Reviews for Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption
“[This] book draws back the curtain . . . to reveal many themes and emotional legacies of the involuntary adoption policy . .”
– Prof. Kate Browne, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
“While this book is one of the few to address the policy specifically, Harness also makes an important contribution to the fields of Native identity. She challenges prevailing stereotypes that pathologize Native transracial adoptees, In this respect, her work echoes that of Renya Ramirez’s important ethnography on urban Native communities, that similarly challenges stereotypes of urban Natives as condemned to a one-way journey toward cultural alienation. Harness’s work is part of a growing number of Native studies’ scholars who are questioning the binary rubric of traditional versus assimilated by offering complicated portrayals of how racialization and acculturation intersect in the lives of Native peoples.”
– Prof. Andrea Smith, University of California-Riverside
“Harness, an American Indian adoptee herself, has skillfully and diligently recruited adult American Indian adoptees to share their experiences, life histories, and identity struggles in this project. On that merit alone, it is a groundbreaking work that provides space for this group to speak out about the impacts, both positive and negative, of their adoption.”
– Prof. Robert Ballard, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA
“[This book} is essential reading for anyone with a professional or general interest in transracial adoption, American Indian studies, cultural anthropology and related disciplines…”
– Prof. Indigo Williams Willing, University of Queensland, Australia
