The Violence of Love bookcover

The Violence of Love

Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States Volume 74
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Description

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents--a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures--in contrast to others that are not--and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.

Product Details

PublisherUniversity of California Press
Publish DateJanuary 28, 2025
Pages284
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9780520402485
Dimensions8.8 X 6.0 X 0.9 inches | 0.8 pounds

About the Author

Kit W. Myers is Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced.

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