Adopted Babies, Adopted Identities

This is Not My Narrative

My office mate and chief idea-discussion-partner D. asks,  “Do we give birth to an identity, or do we adopt an identity?” I am perhaps at once exactly the wrong person to answer this question and exactly the right person to answer the question, having been adopted, having had my adoption, my identity, my various identities as a Cone, a DiStefano, an adopted child, a meant-to-be-member-of-the-family blurred over so sweetly, so smoothly by narrative, by identity construction, so as not to ever really feel adopted. D. says “We adopt, over and over–multiple identities. The adoption is never fixed. Adopting multiple identities is like being born over and over and over again–constant yous being created and then constant theys-readers–being created.”

And then he says, “All autobiography is always already in a state of becoming, always in delivery, always about to be born, always becoming.”

And again, exactly right and exactly wrong. Our…

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