Mother Can You Hear Me?

Betty Allen is an adoptee and activist friend from NJ. I haven't seen her in years but she remember her best for her guitar playing and singing folk songs...especially the clever ones she made up about open records she played at some demonstrations such as this one, to the tune of Mr. Tambourine Man:

Hey, Mr. Legislator, pass a bill for me.
I'm adopted- I don't know my own birth history.
Hey, Mr. Legislator, pass a bill for me.
Give me access to my name and my reality.

I just finished re-reading her book, after buying a copy online - used - for a friend who I know would like it. I was so glad to read it again. It was every bit as good the second time around - no far better. Warm and sensitive.

Mother Can You Hear Me?: The extraordinary true story of an adopted daughter's reunion with her birth mother after fifty years of separation by Elizabeth Cooper Allen is one of the best written and most sensitive memoirs of an adoptee search and reunion as ever has been written before or since.

Find it online used...it's a good read even for someone with no connection with or interest in the subject of adoption. It resonated with me on many levels.