What do you think?
Rate this book
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee.
Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian.
At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.
The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.
Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian.
At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.
The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 10, 2023
About the author
Shannon Gibney
21 books109 followersShannon Gibney was born in 1975, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was adopted by Jim and Sue Gibney about five months later, and grew up with her two (biological) brothers, Jon and Ben.
Shannon has loved to read and to write as far back as she can remember. When she was in second grade, she started making “books” about her family’s camping trips, and later graduated to a series on three sibling detectives in fourth grade.When she was 15, her father gave her James Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, a book that changed her life and made her see the possibilities of the written word. The novel took a long, difficult look at relations between Blacks and Whites, the poor and the rich, gay and straight people, and fused searing honesty with metaphorical beauty. After this experience, Shannon knew that she needed to read everything Baldwin had ever written, and also that she wanted to emulate his strategy of telling the most dangerous, and therefore liberating kind of truth, through writing.
High school was a time for tremendous growth for Shannon, as she had the opportunity to attend Community High, a place that nurtured independence and creativity. At Carnegie Mellon University, Shannon majored in Creative Writing and Spanish, graduating with highest honors in 1997. She was awarded their Alumni Study/Travel Award, and used it to travel to Ghana to collect information for a short story collection on relationships between African Americans and continental Africans.
At Indiana University’s Graduate Creative Writing Program, Shannon honed her understanding of the basic elements of story-writing. She was in Bloomington from 1999 to 2002, and earned an M.A. in 20th Century African American Literature, as well as her M.F.A. while she was there. As Indiana Review editor, she conceived of the literary journal’s first “Writers of Color” special issue, and brought it to fruition, also in 2002.
Shannon has called Minneapolis home since 2002. She moved there right after completing her graduate work at Indiana, and took a job at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the state’s oldest Black newspaper. A three-year stint as managing editor of this 75-year-old publication introduced Shannon to the vibrant, growing, and diverse Black community in the Twin Cities, and also gave her vital insight into the inner-workings of a weekly newspaper. When she left in 2005, Shannon had written well over 100 news and features stories for the paper.
The Bush Artist Fellows Program took Shannon’s daily life in a new direction. In 2005, she was awarded a grant, which allowed her to quit her job at the Spokesman, and devote most of her time to her creative work.
After completing her Bush fellowhip in summer 2007, Shannon joined the faculty in English at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) in the fall, and became Full-Time Unlimited (FTU) faculty there in 2009. She lives with her son Boisey, and daughter Marwein, in the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis.
Shannon’s Young Adult (YA) novel SEE NO COLOR was published by Carolrhoda Lab, a division of Lerner Publications, in November, 2015, and subsequently won a 2016 Minnesota Book Award in the category of Literature for Young Adults. She was also awarded a $25,000 2015 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers, administered by the Loft Literary Center. She used the funds to support work on a family memoir, tentatively titled Love Across the Middle Passage: Making an African/African American Family.
Other publications this year include a short story in the Sky Blue Water anthology of children’s literature from Minnesota writers, the opening essay in the critically-acclaimed and popular A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota anthology, edited by Sun Yung Shin. The Star Tribune published an excerpt of Shannon’s essay “Fear of a Black Mother,” which you can read here.
In 2017, look for Shannon’s short story “Salvation,” in Eric Smith’s new anthology of adoption-
Shannon has loved to read and to write as far back as she can remember. When she was in second grade, she started making “books” about her family’s camping trips, and later graduated to a series on three sibling detectives in fourth grade.When she was 15, her father gave her James Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, a book that changed her life and made her see the possibilities of the written word. The novel took a long, difficult look at relations between Blacks and Whites, the poor and the rich, gay and straight people, and fused searing honesty with metaphorical beauty. After this experience, Shannon knew that she needed to read everything Baldwin had ever written, and also that she wanted to emulate his strategy of telling the most dangerous, and therefore liberating kind of truth, through writing.
High school was a time for tremendous growth for Shannon, as she had the opportunity to attend Community High, a place that nurtured independence and creativity. At Carnegie Mellon University, Shannon majored in Creative Writing and Spanish, graduating with highest honors in 1997. She was awarded their Alumni Study/Travel Award, and used it to travel to Ghana to collect information for a short story collection on relationships between African Americans and continental Africans.
At Indiana University’s Graduate Creative Writing Program, Shannon honed her understanding of the basic elements of story-writing. She was in Bloomington from 1999 to 2002, and earned an M.A. in 20th Century African American Literature, as well as her M.F.A. while she was there. As Indiana Review editor, she conceived of the literary journal’s first “Writers of Color” special issue, and brought it to fruition, also in 2002.
Shannon has called Minneapolis home since 2002. She moved there right after completing her graduate work at Indiana, and took a job at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the state’s oldest Black newspaper. A three-year stint as managing editor of this 75-year-old publication introduced Shannon to the vibrant, growing, and diverse Black community in the Twin Cities, and also gave her vital insight into the inner-workings of a weekly newspaper. When she left in 2005, Shannon had written well over 100 news and features stories for the paper.
The Bush Artist Fellows Program took Shannon’s daily life in a new direction. In 2005, she was awarded a grant, which allowed her to quit her job at the Spokesman, and devote most of her time to her creative work.
After completing her Bush fellowhip in summer 2007, Shannon joined the faculty in English at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC) in the fall, and became Full-Time Unlimited (FTU) faculty there in 2009. She lives with her son Boisey, and daughter Marwein, in the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis.
Shannon’s Young Adult (YA) novel SEE NO COLOR was published by Carolrhoda Lab, a division of Lerner Publications, in November, 2015, and subsequently won a 2016 Minnesota Book Award in the category of Literature for Young Adults. She was also awarded a $25,000 2015 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Writers, administered by the Loft Literary Center. She used the funds to support work on a family memoir, tentatively titled Love Across the Middle Passage: Making an African/African American Family.
Other publications this year include a short story in the Sky Blue Water anthology of children’s literature from Minnesota writers, the opening essay in the critically-acclaimed and popular A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota anthology, edited by Sun Yung Shin. The Star Tribune published an excerpt of Shannon’s essay “Fear of a Black Mother,” which you can read here.
In 2017, look for Shannon’s short story “Salvation,” in Eric Smith’s new anthology of adoption-
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
January 8, 2023
I have never read a book quite like The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be by Shannon Gibney (released Jan 10th). This "speculative memoir of transracial adoption" covers so much ground, content-wise and literature-wise, from memoir to fantasy to found documents to critical commentary and research. It's brilliant, emotional, accessible (if complex), and thoroughly entertaining. Gibney's previously two novels are wonderful; this book is mind-blowing. An early candidate for best book of the year!
January 12, 2023
This isn’t a book you just blow through (like what you might do with a light romcom). It’s a lot to process and think about. I had to reread parts to remind myself of timelines and people.
March 31, 2024
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be is two or more intertwined stories: Shannon Gibney's story of growing up as a biracial adoptee, adopted by a white family, and her speculations about who she might have been if she had grown up as Erin Powers, raised by her white, neurotic, lesbian birthmother. Erin's speculations feel, here, as real as Shannon's story.
In Shannon and Erin's shared search for a more complete picture of their origins and who they are, their stories are occasionally connected by a mysterious portal. The portal feels like an awkward narrative device to me, even though I like some kinds of science fiction. Perhaps I don't like my "peas" (memoir) and "carrots" (sci fi) to touch on my plate.
Gibney documents her/their story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters and cards from her birthmother, family photographs, interviews, medical records from her cancer diagnosis, and brief essays on the absurdities of the adoptee experience – and supplements this with still other stories of "the girl who is not me, who might have been me, who is me" (p. 135).
The end result is fascinating, something that those of us who are white parents of biracial adoptees or friends of transracial adoptees should consider reading, contemplating, and discussing. Certainly, two pieces that come up repeatedly, especially but not only in her birthfamily, are the random and uninformed racism and other microaggressions that she experienced, and the patriarchal and colonial attitudes that society has about white adoptive parents and their brown, black, or yellow adoptive children.
In sum, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be was occasionally frustrating, but it was also eye-opening, a worldview rarely discussed outside of the therapy room.
In Shannon and Erin's shared search for a more complete picture of their origins and who they are, their stories are occasionally connected by a mysterious portal. The portal feels like an awkward narrative device to me, even though I like some kinds of science fiction. Perhaps I don't like my "peas" (memoir) and "carrots" (sci fi) to touch on my plate.
Gibney documents her/their story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters and cards from her birthmother, family photographs, interviews, medical records from her cancer diagnosis, and brief essays on the absurdities of the adoptee experience – and supplements this with still other stories of "the girl who is not me, who might have been me, who is me" (p. 135).
The end result is fascinating, something that those of us who are white parents of biracial adoptees or friends of transracial adoptees should consider reading, contemplating, and discussing. Certainly, two pieces that come up repeatedly, especially but not only in her birthfamily, are the random and uninformed racism and other microaggressions that she experienced, and the patriarchal and colonial attitudes that society has about white adoptive parents and their brown, black, or yellow adoptive children.
In sum, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be was occasionally frustrating, but it was also eye-opening, a worldview rarely discussed outside of the therapy room.
March 13, 2023
I struggled with this one…the changes in perspective/focus weren’t clear for me with the audiobook & I did not appreciate the speculative aspects of it. I wanted more of a straightforward, raw portrayal. It never truly gripped me emotionally.
February 18, 2023
English below.
Батьки авторки/героїні цієї книжки - мама ірландського походження і чорношкірий тато. Але вона про них дізналась уже в дорослому віці, оскільки після народження її вдочерила інша біла родина. Шеннон Гібні уже писала про свій досвід як transracial adoptee в іншій книжці, художній на автобіографічній основі, а тут елементи автобіографічності і вигадки поєднуються у менш конвенційний спосіб. Деякі частини - це спогади ліричної героїні про її дорослішання і пошук контактів з біологічними родичами, прямо-таки підкріплений сканами документів, записок, медичних довідок... а частина - це "спекулятивний мемуар" про те, як би життя ліричної героїні виглядало, якби її біологічна мати її не віддала. Переключення між цими пластами створює цікавий ефект і ставить більш питань (про ідентичність, самість, зумовленість контекстом, у якому зростаємо, тощо), ніж дає відповідей, словом, те, що література-література і має по-хорошому робити. Я останнім часом здебільшого читаю формульні історії, тому ця книжка була несподівано цікава своєю експериментальною формою і відсутністю наперед відомої жанрової арки, яка може відповідати очікуванням або їх руйнувати, але має бути (у формульних жанрах).
--
So, I grabbed this book from the new arrivals shelf in the YA section of my library... Which I think is a great miscategorization. The only thing that would suggest YA is that some of the chapters depict the protagonist as a child/teenager. Otherwise, it touches on quite "adult" topics such as surviving breast cancer. YA is also most often genre fiction, while this book is definitely not genre fiction, but "real, real" literature, being very experimental in form. And trust me on this, I wrote a whole dissertation on YA and genre fiction, and this distinction is not a proxy for "good vs. junk" when I say it. Just what expectations are aroused in a reader and whether they are fulfilled.
The form is super experimental: "A speculative memoir." The author was given up for adoption as a newborn and grew up in a middle-class white family. Shannon Gibney's story is intertwined with the story of Erin Powers - herself that would have been, had her birth mother kept the child. It is partly a documentary - the story of Shannon discovering her biological relatives as an adult supported by letters and bureaucratic paraphernalia of conducting the search - and partly highly speculative. That raises many questions about personal identity and character and the measure to which the context of our growing up defines our personality and values.
The title makes emphasis that this was a transracial adoption, which, of course, was a factor in her impossibility to blend in fully with the adopted family. But, interestingly, had she remained with her birth mother, she would still be the only black person in a white family (but in one with more racial prejudice), and she would still be looking to find missing pieces of information about her relatives (on her father's side).
Батьки авторки/героїні цієї книжки - мама ірландського походження і чорношкірий тато. Але вона про них дізналась уже в дорослому віці, оскільки після народження її вдочерила інша біла родина. Шеннон Гібні уже писала про свій досвід як transracial adoptee в іншій книжці, художній на автобіографічній основі, а тут елементи автобіографічності і вигадки поєднуються у менш конвенційний спосіб. Деякі частини - це спогади ліричної героїні про її дорослішання і пошук контактів з біологічними родичами, прямо-таки підкріплений сканами документів, записок, медичних довідок... а частина - це "спекулятивний мемуар" про те, як би життя ліричної героїні виглядало, якби її біологічна мати її не віддала. Переключення між цими пластами створює цікавий ефект і ставить більш питань (про ідентичність, самість, зумовленість контекстом, у якому зростаємо, тощо), ніж дає відповідей, словом, те, що література-література і має по-хорошому робити. Я останнім часом здебільшого читаю формульні історії, тому ця книжка була несподівано цікава своєю експериментальною формою і відсутністю наперед відомої жанрової арки, яка може відповідати очікуванням або їх руйнувати, але має бути (у формульних жанрах).
--
So, I grabbed this book from the new arrivals shelf in the YA section of my library... Which I think is a great miscategorization. The only thing that would suggest YA is that some of the chapters depict the protagonist as a child/teenager. Otherwise, it touches on quite "adult" topics such as surviving breast cancer. YA is also most often genre fiction, while this book is definitely not genre fiction, but "real, real" literature, being very experimental in form. And trust me on this, I wrote a whole dissertation on YA and genre fiction, and this distinction is not a proxy for "good vs. junk" when I say it. Just what expectations are aroused in a reader and whether they are fulfilled.
The form is super experimental: "A speculative memoir." The author was given up for adoption as a newborn and grew up in a middle-class white family. Shannon Gibney's story is intertwined with the story of Erin Powers - herself that would have been, had her birth mother kept the child. It is partly a documentary - the story of Shannon discovering her biological relatives as an adult supported by letters and bureaucratic paraphernalia of conducting the search - and partly highly speculative. That raises many questions about personal identity and character and the measure to which the context of our growing up defines our personality and values.
The title makes emphasis that this was a transracial adoption, which, of course, was a factor in her impossibility to blend in fully with the adopted family. But, interestingly, had she remained with her birth mother, she would still be the only black person in a white family (but in one with more racial prejudice), and she would still be looking to find missing pieces of information about her relatives (on her father's side).
August 22, 2023
4.5 // what a unique and interesting format! I really enjoyed the speculative/fantasy aspects of this memoir—I believe the expansiveness of this format gave Shannon the opportunity to further explain the desires & struggles of connecting with your birth parents as an adoptee (to those who haven’t gone through and don’t understand that experience)
February 3, 2024
Speculative memoir. What a beautiful, thought-provoking, amazing book.
It made me think long and hard about choices I have made and what could have been, but also seeing insight into a perspective on adoption I would have never looked at before.
Severely under-reviewed, this book needs more love because it’s brilliant.
It made me think long and hard about choices I have made and what could have been, but also seeing insight into a perspective on adoption I would have never looked at before.
Severely under-reviewed, this book needs more love because it’s brilliant.
February 26, 2024
I was like "what is a speculative memoir?" and now I understand--it's both a memoir of her actual life as an adoptee and a fictional account of what she imagines her life might have been with her birth mother, plus some extra narrative twists. Wow. This is the kind of mind-widening book that will stay with me for a long time.
July 17, 2023
An excellent memoir about Shannon Gibney’s experience, both real and imagined, as a transracial adoptee. The use of real letters and documents from her life explains how the what was and what-ifs define and shape our lives, especially for those who were adopted
Read
January 11, 2023One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was because I want to read more about adoptees’ experiences. This book did not disappoint in the slightest.
This book takes a unique spin on sharing the author’s experience as an adoptee—she shares real-life examples while also sharing an alternate timeline that could’ve happened. At first, it totally tripped me up. I kept switching between which one was “real.” However, in a sense, they *could* both be very real. Who is to say that it isn’t?
Because of this, you have to pay attention to details or you will get lost. Just trust me. This isn’t a book you just blow through (like what you might do with a light romcom). It’s a lot to process and think about. I had to reread parts to remind myself of timelines and people.
This book 100% has inspired me to read more books about adoption.
What’s unique about this book is the artistic nature of the speculative fiction part and how it really expresses the complexity of the adoptee’s experience. I have to say that I’ve never read a book quite like this.
I think it will resonate with a lot of people who were adopted.
Thank you PenguinTeen and NetGalley for this eARC!
This book takes a unique spin on sharing the author’s experience as an adoptee—she shares real-life examples while also sharing an alternate timeline that could’ve happened. At first, it totally tripped me up. I kept switching between which one was “real.” However, in a sense, they *could* both be very real. Who is to say that it isn’t?
Because of this, you have to pay attention to details or you will get lost. Just trust me. This isn’t a book you just blow through (like what you might do with a light romcom). It’s a lot to process and think about. I had to reread parts to remind myself of timelines and people.
This book 100% has inspired me to read more books about adoption.
What’s unique about this book is the artistic nature of the speculative fiction part and how it really expresses the complexity of the adoptee’s experience. I have to say that I’ve never read a book quite like this.
I think it will resonate with a lot of people who were adopted.
Thank you PenguinTeen and NetGalley for this eARC!
January 24, 2024
Wonderfully done. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t unintentionally writing something too similar with my hybrid memoir, and got so much more. Really appreciate Gibney’s storytelling. A brilliant way to convey the blurred lines between fiction and reality of adoptee life.
March 26, 2023
[5 stars] A speculative memoir in which a transracial adult adoptee explores possible timelines for her life depending on where, how, and by whom she had been raised. I loved loved loved the creativity of this book. As an adoptee and sci fi fan, Shannon Gibney’s use of the multiverse was such a relatable translation of family reunion conversation, adoption research, and personal processing. The use of pronouns to reflect the dissociative nature of adoptee trauma was especially powerful. I really enjoyed the arc of paternal reconnection for its empathy and framing since it’s an aspect of the narrative absent (for various reasons) from many adoptee stories. This is a great book for adoptees searching for reflections of their own lives as well as those wanting to learn and understand the emotional and mental impacts of transracial adoption from an adoptee’s perspective. Be sure to check out the resources list at the end; I know or have read several of the items listed and agree that they’re worth checking out. Highly recommended for fans of imaginative multi-genre writing, readers who enjoy non-linear timelines and m ensemble casts, and anyone who wonders what would’ve happened if the storytelling power of Everything Everywhere All At Once had combined with the MCU ability to jump through a spiraling portal after Annie sang “Maybe” as she dreamt of her birth parents and their lives.
Goodreads Challenge 2023: 13/52
Dates Read: 3/20/23-3/24/23
Goodreads Challenge 2023: 13/52
Dates Read: 3/20/23-3/24/23
January 11, 2024
4.5 stars
The author is clearly very talented, and the writing style and format of this book is really cool.
I will say though that this book was kind of confusing; I kept forgetting whether I was reading Shanon or Erin. And the wormhole thing was very confusing. I know the switching between first and third person has to have some sort of meaning behind it, but I couldn’t figure out what that was.
Also I really liked the part where she talks about her overactive imagination causing anxiety as a child because I was also like that!
The author is clearly very talented, and the writing style and format of this book is really cool.
I will say though that this book was kind of confusing; I kept forgetting whether I was reading Shanon or Erin. And the wormhole thing was very confusing. I know the switching between first and third person has to have some sort of meaning behind it, but I couldn’t figure out what that was.
Also I really liked the part where she talks about her overactive imagination causing anxiety as a child because I was also like that!
September 14, 2024
As an interracial intercountry adoptee , I enjoyed the story by a fellow adoptee. It was the first time I had read a time traveling book about an adoptee and for that I was super invested in it because it was relatable to the what ifs. If I could time travel where would I go ? If I could time travel would people recognize me? So many questions.
I did have to reread certain parts a few times to make sure I understood what timeline we were in, overall it was really good and I am happy to have read it. ❤️
I did have to reread certain parts a few times to make sure I understood what timeline we were in, overall it was really good and I am happy to have read it. ❤️
March 20, 2024
This book left me wanting to hear more from Shannon/Erin. I appreciated the unique angle of the story, but it felt like more attention was paid to the intricacies of the sci-fi elements than Gibney’s own experience as an adopted person.
This book has received some critical acclaim and Gibney seems to be highly esteemed within the adoptee community, so maybe this is just a case of the book not clicking with me or me “not getting it.”
This book has received some critical acclaim and Gibney seems to be highly esteemed within the adoptee community, so maybe this is just a case of the book not clicking with me or me “not getting it.”
February 20, 2023
This creative speculative memoir provides a glimpse into an adoptees’ ghost kingdom, termed by the late adoptee activist and psychologist Betty Jean Lifton, PhD. The ghost kingdom is the place where the you that never was exists/existed. The secrecy in adoption leads many of us to fantasize about what would have, could have been. Shannon masterfully brings us down both paths - of her as Shannon and of her as the maybe-Erin who never was. I particularly loved the artifacts (documents) included in the book.
June 26, 2023
Probably a 3.5 but I'm rounding down. Interesting style, a mix of fiction and memoir. That made it a bit confusing for me at the beginning because I wasn't sure what was actually happening and what the point of that set up was. I do think it paid off in the end and I was integral to the storytelling.
July 22, 2023
Not sure I loved this? But did appreciate the complexity of what the author is trying to do. Definitely try it out if you're looking for something different. A very unique way to consider the experience of a transracial adoptee, and full of great resources.
February 1, 2024
I think the audio format was the issue for me. The author used an intriguing method to convey her story, but the complexity of moving through the wormholes was hard to follow on the audiobook for me.
July 29, 2023
Spectacular. A trip.
May 2, 2023
The memoir plays with the idea of alternate histories, and of what could have been if the author had not been adopted. One wonders how much of the idea of wormholes actually figured in her childhood education.
It’s unlike any memoir you’ve read.
It’s unlike any memoir you’ve read.
March 2, 2023
A very unique adult voice and very relatable in many parts.
January 2, 2023
Shannon Gibney is an award-winning author of books of all kinds — from novels to anthologies to essays to picture books. She writes for adults, children, and everyone in-between. The through-line in all her work is stories that may have previously gone untold. What God Is Honored Here: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color, an anthology published by the University of Minnesota Press, exemplifies this approach, as does Gibney’s most recent novel, Dream Country, which was published by Dutton in 2018. Her newest book, released by Dutton this month, is billed as a speculative memoir, the provocative title is THE GIRL I AM, WAS, AND NEVER WILL BE, A SPECULATIVE MEMOIR OF TRANSRACIAL ADOPTION.
Gibney writes that the only way for an adoptee to tell her story, is to embrace that there are no singular truths. There are, she says, no stories without holes. For Gibney, there were many holes. Adopted by a white family at birth, Gibney’s birth mother was Irish-American and she’d had a brief and tumultuous relationship with her African American birth father. As a mixed-Black transracial adoptee, Gibney decided that the best vehicle to tell her story was with two different timelines bridged by a mysterious portal. In one timeline, she is Erin Powers, the name her birth mother gave her. In another, she is Shannon Gibney, a transracial adoptee in search of information about her birth parents and her identity. The portal between these two lives is where Gibney meets her birth father, who passed away before she could meet him, when she was six years old.
The memoir is interspersed with letters, documents, photographs, medical records, and interviews. The facts of these are juxtaposed against a time-traveling Erin/Shannon who meets her father in the portal, if every so briefly. It is a longing made more real through facts provided by family members and her own ingenious imagination.
Along the way, Gibney reads books, listens to podcasts, watches films, and discovers websites and organizations that support adoptees and she shares these in a list of resources at the end of the book.
Transracial adoption is never tidy, and cannot be encapsulated in an individual story, but Gibney does a masterful job of helping the reader understand the complexities of identity and the machinations of the adoption industrial complex. A writer with courage and heart, Gibney lays bare her experience for the benefit of us all.
Listen to my interview with Shannon Gibney on January 26 at 7:00 pm and January 28 at 6:00 am on WTIP Radio 90.7 Grand Marais, or stream it from the web at www.wtip.org.
Gibney writes that the only way for an adoptee to tell her story, is to embrace that there are no singular truths. There are, she says, no stories without holes. For Gibney, there were many holes. Adopted by a white family at birth, Gibney’s birth mother was Irish-American and she’d had a brief and tumultuous relationship with her African American birth father. As a mixed-Black transracial adoptee, Gibney decided that the best vehicle to tell her story was with two different timelines bridged by a mysterious portal. In one timeline, she is Erin Powers, the name her birth mother gave her. In another, she is Shannon Gibney, a transracial adoptee in search of information about her birth parents and her identity. The portal between these two lives is where Gibney meets her birth father, who passed away before she could meet him, when she was six years old.
The memoir is interspersed with letters, documents, photographs, medical records, and interviews. The facts of these are juxtaposed against a time-traveling Erin/Shannon who meets her father in the portal, if every so briefly. It is a longing made more real through facts provided by family members and her own ingenious imagination.
Along the way, Gibney reads books, listens to podcasts, watches films, and discovers websites and organizations that support adoptees and she shares these in a list of resources at the end of the book.
Transracial adoption is never tidy, and cannot be encapsulated in an individual story, but Gibney does a masterful job of helping the reader understand the complexities of identity and the machinations of the adoption industrial complex. A writer with courage and heart, Gibney lays bare her experience for the benefit of us all.
Listen to my interview with Shannon Gibney on January 26 at 7:00 pm and January 28 at 6:00 am on WTIP Radio 90.7 Grand Marais, or stream it from the web at www.wtip.org.
March 4, 2023
Part memoir, part science fiction, THE GIRL I AM, WAS, AND NEVER WILL BE is an incredibly unique book that explores the thoughts and feelings of an adoptee, working to understand her identify. The story really delves into the question of what would have happened if Shannon had not been given up for adoption; what her life may have looked like.
Gibney creates a fictional story around Erin Powers, the name given to her at birth, which is told alongside the story of Shannon. As the two stories flow and intertwine, Gibney adds layers of science fiction to imagine the two girls knowing of each others existence as they live parallel lives.
I thought this was a really interesting way of exploring the identity of an adoptee and the questions that exist as you reconcile your life with an adopted family versus that of your biological family. It really shines a light on what it’s like for children and adults who have been adopted and how that impacts their identity.
The most powerful part of Gibney’s story is the way she reconciles the time she lost or never had with her biological family and the way she explores that type of loss through the world of science fiction.
Overall this was a really beautiful and compelling story. I loved how the author approached this book and really made it a unique story.
Gibney creates a fictional story around Erin Powers, the name given to her at birth, which is told alongside the story of Shannon. As the two stories flow and intertwine, Gibney adds layers of science fiction to imagine the two girls knowing of each others existence as they live parallel lives.
I thought this was a really interesting way of exploring the identity of an adoptee and the questions that exist as you reconcile your life with an adopted family versus that of your biological family. It really shines a light on what it’s like for children and adults who have been adopted and how that impacts their identity.
The most powerful part of Gibney’s story is the way she reconciles the time she lost or never had with her biological family and the way she explores that type of loss through the world of science fiction.
Overall this was a really beautiful and compelling story. I loved how the author approached this book and really made it a unique story.
January 13, 2024
Wow, this is a new contender for best book I've read this year. It took me a while to get through only because it was HITTING. The title (describing this as a "speculative memoir of transracial adoption") and cover piqued my interest and I'm so glad I picked this one up. The book alternates between the author's real memories as Shannon Gibney, adopted by Sue and Jim Gibney, and Erin Powers, the name (and life) she would have had if her biological mother hadn't given her up for adoption. It jumps timelines and is interspersed with real scans and photos from Shannon's life and journey into discovering her heritage. It's weird, raw, unflinching, and trippy as you alternate between realities and uncover fact and fiction as you go. Paragraphs will shift from third to first person in a way that would be jarring if it weren't so well done. Everything about the story is immersive and transporting. Even though I am not an adoptee, I found Shannon's journey and her explored "what if's" resonating with my own fraught and unknown origins and heritage. This is written for and targeted to a young adult audience, but it definitely has a mature appeal and weight. The end of the book features references to other materials on transracial adoption, many of which I added to my tbr. Highly highly recommend to anyone looking to read something weird that will slice you open and leave you with lots to think about.
July 19, 2023
DNF(Did not Finish): 40%
It wasn't bad but I had a really hard time following the story because of the writing style and the overall structure of the story. I was really confused for a majority of what I read. I am 100% not the correct audience for this book as I'm not an adoptee. To be honest, I am a little disappointed.
It wasn't bad but I had a really hard time following the story because of the writing style and the overall structure of the story. I was really confused for a majority of what I read. I am 100% not the correct audience for this book as I'm not an adoptee. To be honest, I am a little disappointed.
February 11, 2024
“The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption” (Dutton 2023) by Shannon Gibney.
That intriguing title holds a lot of information. And yes, it’s genre-bending. Shannon Gibney is a mixed race (white and African American) girl, adopted as an infant into an upper middle class white family in the Detroit area. She has two white brothers, Ben who is younger and Jon who is older. She feels loved by her family, but very much the odd man out.
The timeline bounces around. We hear from ten-year-old, then the nineteen-year-old Shannon Gibney who the author portrays as a difficult bright child. We also hear from the 44-year-old Shannon.
We also hear from Erin Powers, Shannon’s birth name, which is part of the speculative aspect. Erin is born to Patricia Powers, and the author invents the life she might have led, had she been raised by her single mother surrounded by a large loving Irish Catholic family in Utica, New York. Erin has a best friend, Essie who is Hispanic.
The real Patricia writes letters to Shannon’s mother, Sue, mostly warning Shannon of an inheritable, rare breast cancer. Excerpts of these letters are published in the book. Shannon meets Patricia when she is nineteen years old, and they have an on again off again relationship until Patricia dies of breast cancer in her forties.
Patricia has told Shannon that her African American father, Boisey Collins, was brilliant and interested in physics. Shannon eventually finds records of Boisey, specifically that he was killed in a high-speed police chase in California when Shannon was six years old. In the meantime, both Shannon and Erin have “met” their father, briefly, due to the “wormhole” that Boisey created with his collider time machine.
Sometimes the author changes from third person to first person in mid paragraph. This makes the narrative clearer rather than more confusing. Occasionally a long passage is repeated, and this, interestingly, serves to show us the difficulty of being raised outside of and ignorant of your birth culture. Shannon is mixed and light skinned, but there’s that one-drop-rule: if you are Black at all, you are Black. She’s not only an outsider in her family but at her school.
As a young adult, Shannon has an article accepted for publication in an anthology. In the article Shannon points out some racist dialogue within the Powers family. Before publication Shannon thinks that Patricia might be interested in reading it. Patricia is livid and denies that the racist things about Mexicans were ever said. Shannon withdraws her article to honor her mother, although it would have been her first publication in the career she aspires to. Nevertheless, Shannon and Patricia’s relationship never fully recovers.
There’s so much food for thought in this ground-breaking speculative memoir which is, rightly, cataloged as fiction. With its adoption documents, family photographs, and medical records, this book is a fascinating dive into adoption as well as racism. It has the distinction of being granted a 2024 Printz Award Honoree.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, Ella Fitzgerald, as well as poems about waterfowl. talesforallages.com
That intriguing title holds a lot of information. And yes, it’s genre-bending. Shannon Gibney is a mixed race (white and African American) girl, adopted as an infant into an upper middle class white family in the Detroit area. She has two white brothers, Ben who is younger and Jon who is older. She feels loved by her family, but very much the odd man out.
The timeline bounces around. We hear from ten-year-old, then the nineteen-year-old Shannon Gibney who the author portrays as a difficult bright child. We also hear from the 44-year-old Shannon.
We also hear from Erin Powers, Shannon’s birth name, which is part of the speculative aspect. Erin is born to Patricia Powers, and the author invents the life she might have led, had she been raised by her single mother surrounded by a large loving Irish Catholic family in Utica, New York. Erin has a best friend, Essie who is Hispanic.
The real Patricia writes letters to Shannon’s mother, Sue, mostly warning Shannon of an inheritable, rare breast cancer. Excerpts of these letters are published in the book. Shannon meets Patricia when she is nineteen years old, and they have an on again off again relationship until Patricia dies of breast cancer in her forties.
Patricia has told Shannon that her African American father, Boisey Collins, was brilliant and interested in physics. Shannon eventually finds records of Boisey, specifically that he was killed in a high-speed police chase in California when Shannon was six years old. In the meantime, both Shannon and Erin have “met” their father, briefly, due to the “wormhole” that Boisey created with his collider time machine.
Sometimes the author changes from third person to first person in mid paragraph. This makes the narrative clearer rather than more confusing. Occasionally a long passage is repeated, and this, interestingly, serves to show us the difficulty of being raised outside of and ignorant of your birth culture. Shannon is mixed and light skinned, but there’s that one-drop-rule: if you are Black at all, you are Black. She’s not only an outsider in her family but at her school.
As a young adult, Shannon has an article accepted for publication in an anthology. In the article Shannon points out some racist dialogue within the Powers family. Before publication Shannon thinks that Patricia might be interested in reading it. Patricia is livid and denies that the racist things about Mexicans were ever said. Shannon withdraws her article to honor her mother, although it would have been her first publication in the career she aspires to. Nevertheless, Shannon and Patricia’s relationship never fully recovers.
There’s so much food for thought in this ground-breaking speculative memoir which is, rightly, cataloged as fiction. With its adoption documents, family photographs, and medical records, this book is a fascinating dive into adoption as well as racism. It has the distinction of being granted a 2024 Printz Award Honoree.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Lift As You Climb; Josephine; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, Ella Fitzgerald, as well as poems about waterfowl. talesforallages.com
February 4, 2024
In my 2024 project of choosing books from Libby-librarian lists, this book was from the Best of 2023 list. I had previously read Gibney's YA novel "See No Color" (4 stars). This too focuses on the issues and experiences of transracial adoption.
I might have preferred a purely factual memoir, but the author felt that her story couldn't be told that way. After all, her story has a lot of blanks and what-might-have-beens. In addition, she grew up with Star Trek and other sci fi stories with parallel dimensions, alternative timelines, portals and wormholes, so this type of storytelling was a natural device for her. Yet it was more deeply felt than a device, in part because from what I could tell there was a childhood incident of deeply absorbing fantasy play involving a portal.
The device to portray almost having been aborted, was to write a story from her life in strike-through text. That worked well. Addiction, mental illness, queerness, racism and cancer are other difficult themes in the book.
Writing about finding and using her biological father's portal and meeting him worked well enough. I interpreted it as partly conveying her desire to interact with him and have a shared story with him, but fiction is the only way to do so because he died when she was 6.
By picking up various threads here and there, we can say that she felt loved and that her birth mom felt that her adoptive parents were everything she could have hoped for. Yet it was difficult for her to carry her blackness alone - for example, her white brothers didn't notice the looks she got.
Unfortunately, this goes against the general happily-ever-after narrative of adoptions, and people like her can be perceived as "angry and maladjusted." The general narrative doesn't want to acknowledge loss of first family, language, culture and community. Nor does it want to face questions about racial or class dynamics, or corruption, trauma and burdens.
But dissenting voices like Gibney's are necessary to improve the system and to ensure that no adoptee feels isolated because their story doesn't match the happily-ever-after narrative.
This is a good and thought-provoking book from a Minnesota author. Kudos.
I might have preferred a purely factual memoir, but the author felt that her story couldn't be told that way. After all, her story has a lot of blanks and what-might-have-beens. In addition, she grew up with Star Trek and other sci fi stories with parallel dimensions, alternative timelines, portals and wormholes, so this type of storytelling was a natural device for her. Yet it was more deeply felt than a device, in part because from what I could tell there was a childhood incident of deeply absorbing fantasy play involving a portal.
The device to portray almost having been aborted, was to write a story from her life in strike-through text. That worked well. Addiction, mental illness, queerness, racism and cancer are other difficult themes in the book.
Writing about finding and using her biological father's portal and meeting him worked well enough. I interpreted it as partly conveying her desire to interact with him and have a shared story with him, but fiction is the only way to do so because he died when she was 6.
By picking up various threads here and there, we can say that she felt loved and that her birth mom felt that her adoptive parents were everything she could have hoped for. Yet it was difficult for her to carry her blackness alone - for example, her white brothers didn't notice the looks she got.
Unfortunately, this goes against the general happily-ever-after narrative of adoptions, and people like her can be perceived as "angry and maladjusted." The general narrative doesn't want to acknowledge loss of first family, language, culture and community. Nor does it want to face questions about racial or class dynamics, or corruption, trauma and burdens.
But dissenting voices like Gibney's are necessary to improve the system and to ensure that no adoptee feels isolated because their story doesn't match the happily-ever-after narrative.
This is a good and thought-provoking book from a Minnesota author. Kudos.
January 31, 2024
Although the author deserves credit for her original approach to an adoption story--her own--and it's certainly interesting to contemplate the what-might-have-beens in her life, the same could be true for any individual. Even those of us who weren't adopted have probably wondered what life might have been if things had played out differently as the result of being born to another family or under different circumstances. The inclusion of various artifacts, including notes, letters, and photos adds to the book's appeal, but the shifting back and forth from Shannon to Erin and the passages about wormholes just left me shaking my head in frustration. Ultimately, Shannon's journey of self-discovery and connections to her various family members was touching but rather unsatisfying because of those shifts in the narrative and in the timeframe. And then, as another reviewer pointed out, it seemed unnecessary for her to use a library card catalog on which to jot down the address of a relative. Surely, rather than taking that card she could have asked someone--a patron or a librarian for a scrap of paper. I'm sure others will find my niggling about this point rather silly, given the book's subject matter, but still, it annoyed me and left me feeling as though some of her journey was frivolous and impulsive. Nevertheless, the writing is strong, and readers have been forewarned with the inclusion of the word "speculative" in the book's subtitle. I would imagine most folks will have never encountered this kind of an adoption story where adoptees don't necessarily live happily ever after, and there are emotional costs for all those concerned. Because the author is biracial with a white mother and Black father and her adoptive parents are white, readers are provided some insight into how isolated Shannon often felt while growing up, but those examples are too few and far between to have as much resonance as they might have otherwise.
September 11, 2023
Gibney features herself as the protagonist in this part memoir, part speculative fiction novel. Shannon Gibney and Erin Powers are one and the same person. However, there’s a primal difference in that one was adopted and the other wasn’t.
Using documents like vital records, correspondence written from her birth mother to her adoptive mother, and photographs of herself and family members, Gibney delivers a layered, complicated and enthralling tale told in the often underheard voice of a transracial adoptee. The author using her own name and photographs in the book make this book read like part autobiography and part science fiction.
The book is a challenging read that requires some suspension of disbelief. However, in the often misunderstood or misrepresented narrative of adoption, this story is an “authentic” piece of fiction written by a transracial adoptee. Shannon/Erin gets to be an explorer who time travels and jumps to other dimensions in order to piece together the story of not only the families that made and raised her but of the family she builds for herself well into her adulthood.
This book comes highly recommended for families formed by transracial adoption. The style and subject matter don’t make for an easy read but what valuable books are (easy reads)?
Don’t just hand this off to a teen to read in a vacuum, read it with them. If they want to talk about it, then discuss. If they don’t want to talk it’s still important for non-adoptees to read books like and show they care about the perspective, identity and narrative of the transracially adopted person. Just as Shannon and Erin catch glimpses of each other or their birth father at different points in space and time, the reader may catch glimpses of what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a transracial adoptee.
Highly recommended!
Using documents like vital records, correspondence written from her birth mother to her adoptive mother, and photographs of herself and family members, Gibney delivers a layered, complicated and enthralling tale told in the often underheard voice of a transracial adoptee. The author using her own name and photographs in the book make this book read like part autobiography and part science fiction.
The book is a challenging read that requires some suspension of disbelief. However, in the often misunderstood or misrepresented narrative of adoption, this story is an “authentic” piece of fiction written by a transracial adoptee. Shannon/Erin gets to be an explorer who time travels and jumps to other dimensions in order to piece together the story of not only the families that made and raised her but of the family she builds for herself well into her adulthood.
This book comes highly recommended for families formed by transracial adoption. The style and subject matter don’t make for an easy read but what valuable books are (easy reads)?
Don’t just hand this off to a teen to read in a vacuum, read it with them. If they want to talk about it, then discuss. If they don’t want to talk it’s still important for non-adoptees to read books like and show they care about the perspective, identity and narrative of the transracially adopted person. Just as Shannon and Erin catch glimpses of each other or their birth father at different points in space and time, the reader may catch glimpses of what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a transracial adoptee.
Highly recommended!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews