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Authors V Leonardo da Vinci ➝ Back to Top

Actors Monroe Martin III ​ ​ Monroe Martin III is an actor and writer, known for Late Night (2019), Charlamagne & Friends (2013) and Master of None (2015). Monroe Martin III grew up in foster care in the United States. External Website

Actors Angela Shelton (Actor) ​ ​ Angela Shelton (b. 1972) is an American actor and screenwriter. She was in the foster care system as a child and in 2001 was inspired to make a documentary for which she interviewed 40 women, many of whom had experienced domestic violence. Search for Angela Shelton won 12 awards and the May of Asheville proclaimed April 29, 2005, Angela Shelton Day. Shelton's memoir about surviving sexual abuse was released in 2007. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Relinquished Gretchen Sisson 2024 Dr Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist whose qualitative research interests focus on abortion and adoption in the United States. Her book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood draws from interviews she has conducted with women who have relinquished their babies to adoption. From the publisher’s site: “Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible, or for whom parenthood is untenable. The stories of relinquishing mothers are stories about our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and to instead embrace External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness Audrey Punnett 2014 The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness addresses loneliness and the feeling of being alone in the world, two distinct characteristics that mark the life of an orphan. Regardless if we have grown up with or without parents, we are all too likely to meet such experiences in ourselves and in our daily encounters with others. With numerous case examples, Dr. Punnett describes how loneliness and the feeling of being alone tend to be repeated in later relationships and may eventually lead to states of anxiety and depression. The main purpose of this book is not to just stay within the context of the literal orphan, but also to explore its symbolic dimensions in order to provide meaning to the diverse experiences of feeling alone in the world. In accepting the orphan within, we begin to take responsibility for our own unique life journey, a privileged journey in which one can at some point in time say with pride, I am an orphan. External Website

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Academic Articles Winnie Woodfern Comes Out in Print: Story-Paper Authorship and Protolesbian Self-Representation in Antebellum America Daniel Cohen 2012 Sometime after July 1851, Mary Field Williams Gibson, a teenage orphan from Vermont, moved to Boston to make her fortune. By the following summer, the 17 year old had begun publishing powers and short stories. Writing under the pseudonym, Winnie Woodfer, Gibson soon became a major contributor to several of Boston's most popular papers. In this paper, Daniel Cohen discusses the life and work of Winnie Woodfern. External Website

Artists Goldie (artist) ​ ​ GOLDIE (b. 1965) Clifford Joseph Price (MBE), better known as Goldie, is a British musician, music producer, DJ, visual artist and actor. Initially gaining exposure for his work as a graffiti artist, Goldie became well known for his pioneering role as a musician in the 1990’s. In 2007, he returned to the art world with an art exhibition, Love Over Gold, which was held at the Leonard Street Gallery, London. In 2008, he teamed up with Pete Tong to provide much of the artwork for Tong’s new Wonderland club night at Eden Club in San Antonio, Ibiza. Since this time he has held exhibitions in Berlin, London, Tokyo as well as various other places. Goldie is an artist whose ferocious creativity shows no bounds. Goldie’s versatility as a visual artist has come to fore and recent work has included sculpture, album artwork, and forays into furniture and fashion design as well as his Lost Tribes Collection. External Website

Actors Charlotte Ayanna ​ ​ Charlotte Ayanna (born Charlotte Lopez; September 25, 1976) is a Puerto Rican American actress and former Miss Teen USA. Ayanna was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but moved to Vermont at an early age. She had a troubled childhood, spending sixteen years in foster homes after her mother, Emma, was judged to be mentally unfit to look after her children. In 1994, at age 17, she was adopted into a foster home. She has since become a spokeswoman for foster children. External Website

Academic Articles A Fragment of the Maltese Exodus: Child Migration to Australia 1953-1965 David Plowman 2010 In this 2010 article, A Fragment of the Maltese Exodus: Child Migration to Australia 1953-1965, David Plowman situates child migration from Malta within the longer history of child migration as part of "British policy from 1618 to 1967." Over this time, according to Plowman, more than 150,000 British children went sent out to colonies as a source of cheap labour and to build up the 'white' population. Initially, the Australian authorities were not enthusiastic about bringing Maltese children to Australia because, although they were "British subjects" they were "universally accepted as being very low in the social strata." Only 310 children arrived from Malta - partly due to racism, partly because Maltese families took in children in need, and partly because parents sought to reclaim their children. David Plowman insists in his paper that child migration still exists today, but now takes the form of adoption "of third world children by affluent first world parents and the migration of the adopted to the foster parents' country." External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Dickens The Orphan Condition Baruch Hochman; Ilja Wachs 1999 This study interprets Dickens's work through close analysis of its involvement with the imaginative and emotional implications of orphanhood and of the horror of abandonment that is inscribed in it. It shows how Dickens's ultimate loyalty is to the abandoned child. Indeed, it tracks the ways in which the development of his work is toward an ever more fierce critique of the world from within the perspective of that child. It demonstrates how Dickens's fiction comes to question all the forms that give shape to the self - status, work, citizenship, marriage, parenthood, property - and how it does so from the subjective vantage point of what may be termed the orphan imagination. Its thesis is that the shape of Dickens's novels is also determined by this perspective. External Website

Actors Adam Beach ​ ​ Adam Beach (born November 11, 1972) is an Aboriginal Canadian actor. Adam Beach was born on the Dog Creek Reserve near Ashern in Manitoba, Canada. Adam’s parents, Sally and Dennis Beach, died within forty-one days of each other. Adam and his brothers first went to live in Winnipeg with their paternal aunt. Five years later, they began living their paternal uncle, Chris Beach. Adam Beach became interested in drama during High School and he didn’t complete his final year. However, he did find work in film and television. Most recently he has starred in Hostiles (2017) as Black Hawk, and the Netflix original film, Juanita (2019) as Jess Gardiner. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Jacqueline Wilson (New Casebooks) Lucy Pearson 2015 Tracy Beaker has become the most well-known care experienced character in the 21st Century. This collection of newly commissioned essays explores Beaker and Wilson's literature from all angles. The essays cover not only the content and themes of Wilson's writing, but also her success as a publishing phenomenon and the branding of her books. Issues of gender roles and child/carer relationships are examined alongside Wilson's writing style and use of techniques such as the unreliable narrator. The book also features an interview with Jacqueline Wilson herself, where she discusses the challenges of writing social realism for young readers and how her writing has changed over her lengthy career.Over the last twenty years, Jacqueline Wilson has published well over 100 titles and has become firmly established in the landscape of Children's Literature. She has written for all ages, from picture books for young readers to young adult fiction and tackles a wide variety of controversial topics, such as child abuse, mental illness and bereavement. Although she has received some criticism for presenting difficult and seemingly 'adult' topics to children, she remains overwhelmingly popular among her audience and has won numerous prizes selected by children, such as the Smarties Book Prize. External Website

Actors Lesley Sharp ​ ​ Lesley Sharp (born 3 April 1960) is an English stage, film and television actress whose roles on British television include Clocking Off (2000–2001), Bob & Rose (2001) and Afterlife (2005–2006). She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the 1997 film The Full Monty. Sharp was born in Manchester, England, and was adopted at 6 weeks old by a Scottish couple—the Sharps. Born Karen Makinson, she was renamed Lesley Sharp upon her adoption at 6 weeks old. She grew up in Formby, which is north of Liverpool. She has an older sister. Sharp has stated that she started acting because, as a child, she felt "invisible" and did not "quite fit in".[3] She has said that her inspiration to act came from watching Dick Emery on television.[4] Sharp attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the class of 1982. She traced her birth mother over twenty years ago and discovered that she was the result of her mother's affair with a married man. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Cultural, autobiographical and absent memories of orphanhood Delyth Edwards 2017 This book offers an empirically informed understanding of how cultural, autobiographical and absent memories of orphanhood interact and interconnect or come into being in the re-telling of a life story and construction of an identity. The volume investigates how care experienced identities are embedded within personal, social and cultural practices of remembering. The book stems from research carried out into the life (hi)stories of twelve undervalued ‘historical witnesses’ (Roberts, 2002) of orphanhood: women who grew up in Nazareth House children’s home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Several themes are covered, including histories of care in Northern Ireland, narratives and memories, sociologies of home, and self and identity. The result is an impressive text that works to introduce readers to the complexity of memory for care experienced people and what this means for their life story and identity. External Website

Academic Articles Two Mothers - Twice the blessing or was I cursed? Deidre Michell 2002 Two Mothers - Twice the blessing or was I cursed? Exploring the Motherhood of God in the context of neglect, abandonment and abuse by women is a challenge to feminist theogolical ideas that Motherhood should be included in the Godhead solely on the grounds that mothers are superior when it comes to nurturing and caring for children. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters Who Cares?: Young People in Care Speak Out Raissa Clark Page et al. 1977 Written by a group of young people in care, this publications provided a platform from which they could speak freely about their hopes, aspirations, contentions, criticisms and fears. As well as detailing their experiences of public care, it highlighted those aspects of the system that needed addressing to ensure that it meets the social, emotional and educational needs of all children and young people. External Website

Academic Books & Book Chapters UK Child Migration to Australia, 1945-1970: A Study in Policy Failure Gordon Lynch 2021 This book offers an unprecedented analysis of child welfare schemes, situating them in the wider context of post-war policy debates about the care of children. Between 1945 and 1970, an estimated 3,500 children were sent from Britain to Australia, unaccompanied by their parents, through child migration schemes funded by the Australian and British Governments and delivered by churches, religious orders and charities. Functioning in a wider history of the migration of unaccompanied children to overseas British colonies, the post-war schemes to Australia have become the focus of public attention through a series of public reports in Britain and Australia that have documented the harm they caused to many child migrants.Whilst addressing the wide range of organisations involved, the book focuses particularly on knowledge, assumptions and decisions within UK Government Departments and asks why these schemes continued to operate in the post-war period despite often failing to adhere to standards of child-care set out in the influential 1946 Curtis Report. External Website

Actors Barry Evans ​ ​ Barry Joseph Evans (18 June 1943 – 9 February 1997) was an English actor best known for his appearances in British sitcoms such as Doctor in the House and Mind Your Language. Barry Evans was born in Guildford, Surrey. He was abandoned as a baby and grew up in a Barnardo’s home in Twickenham, a suburban town in Middlesex. Evans’ acting ability was recognised while he was still at school. After he left, he won a John Gielgud Scholarship which enabled him to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Evans made his theatre debut in Barrow-in-Furness. He went on to appear in Chips with Everything on Broadway in 1963. He finished his working life as a taxi driver so he could have a regular income. Barry Evans was found dead in his home in Leicestershire. He had received a blow to the head and an 18-year-old man was arrested, but never charged with murder. External Website

Artists Arshile Gorky ​ ​ Arshile Gorky (1904 – 1948) was an Armenian-American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. In 1915, the boy and his mother and three sisters escaped Lake Van and he travelled to the United States as a sixteen year old. He spent most his life as a national of the United States. Along with Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Gorky has been hailed as one of the most powerful American painters of the 20th century. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced in the Armenian Genocide. External Website