Journalist and author Roxanna Asgarian joins The Stacks to talk about her new book, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America. We find out how Roxanna pushed back against true crime culture in writing about the 2018 Hart family murders. We also discuss how birth families are treated versus adoptive parents, how race and class factor into American child welfare and the financial implications of the system.
The Stacks Book Club selection for May is This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris. We will discuss the book on May 31st with Nicole Chung.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
- We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian
- The Texas Tribune
- Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott
- “Child in viral Portland police hug photo missing, 5 family members dead after California cliff crash” (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, The Oregonian/Oregon Live)
- Broken Harts (iHeart True Crime)
- “The story behind Devonte Hart’s famous ‘hug’ photo” (Everton Bailey Jr., The Oregonian/Oregon Live)
- Atlanta: Three Slaps (FX)
- “Devonte Hart’s biological mom: They gave my kids ‘to monsters'” (Roxanna Asgarian, The Oregonian/Oregon Live)
- “A mother grapples with an adoption that led to deaths” (Roxanna Asgarian, The Appeal)
- “His siblings were killed by their adoptive mother. He was left in foster care to suffer a more common fate.” (Roxanna Asgarian, The Washington Post)
- “Ep. 232 What Should the Rules Be with Andrea Elliott” (The Stacks)
- Annie (John Huston, 1982)
- Oliver! (Carol Reed, 1968)
- “Ep. 239 The Purpose of a System Is What It Does with Mariame Kaba” (The Stacks)
- Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)
- The New York Times
- Yanni
- Evicted by Matthew Desmond
- Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
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