The Orphan Keeper is a story about a boy from India who is kidnapped and placed in an orphanage, and then adopted by a family in the United States. The story begins with Chellamuthu's early childhood, which is a mix of memories and realistic fictionalized events that may have occurred or were typical of this time period and location. While waiting for his father to complete some business, Chellamuthu is kidnapped at about age 7 and taken to an orphanage under the impression that he has no living family. Despite Chellamuthu's attempts to alert the organizers to the fact that he has a family, he is eventually adopted to a family in the states in a fairly sketchy adoption. Chellamuthu's adoptive parents provide him a home and family and support him but also make some mistakes that affect him for most of his life.
I have read a lot of adoption memoirs, it is a sub-genre that I am a little obsessed with, so I know that there are many different challenges adoptive parents and children face and that depending on what decade, from what country and what age the child may have been, there is a lot of room for error, thus the importance of a more thorough adoption process which we have today.
Here are some of the problems that I would hope would be avoided today:
1) Chellamuthu's adoptive parents were lied to - told that he was 3 years old not 7-9.
2) Chellamuthu was not actually an orphan and there were search parties looking for him while he was being adopted.
3) Birth order/age recommendations were ignored when they are actually extremely important for creating a family of adopted children.
4) The population of Chellamuthu's teachers, classmates and neighbours were almost completely white and he experienced significant racism and no cultural education growing up.
5) Chellamuthu's adoptive parents did not choose a name with any significance, was based on a tourist destination that was not remotely near where he grew up, and was found in a National Geographic magazine.... also the reason to rename him was to help stop the bullying and racism that was taking place at his school rather than addressing the issue with administration or supporting Chellamuthu in making choices related to his life.
6) Once Chellamuthu's parents found out that he was not an orphan they did not tell him anything about his adoptive country or about the fact that his birth parents may still be alive.
7) Chellamuthu had to go to England and live with a billet family in order to learn about his Indian culture.
8) There were essentially no records of anything related to his adoption available to look at in either the United States or India.
I'm sure there were more issues... this book is full of issues related to adoption. While I think that his adoptive parents did the best that they could with their limited knowledge of Indian culture and their limited support and resources from social services, these problems had a variety of different detrimental affects on Chellamuthu's life. It is my hope that people read books like this one and realize that this is what not to do when adopting so that they can be better prepared for that journey should the time or opportunity one day come for them.
This edition is a young readers edition and while I have not read the adult version so I can't make comparisons, I do feel that this book is interesting for both young and adult readers. The book is very well written and easy to comprehend. Despite some jumping back and forth in time periods and locations, it is easy to follow. The storyline is interesting and captivating, especially closer to the end when he begins a search for family. I would recommend this book to middle and highschool grade teachers interested in exploring racism and the "white saviour" mindset that was common in the past and still shines through today. I would also recommend this book to anyone interested in adoption memoirs, stories about finding lost family members and coming of age stories for teens and adults who have experienced traumatic childhoods. I so appreciate Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this awesome book!
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