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Native American adoption/Kingsolver "Pigs in Heaven"
Eugenia Shanklin (shanklin@TSCLION.TRENTON.EDU)
Mon, 11 Jul 1994 17:37:36 -0400
Kingsolver's novel, Pigs in Heaven, and have a different view of the
question of adoption of Native American children? The novel ends well
but raises a number of real questions that are not so easily resolved.
I've been trying to imagine some different endings.
A fellow Africanist/anthropologist was once asked, quite
seriously, to take home a child so that the child would have the benefits
of an American education; her response (which I thought wise) was, "If I
take the child, I will raise him as an American child, not as an African,
and he will be lost to you, to his people. Is that what you want?" The
parents are still undecided, the child is still in Africa where he is
safe, well-fed and loved, but I think the question may not be so simple.
Any thoughts?
Eugenia Shanklin
Professor, Anthropology
Trenton State College
E-mail: SHANKLIN@TSCVM.Trenton.edu
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