Hole in My Heart - Lorraine Dusky - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Lorraine Dusky

GENRE: Memoir

RATING: 3.75 Stars.

In a Nutshell: A bittersweet memoir recounting the author’s journey as a biological mother who surrendered her child to adoption, while also highlighting the systemic issues in how adoptions were handled in the US. Somewhat longwinded and judgemental, but on the whole, thought-provoking.

Synopsis:

Lorraine Dusky, a journalist and author, was always sure that she would be a career-oriented woman and not as focussed on marriage or children as her Polish Catholic parents wanted her to be. But when she falls in love with a colleague, she recognises that her aspirations might change. However, the man isn’t happy when she becomes pregnant, and Dusky took what she thought was the best decision at that time. This was in 1965.

Due to the practice of keeping adoption records sealed and fudging the birth certificates of adopted children by replacing the original details with records of the adoptive parents, Dusky fought for the right to be able to reconnect with her child, or at least to have a channel of communication. The fact that there was a medical reason behind her insistence further validated her demand. But with the official and public opinion skewed heavily against opening the records, Dusky was fighting an uphill battle.

The memoir covers Dusky’s efforts to open up adoption records, her quest to locate her child, and the psychological and practical repercussions on children who are adopted.

While I do read memoirs, I am very selective about the titles I pick up. I try to avoid sensitive topics because it becomes quite hard to distance oneself from extreme emotions when the events mentioned were factual than fictional. But the key thing that appealed to me in this title was the narrator. In adoption stories, the focus is always on the infant, and on the family who gets the infant, but hardly ever on the mother who brought the child into the world. I wanted to know what might have led the author towards such a painful decision, how did she feel about it in the days after, and if she would ever get the child back in her life. The memoir answered all these points, and more.

‘Hole in My Heart’ was originally published in 2015. This is the revised and expanded edition. (Much expanded - the page count is 470 pages, as against the original version that had just under 300 pages.)

Lorraine Dusky was the first woman to openly declare (in a New York Times op-ed) that she had given her newborn to be adopted. This was in the mid-1970s, so you can imagine the furore caused by such scandalous public declaration. Of course, she also received tremendous support, and through her openness, she paved the way for more such conversations to come out. (Her first memoir ‘Birthmark’, written in 1979, speaks of her obsession with finding her daughter and the legal hurdles on this journey.)

What I especially liked was that, unlike what happens in fiction, the book doesn't end with the child being found and a happily-ever-after. Instead, it continues with the new journey, highlighting the difficulties of resuming a broken relationship with no common foundation whatsoever.

Honestly, had this been a fictional work, I would have panned it saying that the book was trying too hard to pile on the misery and that the author has gone too far in incorporating twists and tragedies. But as we all know, real life can be stranger than fiction. There are so many unforeseen turns in the memoir that I felt truly sorry that the author and her natural child (and the adoptive parents) had to undergo so much.

The book backs up the factual events with plenty of data and anecdotes from adoptive children as well as biological mothers who let their kids be adopted.

That said, there are many places where I disagreed with Dusky’s opinions and her approach, especially in the second half. (To be frank, some of the choices made after the 'reunion' left me infuriated.) I also didn’t like how she became a bit too judgemental at times about the people in her life, without acknowledging her own fallacies of discernment. Of course, a memoir should always be judged by its writing quality and not by the deeds of the person who wrote it. So when I am docking off some points for this issue, it is not because of my dissatisfaction with Dusky’s actions or decisions, but because the writing seems heavily one-sided and doesn’t treat all parties fairly.

Also, the writing style ditches quotation marks randomly in conversations. I have never reconciled myself to this trend of writing spoken dialogues without the appropriate punctuation marks, and I am not a fan of this approach.

I am not much aware of current adoption policies in the US, but from what little I have read about Roe v. Wade being overturned and certain states banning abortion, I think a memoir about adoption and its practical side can be considered required reading. (But do note – the memoir doesn’t focus on abortion.)

The pace is quite slow-moving, so if you do pick this up, it should be on a day when you are ready for a ponderous and emotional true story. Recommended to those interested in thought-provoking real-life topics.

A quick shoutout to the cover designer. The design is brilliant and so apt for the title!

My thanks to editor-publisher Marylee MacDonald of Grand Canyon Press for providing me with a complimentary copy of “Hole In My Heart: A Memoir and Report from the Fault Lines of Adoption”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.