The Healing Promise of Adoptions: Revisiting a Foundational American Myth through News of the World

Year 2021, Issue: 55, 3 - 26, 01.05.2021

Elizabeth Joan Abele

Abstract

The 2020 release of News of the World, adapted by Paul
Greengrass, returns to the American cultural trope of white-Indian
adoption to the big screen. These adoption narratives, in film and
literature, offer the promise of healing, though the adoption more often
benefits the white community and adoptive parents over the Indian
community and child. While these texts may acknowledge the decline
of a particular Indian tribe, they generally celebrate how the individuals
and the community may be stronger by remembering what has been
lost, through the new family connections. This essay examines this
recent film in the context of this Hollywood and literary tradition –
looking particularly at the novels The Bean Trees (1988) and Pigs in
Heaven (1993) by Barbara Kingsolver and Indian Killer (1996) and
Flight (2007) by Sherman Alexie.

Keywords

adoption, American Indian, trauma, film, contemporary literature

References

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