Nolan Reviews Book on Child Separation in the U.S.
Rachel Nolan, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a book review of Laura Briggs’ Taking Children: A History of American Terror for Public Books, an online magazine of ideas, scholarship, and the arts.
In her article, titled “As American as Child Separation,” Nolan discusses how the United States has torn families apart throughout its history – during slavery, its wars against Indigenous people, its war on drugs, and, today, at its borders. As made clear in exploration of Briggs’ book, Nolan explains how family separation is not a new phenomenon in the U.S.; the practice has taken different names, most recently as part of former President Trump’s policy of zero tolerance “child separation” policy. While she notes Taking Children does recognize actions taken to combat family separation, Nolan concluded by wondering under what legal guise it might continue under.
An excerpt:
The book is not an unremitting dredging up of past and present misery. Briggs takes care to highlight organizing strategies and social movements that have been partially or fully successful in slapping back the various tentacles of child taking. These include organizing, from abolitionist movements before the Civil War to mid-century Native American activism to keep and raise their children in the way they saw fit, to the sanctuary movement protecting asylum-seeking families in churches in the 1980s. She ends with a sobering caution. Changing presidents won’t be enough to ensure a discontinuation of the practice that is so deeply engrained in American politics and life.
The full article can be read on Public Books’ website.
Rachel Nolan is a historian of modern Latin America. Her research focuses on political violence, Central American civil wars, childhood and the family, historical memory, and U.S.-Latin American relations. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of international adoption from Guatemala. Read more about Professor Nolan on her faculty profile.