Faces of Layla: A Journey Through Ethiopian Adoption
Faces of Layla: A Journey Through Ethiopian Adoption
A Full Color Photo Essay
Photography by Emma Dodge Hanson
Forward by Melissa Fay Greene
Port Angeles, WA (11/27/2007) – Adoption Advocates International announces the release of Faces of Layla: A Journey Through Ethiopian Adoption – A full color ‘coffee table’ photo essay with a forward by award-winning author Melissa Fay Greene, photography by Emma Dodge Hanson and text by children’s book author Jennifer Armstrong. This compelling photographic narrative shows the story of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and other diseases of poverty, waiting for a family at Layla House, a Children’s Home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
“As the adoptive father of a child who once lived there, I’m grateful to see such illuminating photographs find their way into the world. Faces of Layla is a beautiful and important book”
-David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars
First comes the amazing news there is a family waiting for a child. A letter arrives for an Ethiopian orphan and a volunteer races hand-in-hand with the excited girl to the office where she will see a picture of her new parents for the first time. Her eagerness to open the envelope and her smile once she’s seen her soon-to-be parents in front of the house where she will live in the U.S. need no words to describe what she’s feeling.
The girl, Eyerusalem, now lives in Washington State with her American mother and father, Robin and David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars, who writes of the way Faces of Layla bears “witness, concretely, to what otherwise might remain an abstraction-namely, the physical and emotional reality” of day to day life in a clean and bustling orphanage off a side-street in Addis Ababa , Ethiopia. Adoption Advocates International’s Layla House is a haven for children who have nowhere else to go. The lives they lead there under the care of a staff of nurturing adults is full of learning, light, and hope. The past is there too, some of it full of sadness, but the tone of life in this “third-world” orphanage is anything but Dickensian. It’s a place full of rich stories evoked by award-winning photographer Emma Dodge Hanson’s intimate images: a woman cooking dinner for 200 stops to give a hug to a child racing through the compound’s kitchen; a soft-eyed girl’s dreamy expression as she looks out the window; a group of children studying English under a sign listing the school’s rules including “Help Other Children Learn.” These are photographs that allow us to experience a reality that is otherwise easy to dismiss because it’s too far away or inaccessible to us. As Guterson notes, this books bears witness to “the courage and compassion at work in this orphanage on a daily basis,” but perhaps the most powerful story is revealed in the chapter “Going Home” where the daily routine gives way to something extraordinary.
Tensei’s aunt and uncle come to Layla House to say good-bye to their gentle niece whom they are no longer able to house and feed. Their good-bye gift to her is a carefully preserved passport-sized photo, the only image they have, of her biological father, a handsome man in a plaid coat with his collar buttoned at his neck. It’s the day her adoptive father, who has traveled from St. Louis to Addis, will meet her for the first time. Tensei is nervous-more than nervous; nail-biting suspense is more than a figure of speech-as she waits in a corner behind her relatives. An arriving parent is likely to be just as scared. As Melissa Fay Greene, National Book Award Finalist, author of best-seller There Is No Me Without You and adoptive mother, writes in her foreword to Faces of Layla, “I stepped from a taxi onto orphanage grounds preparing to be introduced to a full-grown child who was going to call me “Mama,” I had my familiar emotion-not at all the early tingling of “love at first sight,” but sheer terror.” But then the kind of fear Greene writes of gives way to something else, at least for a moment, something hopeful and tender, as Tensei comes to sit next to her new dad with a shy smile, still unable to look at him for more than a moment. After kissing the girl good-bye, her aunt places the photo of her lost brother in the open palm of Tensei’s new dad, it’s stark black and white contrasting with the pink of his skin.
“So you want to save the world”? acclaimed American writer Russell Banks and President of the International Parliament of Writers asks. His answer? “Save the world’s children first. This book tells you why and how and now.” Faces of Layla is a moving, unfailingly human account that brings to life the way the people of Adoption Advocates International are working to save those of the world’s children who are most in need and who, as Emma Dodge Hanson’s images argue, we most need to know.
Faces of Layla: A Journey Through Ethiopian Adoption can be purchased by visiting www.benefitorphans.org
Faces of Layla: A Journey Through Ethiopian Adoption
Photography by Emma Dodge Hanson
Forward by Melissa Fay Greene
IBSN 978-0-9763765-7-655000
$50.00
