{"id":14327,"date":"2019-11-20T07:28:22","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T12:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=14327"},"modified":"2019-11-21T07:15:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T12:15:36","slug":"phoebe-potts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/11\/20\/phoebe-potts\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Too Fat For China\u2019: Phoebe Potts\u2019s One-Mom Comedy About The Sordid, Racist Adoption Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvery baby is born into a story of how they got there,\u201d Phoebe Potts says at the start of \u201cToo Fat for China,\u201d<\/a> her one-woman \u201ccomic look at the agony of adoption.\u201d The show debuts with a run at the Gloucester Stage Company on Nov. 23, 24 and 30 and Dec. 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to tell you the terrible things I did for love,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In 70-minute performance, Potts tells the story of \u00a0her adoption of her son Lemi, now 9 years old. There are lots of laughs and it ends with bubbly baby love. In between the performance gets seriouser and seriouser as Potts reckons with the sordid, racist, corrupt capitalist heart of the adoption industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cInternational adoption is not about finding families for babies who need them,\u201d Potts says. \u201cInternational adoption is for white people who can afford one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Phoebe<\/a>
Phoebe Potts performs “Too Fat for China” at Gloucester Stage Company, Nov. 19, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last March, I bumped into Potts at a Purim party at Temple Ahavat Achim in Gloucester, where she is Director of Family Learning for their Sylvia Cohen Religious School. She mentioned that she was working on a sequel to her 2010 graphic novel \u201cGood Eggs,\u201d which Publishers Weekly called \u201ca sprawling and lovable memoir about her and her husband’s attempts to become parents.\u201d (Spoiler alert: They turned to adoption instead.) The sequel, she said, was going to be a live one-person show.<\/p>\n

The Gloucester writer and artist had tried telling the adoption story as a graphic novel. \u201cI drew it several times,\u201d Potts tells me. \u201cI did it in black and white. I did it in color. \u2026 I couldn\u2019t make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Potts became a storyteller-in-residence for Fish Tales, the live true storytelling evenings at the Gloucester Stage Company. She would write her tales in advance and practice telling them. \u201cWhen I got up to the mic, I felt prepared. It also felt like I was meant to be there,\u201d Potts says. The woman who runs the series, Maureen Aylward, eventually asked her, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you do a one-woman show of all your stories?\u201d<\/p>\n

Potts tells me, \u201cI love to draw and I love to draw comics. I learned in the last few years after my Dad died that part of the reason I drew so much is to be obedient. It turns out I want to be a lot louder. I think I was told to draw, it kept me quiet. \u2026 But I want to be heard more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Set<\/a>
Set for Phoebe Potts’s “Too Fat for China” at Gloucester Stage Company, Nov. 19, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In \u201cToo Fat for China,\u201d Potts ponders why do we want to have babies? Why do we want to become parents? (\u201cI don\u2019t want to be a mother \u2026 but a father, that could be good,\u201d Potts jokes in the show.) What are we chasing? Lust? Love? A cure for loneliness? Is it selfish? Giving? At what cost?<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery adoption story begins traumatically,\u201d Potts says in the show, \u201ca mother cannot keep her baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cToo Fat for China,\u201d Potts recounts dating Jeff, the man who would become her husband. She tells of getting fat. She considers her Jewishness. She describes their struggles to have a baby. \u201cI could get pregnant, but I couldn\u2019t stay pregnant,\u201d she explains in the show. The couple pursued in vitro fertilization without success. \u201cI have a body type that reads as if it\u2019s given birth and breastfed two people with nothing to show for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the couple looked into adoption. But China wouldn\u2019t allow adoptions to people on anti-depressants and above a certain body mass index, she says. \u201cNever in my wildest dreams did I think the people who would call me fat would be the People\u2019s Republic of China,\u201d Potts jokes in the show. \u201cPhoebe, you\u2019re too fat to have a baby.\u201d Did that hurt her feelings? \u201cI think that China really sees me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you open to race?\u201d adoption agencies would ask. Potts notes the horrible American values embedded in the costs of adoption, starting at $40,000 for a White baby, then $28,000 for a Black girl, and $24,000 for a Black boy. When the couple ends up adopting a Black baby boy from abroad and bringing him to the United States, Potts worries that has she put his life in danger\u2014from racist police, from a racist court system that disproportionately imprisons Black men.<\/p>\n

The couple\u2019s quest to adopt a baby takes them to Cincinnati and Ethiopia. They meet an adoption agent who encourages the birth mothers to hide the adoption by telling friends and family that the baby died. Things turn grim. \u201cWe don\u2019t look like the happy couple on the adoption brochure any more,\u201d her husband tells her. They change directions and, eventually, find a happy ending.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe telling of it gave me some control of what happened,\u201d Potts tells me after a dress rehearsal. She says that she realized after one adoption misadventure, \u201cThis is about race and I\u2019ve been pretending it\u2019s not. The problem of being white is I was surrounded by white people and none of us were looking at it like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvery baby is born into a story of how they got there,\u201d Phoebe Potts says at the start of \u201cToo Fat for China,\u201d her one-woman \u201ccomic look at the agony of adoption.\u201d The show debuts with a run at the Gloucester Stage Company on Nov. 23, 24 and 30 and Dec. 1. \u201cI\u2019m going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,110],"tags":[191,640,641],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14327"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14355,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14327\/revisions\/14355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}