Nov 22, 2008
At first glance, THE BROKEN CORD might appear to be a specialized study with limited appeal to the general reader, but that impression is quickly refuted: Any mother who ingests even moderate amounts of alcohol during pregnancy can produce an FAS child, and Dorris’ treatise is both a practical primer and an eloquent prose poem detailing a poignant and growing problem the ramifications of which are social and legal as well as medical. The solutions to halting the birth of FAS children and to providing for FAS victims’ lifelong care ultimately concern every reader.
“My son will forever travel through a moonless night with only the roar of wind for company,” writes Dorris. “A drowning man is not separated from the lust for air by a bridge of thought, he is one with it, and my son, conceived and grown in an ethanol bath, lives each day in the act of drowning. For him there is no shore.” Indeed, Dorris’ son, Adam, exhibits all the characteristics of the classic FAS child, including “significant growth retardation both before and after birth; 2) measurable mental deficit; 3) altered facial characteristics; 4) other physical abnormalities; 5) and documentation of maternal alcoholism.” Yet because FAS and its companion FAE (fetal alcohol effect) are only recently recognized conditions, for years the cause of Adam’s learning difficulties remained misdiagnosed.
Eventually Dorris’ role as an anthropologist and as the head of the Department of Native American Studies at Dartmouth University led him to work with specialists familiar with FAS and its devastating effect on Native American populations. Dorris learned that Adam is not unique; he discovered that Adam is one of thousands of such children born annually to women of every race and nationality who are themselves victims of poverty, ignorance, or low self-esteem. Dorris emphasizes that FAS may develop from an expectant mother’s drinking as little as one cocktail or glass of wine or one can of beer a day, even on an irregular basis; the only insurance against FAS is total abstinence from alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
THE BROKEN CORD should help to draw national attention to this devastating syndrome and its long-term consequences. The book includes a foreword by Louise Erdrich and a final chapter by Adam, a touchingly unedited autobiography offered as a counterpoint and written at the suggestion of Adam’s dad.
Business Week. August 14, 1989, p.29.
Library Journal. CXIV, July, 1989, p.98.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. July 30, 1989, p.1.
The New York Times Book Review. XCIV, July 30, 1989, p.1.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXV, June 2, 1989, p.74.
The World & I. IV, September, 1989, p.406.
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