Origin Narratives

The Stories We Tell Children About Immigration and International Adoption

Macarena Garcia-Gonzalez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351855426
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The first of its kind, this volume unpacks the cultural construction of transnational adoption and migration by examining a sample of recent children's books that address the subject. Of all European countries, Spain is the nation where immigration and transnational adoption have increased most steeply from the early 1990s onward. Origin Narratives: The Stories We Tell Children About Immigration and International Adoption sheds light on the way contemporary Spanish society and its institutions re-define national identity and the framework of cultural, political and ethnic values, by looking at how these ideas are being transmitted to younger generations negotiating a more heterogeneous environment. This study collates representations of diversity, migration, and (colonial) otherness in the texts, as well as their reception by the adult mediators, through reviews, paratexts, and opinions collected from interviews and participant observation. In this new work, author Macarena Garcia Gonzalez argues that many of the texts at the wider societal discourse of multiculturalism, which have been warped into a pedagogical synthesis, underwrite the very racism they seek to combat. Comparing transnational adoption with discourses about immigration works as a new approach to the question of multiculturalism and makes a valuable contribution to an array of disciplines.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Books We Recommend to Children: Ideologies and Politics in Reading Promotion
• 2 Framing the Questions: Previous Research, Theoretical Frameworks, and Case-Study Materials
• 3 I Came by Plane: The Masterplan of International Adoptions
• 4 They Came from the Desert: Immigration Plots and Tropes
• 5 The United Colors of the Rainbow: Explaining Human ‘Races’ and Racism
• 6 Intersected Identities: Nationality, Class, Gender, and Ableism in the Making of ‘Races’
• 7 Nation-as-Family: Tropes of Kin and Orphanhood
• Conclusions
• Works Cited
• Index