In West Berkeley's historic Sawtooth Building. David Schein is on a West Coast reading tour of his novel, The Adoption. He recently completed a book tour that took him from Vermont to New Orleans, Chicago and New York.
The Adoption is a coming of age story that tracks the lives of Ethiopian children growing up in Ethiopia and the USA. It portrays their cross-cultural realities and illusions in the age of the internet. David Schein directed a troupe of street-kids in Ethiopia in the One Love AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater for many years. They toured markets in rural Ethiopia and did shows about AIDS and gender equality. Schein is still very close to many of the children. Four now live in the USA and many now have children of their own. His Ethiopian friends tell him that these stories have not yet been told.
The Adoption has been published by Fomite Press in Vermont. It is a big book, 435 pages - not including a family tree, a list of 40 to 50 characters and an English/Amharic glossary. It contains 50 short chapters and spans from 1998 to 2019. It entirely avoids the objective voice; the chapters are either dialogues, or monologues and continuity is provided in captions below chapter headings.
Synopsis: The Adoption begins with the birth and subsequent adoption of a girl baby, Kalkidane, by a mixed-race Chicago couple, Lisa and Marc. Early on in the novel, puzzled at the repetitive depictions in their little girls' drawings of a one legged man and a mother holding children, Lisa and Marc find out the truth; the adoption was corrupt, Kalkidane is not an orphan. The American family locates her Ethiopian family and at this point the book takes off, alternating between Kalkidane's life in Chicago and her sibling's lives in Ethiopia. The book focuses on four girls and two boys as they grow up, Kalkidane in Chicago, and in Ethiopia; her sisters Lushan and Selam, Genet, a street girl who befriends Selam when she runs away from home, Geta, the younger brother, who becomes a leader of a nonviolent student movement in Ethiopia, and a male cousin, Fikir, a talented gymnast, who manages to get out of Ethiopia to the USA, only to get in trouble and be deported back to Ethiopia. Kalkidane yearns for the culture she was snatched from and is torn by her "privilege." Her Ethiopian sisters fight to get an education and avoid "cutting," abduction, indentured employment in the Emirates and forced marriage. Kalkidane, outraged by police killings in Chicago, returns to Ethiopia to find her "real' country" and joins her siblings at a huge demonstration on Bob Marley's Birthday in Shashamene, ground zero for the Rastah One Love movement.
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The Adoption is a coming of age story that tracks the lives of Ethiopian children growing up in Ethiopia and the USA. It portrays their cross-cultural realities and illusions in the age of the internet. David Schein directed a troupe of street-kids in Ethiopia in the One Love AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater for many years. They toured markets in rural Ethiopia and did shows about AIDS and gender equality. Schein is still very close to many of the children. Four now live in the USA and many now have children of their own. His Ethiopian friends tell him that these stories have not yet been told.
The Adoption has been published by Fomite Press in Vermont. It is a big book, 435 pages - not including a family tree, a list of 40 to 50 characters and an English/Amharic glossary. It contains 50 short chapters and spans from 1998 to 2019. It entirely avoids the objective voice; the chapters are either dialogues, or monologues and continuity is provided in captions below chapter headings.
Synopsis: The Adoption begins with the birth and subsequent adoption of a girl baby, Kalkidane, by a mixed-race Chicago couple, Lisa and Marc. Early on in the novel, puzzled at the repetitive depictions in their little girls' drawings of a one legged man and a mother holding children, Lisa and Marc find out the truth; the adoption was corrupt, Kalkidane is not an orphan. The American family locates her Ethiopian family and at this point the book takes off, alternating between Kalkidane's life in Chicago and her sibling's lives in Ethiopia. The book focuses on four girls and two boys as they grow up, Kalkidane in Chicago, and in Ethiopia; her sisters Lushan and Selam, Genet, a street girl who befriends Selam when she runs away from home, Geta, the younger brother, who becomes a leader of a nonviolent student movement in Ethiopia, and a male cousin, Fikir, a talented gymnast, who manages to get out of Ethiopia to the USA, only to get in trouble and be deported back to Ethiopia. Kalkidane yearns for the culture she was snatched from and is torn by her "privilege." Her Ethiopian sisters fight to get an education and avoid "cutting," abduction, indentured employment in the Emirates and forced marriage. Kalkidane, outraged by police killings in Chicago, returns to Ethiopia to find her "real' country" and joins her siblings at a huge demonstration on Bob Marley's Birthday in Shashamene, ground zero for the Rastah One Love movement.
In West Berkeley's historic Sawtooth Building. David Schein is on a West Coast reading tour of his novel, The Adoption. He recently completed a book tour that took him from Vermont to New Orleans, Chicago and New York.
The Adoption is a coming of age story that tracks the lives of Ethiopian children growing up in Ethiopia and the USA. It portrays their cross-cultural realities and illusions in the age of the internet. David Schein directed a troupe of street-kids in Ethiopia in the One Love AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater for many years. They toured markets in rural Ethiopia and did shows about AIDS and gender equality. Schein is still very close to many of the children. Four now live in the USA and many now have children of their own. His Ethiopian friends tell him that these stories have not yet been told.
The Adoption has been published by Fomite Press in Vermont. It is a big book, 435 pages - not including a family tree, a list of 40 to 50 characters and an English/Amharic glossary. It contains 50 short chapters and spans from 1998 to 2019. It entirely avoids the objective voice; the chapters are either dialogues, or monologues and continuity is provided in captions below chapter headings.
Synopsis: The Adoption begins with the birth and subsequent adoption of a girl baby, Kalkidane, by a mixed-race Chicago couple, Lisa and Marc. Early on in the novel, puzzled at the repetitive depictions in their little girls' drawings of a one legged man and a mother holding children, Lisa and Marc find out the truth; the adoption was corrupt, Kalkidane is not an orphan. The American family locates her Ethiopian family and at this point the book takes off, alternating between Kalkidane's life in Chicago and her sibling's lives in Ethiopia. The book focuses on four girls and two boys as they grow up, Kalkidane in Chicago, and in Ethiopia; her sisters Lushan and Selam, Genet, a street girl who befriends Selam when she runs away from home, Geta, the younger brother, who becomes a leader of a nonviolent student movement in Ethiopia, and a male cousin, Fikir, a talented gymnast, who manages to get out of Ethiopia to the USA, only to get in trouble and be deported back to Ethiopia. Kalkidane yearns for the culture she was snatched from and is torn by her "privilege." Her Ethiopian sisters fight to get an education and avoid "cutting," abduction, indentured employment in the Emirates and forced marriage. Kalkidane, outraged by police killings in Chicago, returns to Ethiopia to find her "real' country" and joins her siblings at a huge demonstration on Bob Marley's Birthday in Shashamene, ground zero for the Rastah One Love movement.
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The Adoption is a coming of age story that tracks the lives of Ethiopian children growing up in Ethiopia and the USA. It portrays their cross-cultural realities and illusions in the age of the internet. David Schein directed a troupe of street-kids in Ethiopia in the One Love AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater for many years. They toured markets in rural Ethiopia and did shows about AIDS and gender equality. Schein is still very close to many of the children. Four now live in the USA and many now have children of their own. His Ethiopian friends tell him that these stories have not yet been told.
The Adoption has been published by Fomite Press in Vermont. It is a big book, 435 pages - not including a family tree, a list of 40 to 50 characters and an English/Amharic glossary. It contains 50 short chapters and spans from 1998 to 2019. It entirely avoids the objective voice; the chapters are either dialogues, or monologues and continuity is provided in captions below chapter headings.
Synopsis: The Adoption begins with the birth and subsequent adoption of a girl baby, Kalkidane, by a mixed-race Chicago couple, Lisa and Marc. Early on in the novel, puzzled at the repetitive depictions in their little girls' drawings of a one legged man and a mother holding children, Lisa and Marc find out the truth; the adoption was corrupt, Kalkidane is not an orphan. The American family locates her Ethiopian family and at this point the book takes off, alternating between Kalkidane's life in Chicago and her sibling's lives in Ethiopia. The book focuses on four girls and two boys as they grow up, Kalkidane in Chicago, and in Ethiopia; her sisters Lushan and Selam, Genet, a street girl who befriends Selam when she runs away from home, Geta, the younger brother, who becomes a leader of a nonviolent student movement in Ethiopia, and a male cousin, Fikir, a talented gymnast, who manages to get out of Ethiopia to the USA, only to get in trouble and be deported back to Ethiopia. Kalkidane yearns for the culture she was snatched from and is torn by her "privilege." Her Ethiopian sisters fight to get an education and avoid "cutting," abduction, indentured employment in the Emirates and forced marriage. Kalkidane, outraged by police killings in Chicago, returns to Ethiopia to find her "real' country" and joins her siblings at a huge demonstration on Bob Marley's Birthday in Shashamene, ground zero for the Rastah One Love movement.
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