Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Children Like Us: A Métis Woman's Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home

Children Like Us: A Métis Woman's Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home

Penner, Brittany

Paperback

Biographies GeneralGeneral ParentingPregnancy & Adoption

Publisher Price: $18.99

ISBN13: 9798895654972
Publisher: Regalo Press
Published: Nov 4 2025
Pages: 384
Weight: 0.80
Height: 1.20 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
A Métis girl is adopted by a Mennonite family in this breathtaking memoir about family lost and found.

By the time Brittany Penner is seven years old, she has loved and lost twenty-one foster siblings who have come into her family and left--all of them Indigenous like her. When will it be my turn? she asks her mother time and time again. When will I be taken away? You won't be, she is told. You're adopted. You're here to stay. You're the lucky one.

On the day of her birth in 1989, near the end of the Sixties Scoop, Brittany was relinquished into the care of the government and adopted by a white Mennonite family in a small prairie town. Her name and where she came from are hidden from her; all she is told is that she is Métis. Her childhood is shaped by church, family, service and silence. Her family is continuously shifting as siblings arrive and depart, one by one. She knows that to stay, she has to force herself into the mold created for her. She must be obedient. Quiet. Good. No matter what.

Whenever she looks in the mirror, she searches her features, wondering if they've been passed down to her by her biological mother. She thinks, if she can find her mother, she'll find all the answers she's looking for. As Brittany moves into adulthood, she will uncover answers--but they will be more tangled than she could have imagined.

Children Like Us asks difficult questions about family, identity, belonging and cultural continuity. What happens when you find what you're looking for, but it can't offer you everything you need? How do you reckon with the truth of your own story when you've always been told you're lucky and should be grateful? What does it mean to belong when you feel torn between cultures? And how does a person learn to hold the pain and the grief, as well as the triumphs, the joys and the beauty, allowing none to eclipse the others?

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