Jan Beatty - American Bastard

American Bastard

Copyright 2021 by Jan Beatty

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

Book layout by Mark E. Cull

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Beatty, Jan, 1952 author.

Title: American bastard : a memoir : Jan Beatty.

Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021015905 (print) | LCCN 2021015906 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597098786 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781636280127 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Beatty, Jan, 1952 | Authors, American20th centuryBiography. | AdopteesUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC PS3552.E179 Z46 2021 (print) | LCC PS3552.E179 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015905

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015906

The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

First Edition

Published by Red Hen Press

www.redhen.org

More Praise for American Bastard

American Bastard has it all: dazzling craft, a resonant story, and an unflinching honesty, the essential ingredient transforming a work into a work of art. This deep dive into the emotional world of an adoptee and her struggle to find the missing and unresolved parts of herself left behind on the day of her adoption is at once disturbing and hypnotic. American Bastard is a balancing act, a hybrid work blending prose and poetry that threatens to unravel on the page as the author searches for her history, her identity, and her place in the world.

Nikki Moustaki , author of Extremely Lightweight Guns

American Bastard dares and succeeds at reimaging and redefining memoir as a genre where stream of consciousness meets essay, meets magical realism, meets report-age, meets poetry to create an epic mosaic only possible through the literary genius of Jan Beatty. And as if that werent enough, an enthralling yet gracious expos about adoption that confronts and educates us through a voice that is at times tender and broken, at times angry and fierce, but always unflinchingly honest with herself, the people in her life, and her readers.

Richard Blanco , author of The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Memoir

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge the following journals in which excerpts first appeared, sometimes in different forms:

Black Tongue Review , Creative Nonfiction , HeArt , Paterson Literary Review , Poetry , Rattle , and San Diego Poetry Annual .

Other excerpts have appeared in different forms in the following books and anthology:

Boneshaker , Jackknife: New and Selected Poems , Mad River , Red Sugar , The Body Wars , The Switching/Yard , all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press; Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape (Lopez and Gwartney 2013); Journey of the Adopted Self (Lifton 1995); Maple Leafs Top 100: Torontos Greatest Players of All Time (Leonetti and Iaboni 2007); Show Us Your Papers (Paff, Buccilli, and Pollard 2020); and Still Here (OBrien 2021).

I would like to express my appreciation to the Pittsburgh Foundation for a grant that helped to fund this book; Brush Creek Residency, where most of this book was put to paper; and the Howard Heinz Endowments; the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust; the Creative Capital Foundation; Paterson Poetry Center; and Leighton Artists Studios, Banff, Alberta, Canada, for fellowships and support. Thanks to the Carlow University English Department for ongoing support. Special thanks to the wonderful staff at Red Hen Press.

Id like to thank my family of strangers, teachers, and friends who have helped me over the years as this book was forming. Specifically, the people who helped in the living and writing of the book: Lisa Alexander, Joseph Bathanti, Joan Bauer, Paul Baumgartner, Ann Begler, Patty Bernarding, Gerry Rosella Boccella, Bounce, Mad Dog Brooks, Anita Byerly, Gerry Cassie, Joy Castro, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Wanda Coleman, Kay Comini, Jimmy Cvetic, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Heather Donohue, Sharon Doubiago, Denise Duhamel, Martin Farawell, Anahita Firouz, Jay Flory, Roberta Foizey, Dr. G., Diane Glancy, Sinead Gleeson, Matt Gordley, Laurie Graham, Dan Green, David Groff, Michael Jones, James Allen Hall, William Harry Harding, Sharon Hawkins for lifesaving, Katie Hogan, Dorothy Holley, Nancy Koerbel, Gretel Ehrlich, Meg Kearney, Colleen Keegan, Beth Kukucka, Gerry LaFemina, Gail Langstroth, Betty Jean Lifton, Barry Lopez, Peter Oresick, Marilyn Marsh Noll, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Patty McCollum, Bob McGrogan, Leslie McIlroy, Emily Mohn-Slate, Liane Ellison Norman, Marianne Novy, Jean OBrien, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Wendy Scott Paff, Elicia Parkinson, Bob Patak, D. A. Powell, Deb Pursifull, Anne Rashid, Dr. Robin, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Don Rosenzweig, Joanne Samraney, Kayla Sargeson, Patricia Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Shirley Snodey, Rhoda Mills Sommer, Kathy Staresinic, Jerry Stern, Michele Stoner, Michael Thomas, Brian Turner, Beatrice Vasser, Stacey Waite, Lucienne Wald, Michael Waters, Afaa Michael Weaver, Bruce Weigl, Jill West, Martha West, Sarah Williams-Devereux and all the Mad-women, and Michael Wurster. To the cab driver in Prince Rupert, British Columbia; to Ed, the security guard at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, home of the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame; to VIA Rail for getting me there.

Special thanks to Todd Sanders for generous assistance with photography and cooler-than-Jeff-Goldblum brilliance.

With deep thanks to Richard Blanco, Sandra Cisneros, and Sapphire for your all-out support; to Nikki Moustaki for choosing the book; and especially to my teachers: Maggie Anderson, Patricia Dobler, Lynn Emanuel. Extra thanks to Tamara DiPalma for cover mojo and for being Jack. Big thanks to Nancy Kirkwood, bloodsister of choice; Most of all to my poetry companion and cosmic mentor, Judith Vollmer, for your brave writing and living; my earth teacher, Ed Ochester, for years of help and your killer poems. To Charlotte Thoma, spirit guide; my father of fathers, Robert T. Beatty.

To Don, my true north, my family.

This is for the lost ones who never knew where they came from

This is against the ones who pretended the loss never happened

This story begins at an impasse, since I am writing to you as someone who was never born.

Patrice Staiger

[S]he is a fake child. No doubt [s]he was born of a woman, but this origin has not been noted by the social memory. As far as everyone and, consequently, [s]he [her]self are concerned, [s]he appeared one fine day without having been carried in any known womb: [s]he is a synthetic product.

Jean-Paul Sartre