion is self-promotion and to me much of it is degrading and cheapening. I won't do it. This is not a widely shared view and I know it. Please, nobody tell me how deluded I am. I already know that many people who have grown up with the Internet and email and remote 'friendships' won't see it this way at all and will think I'm a crank. So sue me.

Comment by pia savage on February 1, 2011 at 1:30pm: I forgot to add (phone call I had to take) that I think it's wonderful you're going to be on Oprah. It is part of the modern American writing dream! And I have nothing against birth mothers. It was that we were both unprepared for the reality of each other, not the fantasy

Comment by pia savage on February 1, 2011 at 1:07pm: I think my writing would have much more recognition--I'm writing a memoir on having an invisible disability and being adopted. Would it be more valid? As much as I like Oprah and I can't help it I do, I don't think she should be the final authority on what is good or what should sell. I do have some problems with her.

In the 80's Oprah had a series of programs on adoption "reunions." They were all beyond excellent. Oprah said she knew some reunions weren't but....It would have been so helpful had she just one show on "reunions" that were awkward and/or hurtful as I met my birth mother during that time.

As a writer, an adoptee and just as a person I would have to be truthful about that. I'm a licensed social worker. I know better than to expect wonder yet a part of me was hoping this would be an Oprah reunion.

My parents (adoptive) were always honest, and that helped a lot. When I didn't stay in touch with my birth mother I think my father was disappointed as he was already planning a family reunion.

Comment by joan gillman on January 28, 2011 at 2:51pm: I too am writing about the adoption experience. I became an adoptive mother or "his real mother" when a premature baby was abandoned at birth. He picked our family to be his. When he would get mad at me he would threaten to find his mother. But when he was old enough for us to help him he changed his mind. He is grown and adopting the daughter that his love interest gave birth to. He has said he understands that he does not want her to feel abandoned like he would feel even though he was in our home straight from the hospital at 5 pounds. Family is what you make it. He understands family and has taught me too.

Comment by Jodi McIsaac on January 26, 2011 at 8:22pm: Thanks, Jennifer, for remembering and honouring birth mothers, and for calling for a more in depth-discussion on the pain that is such a huge part of any adoption.

Comment by Cathy Kozak on January 26, 2011 at 12:39pm: Of course, one can't generalize: A few years ago, at a Jungian conference in Italy, at the height of Mr. Bush-bashing, I suggested - only partly in jest and in that hushed, polite voice that identifies me right away as a Canadian - that Oprah was a logical choice for the next US presidente. The Americans at the table launched into an immediate, loud-voiced debate about the pros and cons of the idea while their European counterparts, eyes glazed over, baffled or uninterested (I couldn't tell which), looked into the middle-distance, shrugged and ordered more wine. Oprah as the bar by which we measure ourselves and our success? Only in America...

Comment by Angela Christine Ragosa on January 26, 2011 at 12:17pm: enlightened, thank you Jennifer!

Comment by Pam Parker on January 26, 2011 at 11:35am: On a slightly different note, the Oprah sister reveal ruined a short story I was working on: http://pamparker.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/oprahs-sister-killed-my-s...