With the Same Motion: A Personal History of Belonging

Abstract

Lillian Deja Snortland, an African American transracial adoptee, unearths fragments of matrilineal family-making myths buried amongst revelatory media and epistolary text, including postcards sent to her nineteen-year-old adoptive mother while sequestered in an unwed-mother’s home in Arizona. Roe v. Wade was argued Dec 13, 1971, approximately a year and two months after her adoptive mother would give birth and place her son up for adoption—a history Snortland discovers by accident as an adult.

In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers made the statement: “We affirm the inviolable position of Black children in Black families where they belong”. Snortland was part of a closed adoption in 1996, in Kansas City in the aftermath of reconstruction, redlining, and oppression, when racial assimilation was being equated with erasure. Her successful adoption by a white Irish Catholic family in Eugene, Oregon adds nuance to the concept of ideal restoration for the next generations of Black children.

In the wake of an estimated 50 million transracial adoptions in 2010 in the United States, policies around freedom of information and conversations have changed drastically to incorporate new understandings of the harmful psychology of difference for adoptees, the consequences of familial separations, and an increased emphasis on mental health and multicultural belonging. Snortland’s story traces questions posed by sociologists, social workers, and mental health advocates, as well as those interested in research like The Adoption History Project through the Department of History at the University of Oregon.

With the Same Motion explores cross-generational intimacy, interracial lineage, and the liberatory importance of choice as the author purposefully reshapes familial boundaries. The manuscript follows an adoptee researching her adoptive family, rather than her biological one, to understand how choice is a powerful familial tether, and complicate the idea that motherhood, sisterhood, or daughterhood should subsume a woman’s autonomy.