The Stolen Child: Maternal Claim and National Belonging in David Bergen's Stranger

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Contemporary fictions about adoption play an important role in testing and normalizing cultural beliefs about whom adoption serves. Some examples of contemporary adoption fiction seem to offer a political critique of a failed system of international adoption where adoption is understood as a tool of imperial domination. But they may also reduce the complexities of adoption to a "good vs. evil" plotline that pits adults against each other in a struggle for the possession and ownership of another human being. This article's case study is the 2016 novel Stranger by Canadian novelist David Bergen. By granting moral and maternal power to the birth mother, and bringing the stolen adoptee "home," Stranger foregrounds birth mother agency against a backdrop of asymmetrical relations between Guatemala and the US. In this sense, Stranger is a welcome addition to contemporary adoption novels, which often occlude the first parents. Yet Bergen also harnesses the idea of the child as property of the patriarchal family, framing his adoption plot in the stark moral logic of Dickensian fiction, orphan fairytales, and biblical narratives of good and evil. While Stranger offers an anti-imperialist fantasy of the adoptee's return, and a feminist-leaning celebration of the birth mother, it does so on a bedrock of stories in which women compete for male attention, maternal status, and ownership of children.