Book review: ‘You Should Be Grateful’ by Angela Tucker

By Delphine Veith, Program Manager

I’ve had Angela Tucker’s book on my nightstand for the better part of the past year. I had heard many glowing reviews of “You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption.” People were particularly impressed with the way she gracefully weaves her own story and reflections into broader narratives around race and adoption. But the reality is that I just don’t read books like I intend to! Because I seem to be more successful with finishing audiobooks, I recently downloaded it from my local library. What a gift to hear these words read by Angela herself! You Should Be Grateful struck me as a particularly wise blend of purposeful storytelling, history, and critical thinking about the complex nuances inherent to adoption, with a focus on transracial adoptee perspectives. Angela courageously explores her own contradictory feelings about adoption (“I love my adoptive parents. And I wish I wasn’t adopted.”). She also offers an expansion beyond her own experience by including stories from some of the many other adoptees she has connected with over the years, especially teen and young adult adoptees.

One concept central to the book that feels especially tied to values of openness is sondersphere, a word Angela made up based on the term “sonder,” which describes “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Angela writes “the sondersphere is a realm where every person in an adoptee’s life has a place – where birth parents and adoptive parents and biological aunties and foster parents and adoptive cousins all exist together.” She was drawn to the idea of sonder because of how it reflects a genuinely deep sense of empathy toward other human beings, and how this propels us toward more expansive thinking and responding. “It calls us to see the humans around us as complete, complex individuals with inner depths as vast and meaningful as our own.” Sonder as a practice creates room for open adoption relationships to develop in ways that embrace the complexities of who we are. Each person is embraced as a whole self, and is not judged solely by their best or worst moments or decisions.

As I think back on my work supporting people in creating open adoptions, the relationships that seem to thrive most are ones where people find ways to see and acknowledge each other’s humanity in real and meaningful ways. Interactions consider what helps each person feel most welcome and valued in the relationship. Updates and visits aren’t obligations on anyone’s part – they are a chance to connect and share joy and laughter, and to also sit in discomfort, seeking a way through that helps an adopted person to claim and embrace all parts of themselves, including their own complex feelings about being adopted. Reading (or listening to!) You Should Be Grateful is a great opportunity to reflect on the ways that perspectives on adoption grow and change along with the people who inhabit them. Angela does a beautiful job of asking hard questions, describing ideas through lived experiences, and centering adoptee stories as she explores the overlap of her identities.