News
100 Adoptee-Authored Books from the Decade 2010-2019
To commemorate the end of the decade, Adoptee Reading has curated a list of 100 adoptee-authored books published between 2010 and 2019. This is not
Recently Published & Forthcoming Books
Searching for Mom: A Memoir
Searching for Mom is a “disarmingly honest” mother-daughter story. Sara Easterly spent a lifetime looking for the perfect mother. As an adoptee she had difficulties attaching to her mother, struggled with
Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption
Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim
Hey, Kiddo
In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka’s teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett’s family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an
A Twenty Year Journey: An Adoptee’s Search for Answers
Secrets, sacrifice, lies, love, abandonment, acceptance, grief, joy, regret, jubilation, and fortitude are nestled within the pages of A Twenty-Year Journey. Join me as I share the twists and turns
Search & Reunion
Searching for Mom: A Memoir
Searching for Mom is a “disarmingly honest” mother-daughter story. Sara Easterly spent a lifetime looking for the perfect mother. As an adoptee she had difficulties attaching to her mother, struggled with
Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption
Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim
A Twenty Year Journey: An Adoptee’s Search for Answers
Secrets, sacrifice, lies, love, abandonment, acceptance, grief, joy, regret, jubilation, and fortitude are nestled within the pages of A Twenty-Year Journey. Join me as I share the twists and turns
Psychology/Self-help
Groundbreaking Interventions: Working with Traumatized Children, Teens and Families in Foster Care and Adoption
A book of 16 interventions designed to teach new and imaginative ways for working with traumatized children in foster care and adoption and their families. Groundbreaking Interventions provides a wide
Adoption Is a Lifelong Journey
Meet Charlie, an adoptee who opens his heart and shares what’s on his mind through various phases as he grows up in his adoptive home. As the narrator of Adoption
Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America
Why do so many African Americans have such a special attachment to whupping children? Studies show that nearly 80 percent of black parents see spanking, popping, pinching, and beating as
Anthologies
Mixed Korean: Our Stories
From the struggles of the Korean War, to the modern dilemmas faced by those who are mixed race, comes an assortment of stories that capture the essence of what it
Through Adopted Eyes: A Collection of Memoirs From Adoptees
Through Adopted Eyes explores the world of adoption from the viewpoint of adoptees. Russian adoptee Elena S. Hall shares her own story and thoughts on the subject of adoption in
Decoding Our Origins: The Lived Experiences of Colombian Adoptees
Decoding Our Origins: The Lived Experiences of Colombian Adoptees is written by seventeen authors who were born in Colombia and adopted internationally. Their individual stories illustrate different aspects of the
Journalism/Research
Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for Truth
The dramatic story of how an American housewife discovered that the Guatemalan child she was about to adopt had been stolen from her birth mother. Over the last decade, nearly 200,000 children have been adopted into the United States, 25,000 of whom came from Guatemala. Finding Fernanda, a dramatic true story paired with investigative reporting, tells the side-by-side tales of an American woman who adopted a two-year-old girl from Guatemala and the birth mother whose two
The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion, and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism
The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism uniquely brings together three sites of reproduction and reproductive politics to demonstrate their entanglement in creating or restricting options for family-making. The original essays in this collection—which draw from a wide range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives—are attentive to neoliberalism’s reshaping of economies and intimacies to better understand the politics of reproduction. By looking at particular instances (surrogacy in Mexico, forced sterilization in Peru, and racialized
Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption: Embodiment and Emotion
This book investigates the experiences of South Koreans adopted into Western families and the complexity of what it means to ‘feel identity’ beyond what is written in official adoption files. Korean Adoptees and Transnational Adoption is based on ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea and interviews with adult Korean adoptees from the United States, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and Sweden. It seeks to probe beneath the surface of what is “known” and examines identity as an embodied
Children/Teens
Hey, Kiddo
In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka’s teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett’s family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an
For Black Girls Like Me
Makeda June Kirkland is eleven-years-old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When
Poetry
Arabilis
Arabilis integrates the ordeal of othering into the fundamental uncertainty of life to produce a collection that is honest in its pain, confusion, and joy. Beautiful and desolate as a rural
Blackbirds
In Blackbirds, Greg Santos delves into the raw, private mythologies of parenthood, adoption, ethnicity, and uncertain histories. These lyrical poems bring us from Lisbon’s winding ways, to cramped Paris quarters
Fiction
Inconvenient Daughter
Forthcoming June 2020. Available for preorder. Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted by Marie and Joseph, she could have spent her days in a
For Black Girls Like Me
Makeda June Kirkland is eleven-years-old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When