Fathering Chika

One of my greatest finds at the 2024 Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) is Mitch Albom’s latest book, Finding Chika. 

Only on the first page and I am already crying buckets. Don’t get me wrong; it is not a tearjerker. But as a writer myself, who often writes about adoption, everything  about the book resonates with me. 

I’d retitle it Fathering Chika, if I could. 

Albom of Michigan is an internationally renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. A non-father, he unconditionally loves, like his own, a kid of no blood relation, of a different race and country, and born under unknown circumstances. 

He writes, “Families are like pieces of art, they can be made from many materials. Sometimes they are from birth, sometimes they are melded, sometimes they are merely time and circumstances mixing together like scrambled eggs in a Michigan restaurant.” 

What grace it is to read a book such as this, specially these times when there are over 147 million orphans in the world, and love is being redefined or ignored.