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Adoptee Reading is a catalog of books written by adoptees along with other adoption-related books recommended by adoptees.
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News
Adoptee-Authored Books Published in 2021
We’ve added twenty-three thirty-four books published in 2021 and written by adoptees to the Adoptee Reading catalog!
Recently Published & Forthcoming Books
Finding Out: Coming to Terms with Adoption
Thanks to my wonderful parents, there is a story to be told about an airman and his wife. Those people, who took a chance, went through an arduous process never
Where the Fuck is My Mother?: A Book for Grown-Up Adoptees
Gritty depiction of an adopted girl’s journey into adulthood starting in 1970s New Zealand. Annie’s story unearths the dark truths about adoption while shedding light on the fact that it’s
Lions Roaring Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees
Lions Roaring Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees includes the essays and poems of 33 writers, ages 8 to over 50, raised in six countries (the US, Canada, Sweden,
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven
Search & Reunion
Planted by Love: Beauty for Ashes Through Finding My Birth Mother
When I was a small child in the early 1950’s, my adoptive parents read me a story book about a mother and father going to a special place and choosing
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven
Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery
A powerful, experiential journey from white cult to Black consciousness: Harrison Mooney’s riveting story of self-discovery lifts the curtain on the trauma of transracial adoption and the internalized antiblackness at
Psychology/Self-help
Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas For People Who Were Adopted
In order to feel fully rooted, it’s important to know your story. If your personal narrative starts “The day we got you,” then you are already in the gaslit land
Under My Bed and Other Essays
Jody Keisner was raised in rural Nebraska towns by a volatile father and kind but passive mother. As a young adult living alone for the first time, she began a
Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adult Adoptees
Adoption is based on loss, often yielding deep feelings of inner turmoil, grief, disconnection, and, at times, overwhelming fear and anxiety stemming from those old, unattended wounds. Yet it is common for
Anthologies
Lions Roaring Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees
Lions Roaring Far From Home: An Anthology by Ethiopian Adoptees includes the essays and poems of 33 writers, ages 8 to over 50, raised in six countries (the US, Canada, Sweden,
Dear Me….: Letters to Our Younger Adoptee Selves
This is a book of words and pictures. The images are important because they reflect the people we are now and the children we were growing up. We can see
Together At Last: Stories of Adoption and Reunion in the Age of DNA
Together At Last is a collection of first-person stories that explores the intersection of multiple histories: the Korean War, military camptowns, immigration, and transnational adoption. Taken together, they challenge us
Journalism/Research
Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family
An incredible, deeply reported story of identical twins Isabella and Hà, born in Viêt Nam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other’s existence until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds. It was 1998 in Nha Trang, Việt Nam, and Liên struggled to care for her newborn twin girls. Hà was taken in by Liên’s sister, and she grew up in a rural village with her aunt,
Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences
Generations of adults who were adopted as children have been kept in the dark about their original identities. The law sealing birth records forever, even to the adopted person, passed in 1935 in California, sweeping adoption´s emotional complexities under the rug and making it possible to keep an adoption itself a secret. Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences takes you through California´s early adoption laws, highlighting the passage of the original law that sealed
Ripped at the Root: An Adoption Story
“With searing detail and lean, crisp prose, in Ripped at the Root Mary Cardaras tells the story of Dena Polites, a woman born to a young unwed Greek couple who was adopted by married Greek Americans in Ohio. Polites’s tale serves as a focal point for the some 4,000 Greek infants and children who, in the years after World War II, were torn from their families, country, culture and dispatched to live with distant strangers
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Children/Teens
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven
Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller
There’s no one Kelsie Miller hates more than Eric Mulvaney Ortiz—the homecoming king, captain of the football team, and academic archrival in her hyper-competitive prep school. But after Kelsie’s best
Poetry
Out of the Fog: Poems of Nature, Nurture and Imagination
Using evocative language and powerful emotion, Jill Uchiyama’s poems expose the creative interior of an adopted girl, from infancy to middle age. Through them, we discover the rare and often
Person, Perceived Girl
Person, Perceived Girl is poetry collection that explores Blackness–specifically queer, Midwestern, disabled, and transracially adopted Blackness. Poems in this manuscript explore identity, lineage, and body. Adoptee Author: A. A. Vincent
Fiction
Seoulmates
When Hara Wilson lands in Seoul to find her birth mother, she doesn’t plan on falling in love with the first man she lays eyes on, but Choi Yujun is
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven