Beggars and Choosers

A new book, a photographic essay

Rickie Solinger, author of "Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade" (1992, 2d ed. 2000), has a new book in 2001, "Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the U.S."

In "Susie", Solinger showed how, in the decades after World Ward II, the treatment of unwed mothers was determined by race. Starting in the 1940s, unmarried African-American women who had babies were targeted for punishment (including incarceration, sterilization, and removal from public assistance) by politicians in all regions of the country. Almost all of these girls and women of color kept and raised their own babies even while politicians and policy makers excoriated them for "excessive" reproduction. Unmarried white women who gave birth to "illegitimate" babies were, increasingly, spirited away from their homes and communities, placed in maternity homes and told that they had to relinquish their babies for adoption. This was the beginning of the "adoption market" in the United States.

In the central section of "Beggars and Choosers", Solinger revisits the component of white women upon whom this social engineering experiment was performed - the girls and women roughly pressed to give up their babies in the postwar years - and explores the aftermath of coerced surrender.

Solinger, who worked with three Denver artists to make an "art installation" to go with "Susie" (a show that has now traveled to 50 college and university art galleries in the U.S.), is now putting together a photography show to go with her new book. She is seeking photographs for this exhibition, to be called "Beggars and Choosers: Motherhood is Not a Class Privilege in America."

For information about the book, the photography show, and how to submit materials, visit the Beggars and Choosers web site or see purchase information.

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