Endorsements
Rose City Reader recommended Creole Son as one of six gift-worthy books for its readers to buy for Christmas 2020.
Read more about it.
Jane Friedman, Oakland, Ca. Marco's first grade teacher.
"Over the years we had many adoptive families at our school and your research and thinking would have deepened our understanding and made us better teachers for these kids."
Marianne Novy, Professor Emerita of English, University of Pittsburgh, co-founder, Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture."
"No previous memoir by an adoptive parent carries the story of an adoptee and their relationship so far into the adoptee’s adulthood."
Andrew Solomon is the National Book Award winning author of Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Among other books, he wrote the prize-winning Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity which was made into a documentary film. In the Introduction, he says:
“This is both a rigorous and a brave volume, both a meticulous study of behavioral genetics and a deeply personal story of the complex relationship between the author and her adopted son, Marco. It explores cultural touchstones such as race, addiction, and love, and it does so with compassion and sadness. . . . This is a book about the same lessons learned two ways: painfully, by living them; and restoratively, by studying them. Kay Trimberger is given to neither effusion nor self-pity, and her intellectual nature frames this book, but the emotions nonetheless run high.”
David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy: a father’s journey through his son’s addiction which was made into a major film. He has written other books on addiction and is recognized as a national expert who speaks to a wide audience.
"Is addiction caused by genetics or the environment? E. Kay Trimbeger discovered the hard way that it’s both. In her riveting book, she shares her family’s journey, which sheds light on the issues faced by many of those raising children who struggle with great challenges. Most important, she offers hope and a new way forward. "
Jenea Neiderhiser is president of the Behavior Genetics Association, Professor of Psychology at Penn State University, co-author of the textbook Behavioral Genetics and many research articles. She is an adoptee.
"This is a story told from the heart about the love between a mother and her son and her struggles to understand him. This is about adoption and the challenges that families can face despite the best of intentions. Dr. Trimberger has managed to weave together science and the story of her adopted son in a way that anyone can understand. This book, in the end, is about how heredity and environment are intertwined and can help to provide hope and guidance to other adoptive families."
Ilene Philipson has doctorates in Sociology, Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, She is in private practice in Oakland, CA and is the author of Married to the Job: Why We Live to Work and What We Can Do About It and other books and articles,
"In Creole Son, sociologist Kay Trimberger offers essential insights into the challenges facing adoptive parents and their children today. Weaving together in exquisite detail her personal experience of adopting a mixed-race son together with crucial findings from the field of behavioral genetics, Trimberger provides an invaluable text for understanding the complexities involved in adoption. Therapists will find this a foundational resource for working with both adoptive parents and adoptees, and an absorbing and accessible guide for their patients."
Adam Pertman is the author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming our Families – and America. He is an adoptive parent and President of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency
''Kay Trimberger’s personal, intriguing book makes an important contribution to the literature on adoption. It lays out a compelling case for progressing beyond the current best practice of open adoption toward a genuine Extended Family of Adoption, in which ongoing relationships among all the child’s relatives – by birth or through adoption – become the norm."
Meredith Minkler, Professor Emerita of Public Health, UC Berkeley and author of Grandmothers as Caretakers: Raising Children of the Crack Cocaine Epidemic and other books and articles. She is an adoptive parent.
"Creole Son beautifully interweaves the growing evidence on the role of genetic factors in our adoption journeys. This will be an immensely helpful and deeply personal book for so many, and one I've been looking for these past 28 years. "
The New Single Woman
“A much needed breath of fresh air. Women have been in bondage to the dream of the “soul-mate” for far too long, and Kay Trimberger gives us the inspiration and insight to get on with our lives. ”
“This fascinating study is the perfect antidote to the onslaught of books telling women to marry or be miserable. The women Trimberger depicts have complex and interesting lives enriched by a wide variety of relationships— with children, family, lovers and most of all friends. Must reading for the single, the coupled, and everyone in between ”
“In this thoughtful book Trimberger explores with openness and grace the experience of single women in a soul-mate culture Whether you have a soul-mate, you’re looking for one, or you don’t and you’re not, this is a book that explores and expands the notion of human fulfillment.”
“This is an invaluable study, one that traces, most plausibly, the bittersweet experience—filled with contradiction and surprise—of the women caught up in the changing social norms achieved by thirty years of feminist influence. I applaud the entire project.”
“Living a meaningful and rich single life is not a taboo topic, but it might as well be. For all the books and films about the agony of being alone, there is a strange absence in both the popular media and scholarly literature of whole, actualized lives lived single. This remarkable book speaks to the undertheorized condition of many Americans in a sympathetic rendering with neither apology nor ideological axe to grind.”
