ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the beginnings of a textual home, a kind of jumping-off point for Critical Adoption Studies scholars, to familiarize us with each other and reach out to those who want to join us or who already have without realizing it. Politicians have proposed and sometimes passed restrictive legislation concerning trans healthcare, drag queens, gay marriage, access in public school classrooms and gymnasiums to books and ideas about family creation. The field’s interaction with Western texts, practices, and ideologies is one feature of its current state. The book presents idealized stories of adoption in which the family is home and a hopeful nurturing space and critical stories that reveal how difficult adoption can be or how delusional those who hope for coherent adoptive—or, indeed, natal—families might be.
