Tree of Strangers
Reviewed by: Caroline Barron
Tree of Strangers is a powerful read that could lead to fundamental change.
Author:
Barbara Sumner
Publisher:
Massey University Press
ISBN:
9780995135406
Date Published:
10 September 2020
Pages:
240
Format:
Hardback
RRP:
$35.00
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Perhaps initially conceived out of closed-adoption activism, Barbara Sumner’s Tree of Strangers is, through her sharp intellect and exquisitely cinematic writing, a book of far greater social and literary importance.
Born, then transacted to her adopting parents, in 1960, and now in her 60s, Sumner writes of her early-20s life—three young children and a loveless marriage in a house in the West Coast bush of Runanga. The dual experiences of that marriage’s end and finding out her birth mother’s name, somehow inevitably intertwined. Her mother plans to fly to New Zealand from Spain to meet Sumner, but tragedy strikes so she never arrives. Sumner cannot shake the feeling that she somehow caused this. The remainder of the book follows her struggle both to untangle who her mother and father are and access her adoption file.
But before I go on, let’s talk about the physical beauty of the book. Lifting off the matt green dust jacket reveals a bright yellow hard cover and hopeful, tangerine-coloured endpapers. The book is unusually compact and light—small enough to carry in your pocket—striking me as vade mecum of sorts; a closed-adoption field guide.
Sumner is an award-winning documentary producer. Her 2009 film This Way of Life, about a Māori family of horse breeders living in the remote Ruahine Ranges, was shortlisted for an Oscar and won 12 international awards. Thank goodness I know this, and that her beloved husband Tom is beside her making films, because I spent much of the book worrying about Sumner. Especially those Runanga years. “Run, Barbara, run,” I whispered, as her then husband and a priest held her down in an attempt to exorcise her demons. The only demon, she now knows, is the one that prevented her from accessing her original birth certificate and adoption file: the system.
At the heart of the book is admonishment for the 1955 Adoption Act, a piece of moralistic New Zealand legislation from a time when women were stigmatised for having babies out of wedlock. In a recent interview with John Campbell — who has taken up Sumner’s cause with gusto — she calls for new legislation that allows adopted people choice; to choose to know who their parents are and to have access to their original birth certificate and adoption file.
Adoption is a process handled by adults but it is the child, and subsequent generations, who bear the consequences. Perhaps it is time, Sumner suggests, to hand some of that power back to the affected child.
I kept stumbling across moments of serendipity between Sumner’s story and my own. I am not adopted but my father was. He died in 1996 aged 50 never knowing who his birth parents were. And the Maysie referenced in the first chapter, is both the woman who helped Sumner figure out who her fashion model mother is, and the woman whose business I took over in 2000 and ran for a decade. Therefore, the impactful life of Maysie Bestall-Cohen features in not one but two memoirs this year— Sumner’s and my own.
Sumner admits early in the book she was diagnosed with generalised dissociative identity disorder, symptoms of which are fragmented memories and a feeling that the world is unreal. ‘Daydreaming on steroids,’ she calls it. In adoption circles, it’s called ‘the fog’. Her writing mirrors this surreal atmosphere and at times it felt as though I was swimming beneath the surface, buoyed by an undercurrent of the imagined or the subconscious, grasping at the tails of her silver fish memories.
Also common for adopted people is an imaginative ability to fill in the gaps. There are several scenes—her mother’s plane taking off from a Spanish airport, her mother’s husband and daughters watching from the terminal—that, in reality, she never experienced. This adds a sheen of sorcery, a touch of madness, to the writing. But after the covers were closed, I decided these are merely qualities of a gifted artist.
The dilemma of writing memoir is determining what is your story to tell and what belongs to others. If a writer chooses to ‘go there’ and write part of a story others might deem as trespassing on their lives, the writer may bear consequences of anger, estrangement or abuse. It is clear Sumner has considered this deeply—if it happened to her then it’s fair game—but still, some of it makes for uncomfortable reading. She feels as though she never quite belongs in her adopting family and it is the stripped-bare honesty of recounting this relationship that made my stomach lurch.
Mavis’s parenting was competent and practical, Sumner writes, yet, “The mysterious and strange works of the heart were missing.” Everyone loses, Sumner writes: Mavis, because Barbara is the ‘replacement’ baby she lost due to miscarriage; and Sumner because she is stripped of her authentic identity. “We do not exist at all, except as misshapen fruit grafted onto the tree of strangers.”
When Mavis and Max one day send a letter advising Sumner that they are dissociating from her, my heart broke for all three of them. From the beginning, Max and Mavis were told to treat Sumner as if she was their own. By seeking out her true identity, Sumner ceased playing the expected role of a grateful adopted person. At times I winced at Sumner’s relentless testing of the love between her and Max and Mavis. Yet it is this very determination to cast adoption in its true light that will, and I am sure of this, impact legislatorial change.
As the daughter of an adopted person this book deeply affected me. In recent years, I have come to know each branch of the biological tree from which my father came and, like Sumner, this has positively impacted my sense of identity. Having said that, this does not change the fact that even though the people who raised my father—Grandma and Grandpa—were from a tree of strangers, their grafting to Dad, his adopted sister, and therefore me, was one of the successful ones. I know for sure, though, that had Dad lived, like Sumner, he would have wanted the choice to be able to access to his authentic identity.
Caroline Barron
