A couple of days ago I finished reading the book Black Baby, White Hands by Jaiya John and I have mixed opinions about it.
On one hand I didn’t like the author’s prose that is sometimes a little hard to read,
but on the other hand I think that it’s an important book for adoptive white parents of a black child to read, specially in America. I don’t know the racial relations in other countries but I suppose that they must be very similar.
The author narrates his experiences as an adopted child inside a white family in a time in which such adoptions were unthinkable.
There are many things that must be highlighted and important to understand the story. One is that we are talking here of the 60’s and another that the author is an extremely sensitive human being inside a family that didn’t have any idea how to deal with a transracial adoption.
I have found many reviews of this book, most of them positive and highly favorable and many see this memoir as a good introduction to understand how is it to be black in America. Obviously times have changed, not completely but there has been a great improvement in racial relations.
Now a day discussions are more open and even when talking about race is considered politically incorrect for fear to offend someone or to be labeled as racist, it’s more easy to discuss the subject.
In a time when there is a great possibility of a black man to become president of the U.S., it is evident that things have changed a lot.
Besides, today parents are more informed and have a more open attitude and less fear to face prejudices, and also the country is much more diverse racially and culturally. We can’t deny that race is still a very important part of a person identity and the subject has to be considered part of the education of a black child. specially when those parents don’t belong to the same race.
This is a hard book to read because the hurtful experiences of that boy make us feel the pain in our own flesh.
I think that the first life experiences of a person are very important because they will forge the personality and the view that the person will have of the world.
Even when the author recognizes the love that his parents gave him, I think that he still has some rancor toward them.
We human beings make many mistakes, but if we consider the education and the time in which those parents were raised they gave his children everything they could and even more.
But we know that it is the children’s job to judge their parents and find all the imperfections and in the same way that we judge ours, they will judge us when they become adults. The important thing is to give the best of oneself, to be informed, open to the conversation and to love our children above all.

AliciA