Adopted, Returned, Unwanted: My Foster Care Journey - Paperback

by Judith Levisy (Author)

This is the story of my life in foster care, along with six other foster children. The book gives you an inside view of the good, the bad, the ugly events, circumstances, and lifestyles, including mental and physical abuse. I was born in May 1961 in Buffalo, New York. Miscegenation was still illegal in twenty-two states in 1960. The word miscegenation comes from the Latin words misère (to mix) and genus (type, family, or descent) and has been used to refer to cohabitation or intermarriage between racial groups. Regulated by state law, miscegenation was illegal in many states for decades. New York was 1 of 9 states that never had Anti-Miscegenation Laws. In the other states, all bi-racial children born to a white and Black couple were said to be illegitimate. Bi-racial children were often shunned and put in orphanages because of the attacks from both Black and white people alike. They were born unwanted or in some cases, their mother was single or incredibly young, and poor. I looked white on the day I was born. I was told I had white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes and my mother had given me to a Caucasian couple that wanted to adopt me. Living with my newfound parents did not last long. My skin, hair, and eyes started turning colors when I was six months old. That's when my new parents realized they were lied to, and their new baby daughter was not 100% Caucasian. They returned me to the adoption agency. I was eight months old when the orphanage

placed me with Lloyd and Gertrude, who lived at 17 Viola Park. My foster parents never wanted any of us to know our background or find our biological family. But when I was able to understand what it meant to be a foster child, my curiosity grew. I remember asking my foster mother, on many occasions, about my biological mother and father. She would always try to

avoid my questions or sometimes say that my mother was white and was unable to keep me.