The topic of adoption arises across many fields of studies, including social work, psychology, anthropology, and, of course, literature. Pitt’s English department has empowered a number of writers and scholars in the field of adoption studies, spearheaded by professor emerita, Marianne Novy. Some students who studied and graduated from Pitt’s MFA program have gone on to publish books that delve into the complicated experience of adoption, including Jennifer Kwon Dobbs (MFA 2001), Lori Jakiela (MFA 1993), and Jan Beatty (MFA 1990).
Adoption Studies: Finding Yourself
Adoption is a complicated process for everyone involved: The adopting family, the birth parent(s), extended family members, and most importantly, the adoptee. Growing up in a family they weren’t born into can be a confusing adjustment for many adoptees, even if they find joy in their adoptive families. This is where critical adoption studies comes in, shedding light on the multi-faceted reality of adoption.
Many works of literature, from novels to plays and poems, feature adoption stories. Many of these tales highlight adoptive figures and parents, thus shaping public opinion on the adoption process. In America, much of adoption is framed as a “saving” of a child from unfortunate circumstances, such as a life in foster care. But adoption studies validate the experiences of adopted children and families involved in adoption by showing the many difficulties that come with a family-shaping decision.
Pitt scholars and writers have challenged many of the generalizations that are made about adoption. Here, some adoptees have had the chance to reflect upon their own experiences in ways that they hadn’t previously.
Marianne Novy, a leader in adoption studies scholarship, came to Pitt’s English department in 1971, becoming a professor emerita in 2016. During her time at Pitt, she developed two courses that centered on adoption, including “Literature of Adoption” and “Changing Families in Literature.”
Novy’s brilliance and academic outreach spread across the English department, establishing her renown as an adoption studies scholar. Her work empowered that of other writers who made their way to Pitt for the MFA program. Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Lori Jakiela, and Jan Beatty all came to Pitt for their master’s degrees, engaging with the field of adoption studies in one way or another. The skills they learned at Pitt empowered them to reflect on their own adoption stories, resulting in significant publications by each author.
In recent years, Novy, Dobbs, Jakiela, and Beatty have published writing that engages with their identity as adoptees in one way or another. Through writing, many of them have found themselves and grown to understand their place in the world as adoptees searching for a sense of belonging.
Marianne Novy, Author of Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories
Critical adoption studies was accepted as a field of scholarship partially through Novy’s contributions—especially through the Alliance for the Study of Adoption & Culture (ASAC), which Novy co-founded in 1993 in conjunction with a panel presentation on the topic at the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention. Now the alliance holds their own interdisciplinary conference every other year, involving scholars and creatives who work with adoption across literature, art, film, law, history, and more.
Novy even made this work central to Pittsburgh with the Pittsburgh Consortium for Adoption Studies, which gathered scholars from a range of disciplines to discuss their interactions with adoption. Since 2008, the consortium has hosted film festivals among other events to delve into critical adoption studies.
Through critical adoption studies, Novy and other scholars question the assumptions that are made about adoption and “validate the experiences of adopted children [and families],” according to Novy.
“There are lots of generalizations that are made about adoption,” Novy noted. “That is, that it is a blessing, a rescue, that it is a happy ending of a story. And this is something that is really too simple.
Novy highlighted how, because of the way adoption is typically framed in the media, many adoptees “feel like they’re being told that they should be grateful.” This notion, however, can’t be true for every adoptee because the experience of being adopted is so complex. And this can be particularly true if a family is adopting a child who grows up “without seeing anyone who looks like them,” which Novy pointed out can be “a very painful situation to be in.”
Looking at adoption critically, for Novy, helped her to digest her own experiences as an adoptee and to recognize that there are important lessons to be learned from this area of study. When writing Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama (University of Michigan Press, 2007), she analyzed the ways in which adoption was presented in literature, picking up on the representation of women as simplified mothers—either all good or all bad.
“These are not good ways of looking at people in real life,” Novy said. “If you analyze this critically, it’s helpful for [everyone]—and not just for people who are adopted themselves. It’s also helpful for other people who have family, friends, or even just classmates who are adopted. That way they know better about what stereotypes are really inadequate to think about people with.”
While at Pitt, Novy was considered a leader in the field of adoption studies, introducing literature classes centered around adoption, including “Adoption in Literature,” which she also taught through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).
Novy has noticed that one of the best ways to learn about the realities of adoption is through memoirs, which is reflected in both Reading Adoption and in her new book, Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories (Temple University Press, 2024). The first book—which “really is partly memoir,” she said—is different from Adoption Memoirs, where the focus is less personal. Rather, her 2024 book is a critical study of memoirs by 45 different people impacted by adoption in one way or another, including birth mothers, adoptees, and adoptive parents. 
After having worked for eight years on this collection, which Novy began writing upon her retirement in 2016, her main goal is further expanding her library of adoption memoirs to read. She is particularly interested in learning about adoption stories from other countries and languages, because adoption studies is “a really big field, and it is so interesting to see.”
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Author of Paper Pavilion and Notes from a Missing Person
Kwon Dobbs, a 2001 graduate from Pitt’s MFA program in poetry, is a poet and adoption studies scholar. Before coming to Pitt, she studied during her undergraduate career at Oklahoma State University.
Kwon Dobbs was born in Wonju, Korea, adopted as an infant, and grew up in a small town near Tulsa, Oklahoma. A first-generation college student, she never truly encountered diversity until she went to college. While getting her college education, she began thinking about her own position in the world.
When Kwon Dobbs was growing up, much of Asian American literature was centered around immigration—but not adoption. This lack of representation made Kwon Dobbs wary about writing her own experiences, which revolved around adoption. Yet this all changed while she was pursuing her Pitt degree; here, Kwon Dobbs was introduced to several mentors—including Novy, Beatty, and the late Pitt faculty member and MFA alumnus Jeff Oaks—who encouraged her to explore her own identity as a transnational adoptee.
“Reading their work, getting to know them, [I was] feeling encouragement to write in these directions I felt compelled to write in but felt scared to pursue. [It] opened up for me this feeling that I could do this, and that there’s community to do this work,” Kwon Dobbs said.
Around the same time, Kwon Dobbs officially adopted the name “Jennifer Kwon Dobbs” to reflect her adoption records.
“I began writing from this place of experience and not knowing, which is the condition of being adopted,” she said. “I decided that I didn’t want to pass as a white person on the page, potentially. So, I changed my name to ‘Jennifer Kwon Dobbs [허수진].'
Kwon Dobbs first wrote about adoption during a poetry workshop at Pitt with Ed Ochester, who headed the Writing program for two decades and passed away in 2023. There, she wrote “Terms of Adoption,” which is a braided narrative that she calls her “first serious poem.”
The poem was published in 5 AM, as were other poems that appear in her first book, Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press, 2007), recipient of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. This collection of poems explores Kwon Dobbs’s history as a transnational adoptee, using both English and Korean language in her poetry to explore herself.
For Kwon Dobbs, her adoption narrative is an epistemology of who she is as a whole person. “I realized adoption didn’t have to be an identity of a stock narrative that was on me to create, but instead could inform ways of knowing, ways of not knowing,” she said. Since then, Kwon Dobbs integrates her history of adoption into the whole picture of herself.
Kwon Dobbs’ contributions to the realm of adoption literature likely would not have been possible without the help of Novy, who Kwon Dobbs considers a lifelong friend. Novy first reached out to her during her second year in the MFA program to give her book recommendations and invite her to learn more about adoption-focused writers and scholars emerging in and around the Pittsburgh area. “I feel like so much of what I learned from Marianne created a foundation I’ve taken with me going forward,” Kwon Dobbs said. 
Kwon Dobbs said that, because of Novy’s support for her creative process, she was empowered to pursue her PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. Since then, Novy has invited Kwon Dobbs to speak on panels for the MLA and the ASAC, and the pair has worked on numerous projects together outside of adoption studies.
Now, Kwon Dobbs serves as an associate dean of Interdisciplinary and General Studies, as well as a professor of English and Race, Ethnic, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Minnesota is a key U.S. location for Korean American adoptee diasporic communities, serving, she says, as “a center of creative intellectual work.” Because of this characterization, Kwon Dobbs feels very fortunate to be based there for her career.
Kwon Dobbs is working on her third collection of poetry alongside Paper Pavilion and Notes from A Missing Person (Essay Press, 2015). Across her writing, she is interested in the ways that family histories are reshaped through the process of adoption. Further, she explores how adjacency and white supremacy interact when it comes to adoption.
Much of her writing is enabled through the things she learned while at Pitt, Kwon Dobbs said. “I’m really grateful to the University of Pittsburgh for all the ways that it really gave me a space to create myself as the poet, scholar, community member I am today.”
Lori Jakiela, Author of Belief is its own kind of truth, Maybe
Lori Jakiela, who graduated from Pitt’s MFA poetry program in 1993, uses writing to sort out her thoughts. This helps her understand the world around her—something that she hopes can be translated to others. This is reminiscent in her 2015 memoir, Belief is its own kind of truth, Maybe (Atticus Books, 2015; Autumn House Press, 2019), which follows Jakiela through the process of mapping out her life as an adoptee.
The narrative is nonlinear, displaying firsthand experiences with her biological and adoptive families through prose and poetry. Jakiela went on an “adoption search” for her medical records, which, as most adoptees may know, is difficult to do. “It got very complicated, very messy, very fast,” Jakiela said. Yet, as she was uncovering her history, she realized that all her writing about her experiences was actually turning into a book.
The fragmented style of Belief reflects Jakiela’s own mind, which was juggling tons of information when she was writing the memoir. “That was just sort of how I could write it,” Jakiela said. She hoped that readers would understand the fragmented style and feel the entire process, which truly was “kind of a whiplash experience.”
The feeling of whiplash is common for adoptees in their lives, which can often feel “fragmented” in one way or another. “There’s just all these holes, all these questions that will never really be answered,” Jakiela said. “There’s always the first part of your life—you have no idea … you’re sort of reliant on stories that you’re told about your life. But for adopted people, that’s amplified, because you don’t have the original source to ask, even to give you those kinds of stories. So, there’s this hole in your life.”
That’s where she got the idea for the book’s title. Believing, even in something that may not be entirely true, gives someone something to stand on rather than shaky, questionable grounds.
“Whatever we need to believe to be allows us to go on living, even if it may not be true at all,” Jakiela said. “It really is just this idea, ‘I’ve settled on believing this thing, and this is my narrative now.'
Writing Belief helped Jakiela process her emotions in real time, which is a testament to the power of writing overall, she said. Despite having complicated relationships with her family, writing about them helped her to see them for what they were through her adoption search.
“It’s your obligation as a writer to find the softness wherever—you have to have empathy, right?” Jakiela said. “I struggled with that … because I was so angry and hurt. It really allowed me to empathize and feel the pain that I think [my birth mother] might have felt.”
Jakiela finds that writing is rooted in “a desire to not feel alone in the world.” Writing a memoir can be especially difficult because there is no veil of fiction, but it also gives others access to a story they might need to hear.
“By writing our stories, we allow other people to start to tell their stories,” Jakiela said. “They may not have ever done that, and I like to think it’s a healing thing. I like to think it’s something that makes us connected and less isolated, less alone.” />
In writing the memoir, Jakiela was able to sort through her own experiences and truly reflect on her life, something which is at the core of adoption studies. Before her adoption search, she had never fully grappled with the ways being an adoptee had actually changed her.
Yet, through skills she developed during her time in Pitt’s MFA program, she learned “how to be honest on the page” and thus, honest with herself. “They certainly laid the groundwork for me in that program,” Jakiela said.
Before Belief, Jakiela somewhat rejected the idea that she was “special in any way,” pushing her away from adoption studies. Once she began her research for the memoir, however, Jakiela was 
introduced to Novy, who soon invited Jakiela to speak to one of her classes on adoption at Pitt. Novy has included her extensive analysis of Belief in Adoption Memoirs. To Jakiela, it is “such an honor to have her even read it, and blurb it, and then to actually spend time thinking about it.”
Currently, Jakiela is the director of Pitt Greensburg’s Creative and Professional Writing Program, where she also is a professor for the English and Writing programs. She teaches a series of courses that she designed in “Writing and Healing Arts,” which addresses a certain topic each semester. This past fall, the focus was “Writing Childhood,” where adoption (obviously) came up. There are other installments, including “Writing through and about Trauma,” “Writing and the Body,” “Writing as Play/Experimental Forms,” and “Writing in the World.”
“It’s just really a way for people to write about things that they maybe haven’t had a chance to write about,” Jakiela said. “They’re less craft driven, more like, ‘let’s get down to what you need to say.’”
Teaching, for Jakiela, has constantly reminded her that “as a writer, what you do matters, and it can help people.” In her classes, students open up and tell hard stories while simultaneously supporting one another. From students who are adoptees to those who have experienced trauma to just those looking to write a good poem, she is constantly reminded that “at our core, maybe we’re good.”
Jan Beatty, Author of American Bastard
Beatty graduated from Pitt with an MFA in poetry in 1990. Before that, she was a social worker, a waitress, and tried going to the Iowa Writers Workshop—but it wasn’t until she met the late Pitt professor, Ed Ochester, that she became confident about publishing her writing. Eventually, he became her good friend, editor, and advisor, encouraging her to publish her memoir, American Bastard (Red Hen Press, 2021).
American Bastard was a work in progress for about 20 years, but Beatty kept at it because “it was one of those things that had to be done. ... I knew that I knew things that no one else knew, except for adoptees,” she said. Her identity as an adoptee was often accompanied with feelings of being lost, something that is emphasized throughout the memoir.
The dedication in American Bastard is for “the lost ones who never knew where they came from,” which resonates with adoptees, Beatty said. With repeated mentions of “a fake child” and a “ghost in the story,” Beatty reveals the weight that adoption has on adoptees, who feel like they never have a true place of belonging.
“I didn’t learn my [real] name until I was in my thirties, and so it’s like I was wandering around not knowing where I came from,” Beatty said. “That’s something you really can’t explain to people. Your name, your history has been erased, and you’re supposed to be happy about it.”
Beatty was six years old when she found out she was adopted, but she didn’t know the impact that adoption truly had on her until she was an adult. She denied the feelings of loss that she felt throughout her twenties until eventually realizing “this [was] a big loss for [her], and it’s a primary lifelong loss and a defining nature of [her] existence.”
Despite Western culture pushing adoption narratives filled with lots of sentimentality and luck, Beatty knew that she needed to talk about her story. “I was very aware that I was going against cultural norms—but there’s no way I was going to write a book that wasn’t true,” she said. Her goal was to write something authentic, to “present a picture of how it was, and how adoption can be.”
Because adoption is a core part of Beatty’s identity, it constantly arises across her writing. With 11 published poetry collections and books, including American Bastard, Beatty acknowledges that “there’s probably something of adoption in all my books,” even if she wasn’t aware of it at the time of writing.
When American Bastard was released, Novy invited Beatty to give a reading of her memoir to a class that Novy was teaching. The pair had spoken about adoption before and have both been supportive of each other’s s tories.
After graduating from Pitt in 1990, Beatty did some private teaching before finding her way to Carlow University, where she became the director of Madwomen in the Attic, a creative writing workshop for women ages 18-99 to openly write. During her time at Carlow, she was a tenured professor in the English department, director of Creative Writing, and director of the MFA program.
Now, after retiring to faculty emerita from Carlow in 2022, Beatty is still writing. She’s halfway through another book and continues writing poetry, which she foresees she will always be doing. Beatty imagines that her future writing will still be involved with adoption, because “it’ll always rise, in one way or another.”
—Briana Bindus
Briana Bindus, associate editor for The Fifth Floor, is a junior pursuing a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in English Literature and Communications. She believes in empowering all voices, which she aims to do through her passion for journalism.