Do you remember that little girl some time back?

[conuly]

She was taken from her (Roma) family on the grounds, basically, of being too blond, and when it came out that she wasn't their biodaughter there was a whole fuss and lots of other kids were taken from their families, and then it shook out that her (adoptive) mother's claim that she'd just been handed this child by another Roma woman elsewhere was true and... then what? Was she returned to either family?

That just popped into my head, and honestly, that story dropped well off the radar, didn't it?

Comments

[elisi]

This reminded me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein...

Bear with me. ;)

I've not finished it yet, but our protagonist starts off talking about his childhood and spends a lot of time talking about his adopted sister. She is this blond angelic child that his mother (doing charitable work, helping poor peasants) discovered in a family of poverty stricken but kindhearted people. The child was clearly not their own (they were all very dark & peasant-y & rough), but had taken the child in when her parents had died or something like that. So Frankenstein's mother scooped up the blond darling, since clearly she would benefit from a better environment.

This kinda thing is just... baked into our history & culture, I think. :(