Book Review "Twenty Life-Transforming Choices"

Eldridge, Sherrie. Twenty Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make. Colorado Springs:      NavPress Publishing Group, 2003. 1-288. Print.   

    Sherrie Eldridge is an adoptee that was given up for adoption at the age of a few days old. Eldridge is an award-winning author and public speaker. She is also known for writing “20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew” and her renowned adoption blog called Café Adoption.
    This is a work of personal narrative and a guideline on adoptee decisions that speaks directly to adoptees with a partial relation to others interested in the subject of adoption. Adoptees should be warned that this book has to deal a lot about negative connotations with adoption and the situations adoptees experience.
    Rating: 1) I highly recommend this book for both academic audiences and self-educating persons that would like to know more about the life of an adoptee (especially recommended for adoptees because of major relevance).
    I recommend that the libraries purchase this book because it helped me finally relate my life to something and other adoptee students here should have the opportunity to read it.
    Sherrie Eldridge’s book “20 Life-Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make” is a riveting read that addresses the issues adoptees face every day for their whole lives. The main idea that Eldridge tries to portray to her audience is the emotional road blocks all adoptees face and how everything that has happened to them since conception is in some way influenced by this category of negativism, whether it be conscious or subconscious.Her major objectives in this work focus on feelings from pain and anger to loneliness and self-esteem.

    I believe a major strength she displayed was, not only her relation to the subject, but also her knowledge of the major issues that adoptees experience throughout their entire lives; she even mentions many interviews of adoptees and adoption experts. Another major strength I would like to state about her writing, particularly for this book, is her addressing the biggest questions/issues adoptees face and the recommended beginning for betterment on those particular subjects.
    Apart from her strengths, I think the only weakness Eldridge exposes is her undying negative attitude attributed foul metaphorical images towards the many subjects she addresses. Prior to her actually addressing the many issues and questions she poses she places an intimately negative relation all readers can relate to in order to associate that particular topic. For instance, in the very first paragraph in chapter four she asks the readers if they have run fingernails on a blackboard and if they experienced the “physical and aural discomfort” it creates in order to make one cringe. I don’t believe that all of her metaphorical images are bad, but I do believe some of them could be replaced with a better example; such as a person telling themselves they are good enough for someone and they still back down from ever introducing themselves. This would set up a better associated feeling towards want for somebody than the negative ‘cringe’ inside somebodies stomach she portrays.

    The greatest theme I was able to associate from this text and the texts in class was the adoptees powerlessness in their lives. The article “Five Faces of Oppression” by Iris Young distinctly sticks out to me when addressing the powerlessness debate in adoption ethics and the congruencies with Eldridge’s “20 Life-Transforming Choices” because they both hint towards adoptees being “victims” according to Eldridge. “The powerless are those who lack authority or power even in this mediated sense, those over whom power is exercised without their exercising it; the powerless are situated so that they must take orders and rarely have the right to give them” (Young, p. 56). "Because our birth mothers made a choice for us that dramatically changed the course of our lives and over which we had no control, many of us have a foundational belief (often unconscious) that we don’t have the right to choose our own course in life. We feel instead that we are at the mercy of others" (Eldridge 1-288).

    I would also like to argue that Eldridge brings up entirely new ideas to consider when addressing adoption and adoption ethics because she goes on to state how the adoptee can overcome the issues mentioned in the book. After each chapter she writes a “How to Begin” section in order that particularly addresses adoptees and how they can overcome the issues and answer the questions they might have about their lives. These end of the chapter sections really shed light on the gray areas for adoptees who are lost and that seems extremely important when thinking about how adoption works.

    She mentions different emotions and feelings adoptees have and she goes deeper in analyzing them rather than just scratching the surface which we sometimes do in class. For painful feelings, Eldridge interviewed hundreds of adoptees and came up with four major styles of running from pain: numbing out, compulsive overeating, drug addiction, and workaholism. She gives examples of all of these methods of running and more, then goes on to discuss different ways adoptees think about pain and how they can embrace those painful feelings. She uses almost this exact method throughout the book, pulling from her own personal experiences and from interviews. This gives a completely new thought on adoption ethics because it makes us question, as readers, what we are going through and how we may compare to adoptees that are going through all of these different unbelievable experiences.

    From my own experience, I have actually been able to connect with this book much more than I have ever been able to in any other book. I can understand everything she touches on because I have felt the exact same feelings and asked the exact same questions she asks and answers. I have been able to analyze my own adoption story and draw educational conclusions from her chapters.

-Michael