Piece Comment

Review of Dear Birth Mother


This is a piece that humanizes what can be a touchy issue: bi-racial adoption. It was intense to hear from an adoption lawyer say that it agencies lower the cost of adopting black babies because it's so much harder to get them adopted. What moved me the most in this piece were Suzanne's interactions with her daughter Loretta's birth mother (whose identity is not revealed). Those interactions brought emotion into what could seem like a strangely businesslike transaction. Listen for the end, when the birth mother answeres Suzanne's questions about herself and her family that Suzanne can later tell to Loretta when she gets older. I like that the piece was narrated by Suzanne, though she seemed slightly wooden at times, like she was reciting something rather than telling a story. But overall a moving, intense piece.