| Betty Jean Lifton | |
| Birth Name: | Blanche Rosenblatt |
| Birth Date: | June 11, 1926 |
| Birth Place: | Staten Island, New York |
| Death Place: | Boston, Massachusetts |
Betty Jean Lifton was an American author known for her children's books and books about the experiences of adopted children.
Lifton née Kirschner[1] was born on June 11, 1926, in Staten Island, New York. She was born to Rae Rosenblatt and adopted at the age of two by Oscar and Hilda Kirschner.[1] She graduated from Barnard College in 1948. In 1952 she married the psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton with whom she had two children.[2]
The couple resided in Japan and Hong Kong for several years the early 1960s. Around this time Lifton began writing children's books including Joji and the Dragon Morrow, 1957, The Dwarf Pine Tree, Atheneum, 1963, and The Rice-cake Rabbit W.W. Norton & Company, 1966.[3] [1]
In 1973 her book Children of Vietnam was a finalist for the National Book Award for Children's Books.[4]
In 1975 Lifton published Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter which was about her search for her birth mother.[5] The book received attention from people who had undergone similar experiences. This, in turn, influenced Lifton to become an open adoption advocate. Lifton wrote two more books about adoption Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience, Dial, 1979, and Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness Basic Books, 1994.[2]
Her husband Robert further illustrated on her book "Twice Born," and her other activities while both were in Japan as follows: "(Robert Jay) Lifton’s formative experience was the research he did while accompanied by his wife, B.J.—a writer, an adoption therapist, and a leading spokesperson for adoption reform—whom he had married en route to his assignment in Japan, after being caught up in the doctor draft. Soon after arriving in Tokyo, Lifton was dispatched to Korea for six months, leaving B.J. to fend for herself in a culture where everything was the opposite of what she had known in Ohio and New York. In her book Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter, she describes how she moved in with a Japanese family, and found a job as a journalist working for the Japan Times, and then the Tokyo Evening News. She started the East-West Discussion group to give Japanese and Americans a chance to communicate with each other, and this group still exists today. She also began writing children’s books, which were illustrated by Japanese artists. Later, she would collaborate with the renowned Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe on the book A Place Called Hiroshima."[6]
In the 1990s Lifton earned a Ph.D. from Union Institute.[2]
She died on November 19, 2010, in Boston, Massachusetts.[2] Her papers are in the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe.[1]