Welcome!

Adoptee Reading is a catalog of books written by adoptees along with other adoption-related books recommended by adoptees.

Start here for information on how to use this site.

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

Recycled: A Reluctant Search for True Self Through Nurture, Nature, and Free Will

Jack Rocco was a baby when he was adopted by a blue-collar, Italian American family. Today a successful orthopedic surgeon, Jack’s identity was built around his Italian heritage and while

Not Nicholson: The Story of a First Daughter, An Adoption Search and Reunion Memoir

This is a story about family, adoption, heritage, and identity. It is also about place and people. Haralambie invites you to accompany her on her search for her biological roots,

A Fire Is Coming

The true story of when Emma Stevens learned her new next-door neighbor was a psychologist, she innocently asked about how to find a therapist for her own issues. Dr. Carol

Found: Adopted Friends Search for their Birth Families

Lifelong friends–both adoptees–decided they would take a chance and search for their birth parents using online DNA kits and social media. It turns out, that was the easy part. What

Search & Reunion

Recycled: A Reluctant Search for True Self Through Nurture, Nature, and Free Will

Jack Rocco was a baby when he was adopted by a blue-collar, Italian American family. Today a successful orthopedic surgeon, Jack’s identity was built around his Italian heritage and while

Not Nicholson: The Story of a First Daughter, An Adoption Search and Reunion Memoir

This is a story about family, adoption, heritage, and identity. It is also about place and people. Haralambie invites you to accompany her on her search for her biological roots,

Found: Adopted Friends Search for their Birth Families

Lifelong friends–both adoptees–decided they would take a chance and search for their birth parents using online DNA kits and social media. It turns out, that was the easy part. What

Psychology/Self-help

A Fire Is Coming

The true story of when Emma Stevens learned her new next-door neighbor was a psychologist, she innocently asked about how to find a therapist for her own issues. Dr. Carol

Coloring & Journal Book For Adoptees With Motivational Quotes: For Adoptees Healing Journey – Volume 1

As an adult adoptee that struggles with the seven core issues of being adopted, (loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and mastery/control), I have created this therapeutic coloring

Swear, Vent & Coloring Book For (very) F*cking Angry Adoptees: For Adoptees Healing Journey – Volume 1

Why an angry sweary coloring and journal book? Because punching people in the face is frowned upon, and anger isn’t great for your overall mental and physical health if you

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

We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children–and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it

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

Visit the Adoptee Reading store on Bookshop.org!

Your purchase helps support Adoptee Reading as well as independent bookstores

Shop Now

Children/Teens

Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

Sarah has always struggled to fit in. Born in South Korea and adopted at birth by a white couple, she grows up in a rural community with few Asian neighbors.

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

Poetry

Landlock X: Poems

Sarah Audsley’s debut poetry collection, Landlock X, joins a growing body of adoptee poetics. By examining the consequences of the international transracial adoptee experience–her own–Audsley’s collection finds more questions than solid

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

Fiction

Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee

An unusual adoption, a gruesome family discovery, a lonesome journey through North America, a miraculous death escape at the 7/7 bombings in the London Underground and a life-altering diagnosis are just

Sanctuaries

Gianni, a gay adoptee, comes of age in a time when adoption and same-sex love are not easily discussed or accepted. Sanctuaries is a tender story of love and healing, set