Black Is the Body

by Emily Bernard

  My life in Vermont has brought me into close connection with so many fine human beings, many more than I can list here. But I must thank Beverly Colston and Patricia Corcoran for friendship and for reading. Leslie Wells, thank you for sharing your family and stories with me. Loree Zeif, I am forever in your debt.

  I am grateful for my friends at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, where I have enjoyed loving support and a platform to share my stories. For multiple opportunities to get to know a wider Vermont community of readers, I thank the Vermont Humanities Council. From the Vermont Arts Council, I received much more than institutional support, although I am particularly grateful for a Creation Grant that enabled me to focus on writing the essays in this book. I am thankful to the Vermont Studio Center and the MacDowell Colony for allowing me to benefit from the extraordinary worlds they create.

  At the University of Vermont, I have been lucky to have had many fascinating and formidable students over the years, a few of whom conducted research for me while I was writing this book. In particular I thank Sophie Scharlin-Pettee and Megan Williams for helping me verify important details.

  Throughout these pages, it has been my primary aim to stay faithful to the emotional authenticity of the experiences I explore in this book. In “Motherland,” Helen Franklin represents an actual person, but ultimately the essay is about my own experience, and therefore attends to what I felt, heard, and saw over the course of our adoption process. While “Motherland” is an honest account drawn from information available at the time, Helen Franklin was never sanctioned for professional malfeasance, while individuals affiliated with the American agency were eventually prosecuted by federal authorities.

  For permission to relate the story of how we became a family, as well many other stories in this book, I thank, again, my three: John Gennari and our children, Isabella and Giulia Gennari. Everything good in this book, and in my life, exists because of you. I am grateful.

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