《希腊失散儿童的声音:冷战时期国际收养的口述历史》,玛丽·卡达拉斯主编(书评)

IF 0.2 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES Pub Date : 2023-10-01 DOI:10.1353/mgs.2023.a908565
Alexander Kitroeff
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Naturally, the publication of Van Steen’s study sent shock waves among the many adoptees, some of whom were already searching for their biological parents and the truth about their backgrounds. One of these, who decided to take up the cause of her fellow adoptees, was Mary Cardaras, a communications professor at California State University, East Bay. Cardaras proved to be the ideal person to fulfill Van Steen’s wish that the adoptees would follow up her book by telling their own stories. Cardaras and Van Steen appeared together at several book presentations, including those for the Greek translation of Van Steen’s book that was published by the Athens-based Potamos Publishers in 2021. In that same year, Cardaras herself published Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story, an account of how Dena Poulias was taken as a child from her Greek biological parents in 1958 and found her way back to their village after many years. 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Mossin has already told his own story in a book titled A Son from the Mountains, where he details his Cold War–era adoption from Greece and subsequent childhood. In his foreword to this new collection, Mossin offers vignettes from the experiences that the volume’s contributors describe, many of them emotionally wrenching and hard to read. 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One of these, who decided to take up the cause of her fellow adoptees, was Mary Cardaras, a communications professor at California State University, East Bay. Cardaras proved to be the ideal person to fulfill Van Steen’s wish that the adoptees would follow up her book by telling their own stories. Cardaras and Van Steen appeared together at several book presentations, including those for the Greek translation of Van Steen’s book that was published by the Athens-based Potamos Publishers in 2021. In that same year, Cardaras herself published Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story, an account of how Dena Poulias was taken as a child from her Greek biological parents in 1958 and found her way back to their village after many years. The book traces how Poulias’s discovery of her origins affected everyone involved—the two families on either side of the Atlantic, the Greek village community, and of course Poulias herself and her loved ones. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

《希腊失散儿童之声:冷战时期国际收养的口述历史》编辑:玛丽·卡达拉斯。伦敦和纽约:Anthem Press, 2023。第16 + 192页。精装本$110.00,纸质$35.00,电子书$35.00。冈达·范·斯蒂恩在这本由14篇短文组成的书的前言中写道,既然他们经历的全部事实已经确立,现在是时候让人们听到被收养者自己的声音了。正是范·斯蒂恩本人,在她精心研究的书籍长度的研究中,收养、记忆和冷战时期的希腊:孩子的交换条件?(2019),揭示了3200名希腊儿童是如何在1950年至1962年间被美国家庭收养的。范·斯蒂恩讲述的故事是一个善意的人道主义动机,但却被从纯粹的违规行为到肆无忌惮的不法行为所取代,这些行为使不择手段的中间人获利。当这些做法开始被揭露时,数百名希腊儿童已经在被收养的过程中。在20世纪50年代,希腊政府当局、希腊孤儿院官员和美国没有准备的无子女夫妇教唆了这些不正当的做法。在一些情况下,收养过程中的部分或全部参与者使中间商偷工减料。值得注意的是,许多这样的收养都有幸福的结果,但也有一些收养对孩子是有害的,因为他们不知道自己的亲生父母是谁,也不知道收养的情况,当他们试图找回真相时,他们会发现创伤。正是这些孩子在这本书中讲述了他们的个人故事。自然,范·斯蒂恩的研究成果的发表在许多被收养者中引起了冲击波,其中一些人已经在寻找他们的亲生父母和他们的真实背景了。加州州立大学东湾分校(California State University, East Bay)的传播学教授玛丽·卡达拉斯(Mary Cardaras)就是其中之一,她决定为其他被收养者的事业做贡献。事实证明,卡达拉斯是实现范·斯蒂恩愿望的理想人选,她希望被收养的孩子们能在她的书之后讲述自己的故事。Cardaras和Van Steen一起出现在几次图书发布会上,包括2021年由雅典Potamos出版社出版的Van Steen的书的希腊语翻译。同一年,卡达拉斯自己出版了《连根拔起:一个收养的故事》,讲述了1958年,还是个孩子的迪娜·波利亚斯如何从她的希腊亲生父母身边被带走,并在多年后找到了回到他们村庄的路。这本书追溯了普丽亚斯发现自己的起源是如何影响到每一个相关的人的——大西洋两岸的两个家庭,希腊村庄社区,当然还有普丽亚斯自己和她所爱的人。这本新书既是Poulias的故事的产物,正如Cardaras所指出的那样,正是这个故事激发了她出版这本被收养者(包括她自己)的故事集,从某种意义上说,也是Van Steen在20世纪50年代对收养的学术研究的伙伴。在这里无法总结所有感人的描述,这些描述揭示了每个被收养者所经历的全部经历。然而,这些描述的本质在安德鲁·莫辛(Andrew Mossin)的前言中得到了很好的总结。莫辛是一位在费城天普大学(Temple University)任教的作家,他自己也是一位被收养的希腊人。(书中也使用了他的原名安东尼奥·萨卡斯(antonio Sakkas)。)莫辛已经在一本名为《山子》的书中讲述了自己的故事,书中详细描述了他在冷战时期从希腊被收养的经历以及随后的童年。在这本新文集的前言中,莫辛提供了一些作者描述的经历的小插曲,其中许多是情感上的痛苦,很难读懂。莫辛写道,每一个故事都是一种挥之不去的后记忆,通过被收养者找到的文件和其他数据构建而成,并试图从……
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Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption ed. by Mary Cardaras (review)
Reviewed by: Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption ed. by Mary Cardaras Alexander Kitroeff (bio) Mary Cardaras, editor, Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption. London and New York: Anthem Press, 2023. Pp. xvi + 192. Hardback $110.00, Paper $35.00, and E-book $35.00. Now that the overall facts of their experience have been established, writes Gonda Van Steen in the introduction to this volume of fourteen short essays, it is time for the voices of the adoptees themselves to be heard. It is Van Steen herself who, in her meticulously researched book-length study Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? (2019), uncovered how 3,200 young Greek children were adopted by families in the United States between 1950 and 1962. The story Van Steen tells is one of well-meaning humanitarian motives which were overtaken by practices ranging from mere irregularities to brazenly illegal acts that profited unscrupulous middlemen. When those practices began to be uncovered, several hundred Greek children were already in the process of being adopted. Abetting those underhand practices in the 1950s were Greek government authorities, Greek orphanage officials, and unprepared childless couples in the United States. In several cases, some or all of these participants in the adoption process enabled the middlemen to cut corners. And while it is important to note that many of these adoptions had happy outcomes, others were harmful for the children involved because they were denied knowledge of who their biological parents were and the circumstances of their adoption, making for traumatic discoveries when they tried to retrieve the truth. It is these children who tell their personal stories in this volume. Naturally, the publication of Van Steen’s study sent shock waves among the many adoptees, some of whom were already searching for their biological parents and the truth about their backgrounds. One of these, who decided to take up the cause of her fellow adoptees, was Mary Cardaras, a communications professor at California State University, East Bay. Cardaras proved to be the ideal person to fulfill Van Steen’s wish that the adoptees would follow up her book by telling their own stories. Cardaras and Van Steen appeared together at several book presentations, including those for the Greek translation of Van Steen’s book that was published by the Athens-based Potamos Publishers in 2021. In that same year, Cardaras herself published Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story, an account of how Dena Poulias was taken as a child from her Greek biological parents in 1958 and found her way back to their village after many years. The book traces how Poulias’s discovery of her origins affected everyone involved—the two families on either side of the Atlantic, the Greek village community, and of course Poulias herself and her loved ones. This new book is [End Page 308] both an outgrowth of Poulias’s story, which, as Cardaras notes, inspired her to present this collection of the stories of adoptees (including her own), and, in a sense, a companion to Van Steen’s academic study of the adoptions in the 1950s. There is no way to summarize here all the moving accounts that reveal the full range of experiences each of the adoptees went through. The essence of these accounts is, however, nicely summarized in a foreword written by Andrew Mossin, a writer who teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia and who is himself also a Greek adoptee. (His original name, Antonios Sakkas, is also used in the book.) Mossin has already told his own story in a book titled A Son from the Mountains, where he details his Cold War–era adoption from Greece and subsequent childhood. In his foreword to this new collection, Mossin offers vignettes from the experiences that the volume’s contributors describe, many of them emotionally wrenching and hard to read. Mossin writes that each of those stories is a form of haunting post-memory, constructed through the documents and other data that the adoptees have located and have used in an effort to reconstruct their lives from the moments of...
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JOURNAL OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES
JOURNAL OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
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期刊介绍: Praised as "a magnificent scholarly journal" by Choice magazine, the Journal of Modern Greek Studies is the only scholarly periodical to focus exclusively on modern Greece. The Journal publishes critical analyses of Greek social, cultural, and political affairs, covering the period from the late Byzantine Empire to the present. Contributors include internationally recognized scholars in the fields of history, literature, anthropology, political science, Byzantine studies, and modern Greece.
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