Author: Editor
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Practically Still a Virgin: An Adoption Memoir
by Monica Hall
During Alaska’s rough-and-tumble 1970s oil boom, a time when prostitution, violence, and lawlessness reigned, Monica Hall rebels against her strict Catholic parents in a downward spiral of delinquency. Overwhelmed by guilt and shame when the unthinkable happens, Hall is forced to make impossible choices. Will…
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Mirrors Made of Ink
by Shannon Quist
A collection of sixty poems spanning moments across a lifetime, Mirrors Made of Ink focuses on the emotional catastrophe of adoption. Quist muses with varied style on family, existence, and the liminal space between two lives in pieces that narrate a lonely path of discovery amidst a…
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Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants
by SunAh M. Laybourn
Since the early 1950s, over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted in the United States, primarily by white families. Korean adoptees figure in twenty-five percent of US transnational adoptions and are the largest group of transracial adoptees currently in adulthood. Despite being legally adopted, Korean…
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Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
by Rebecca Wellington
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed…
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Going Unarmed Into the Wail
by Karen Wangare Leonard
Going Unarmed Into the Wail is an intense, intimate chapbook that wrestles with what it is to be a product of the adoption-industrial complex. With rich visuals, the poems in this chapbook create space that leaves room to interrogate relationships with historic and present systemic violence,…
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Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
by Gretchen Sisson
Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a…
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When the Ocean Flies
by Heather G. Marshall
An email from a stranger tells Alison Earley that her natural father, whom she has known for only six years, has died suddenly. What begins as a short trip back to Scotland for a funeral soon becomes a journey that puts adoption, sexuality, and identity…
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In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family
by Sara Docan-Morgan
“Do you know your real parents?” is a question many adoptees are asked. In In Reunion, Sara Docan-Morgan probes the basic notions of family, adoption, and parenthood by exploring initial meetings and ongoing relationships that transnational Korean adoptees have had with their birth parents and other…
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45 Days of Pushing Through: A Guided Journal
by Melissa A. Corrigan
Are you ready for a change? Like really ready? Have you battled low self-esteem, poor internal dialogue, remnants of a traumatic childhood, abusive relationship, or simply feeling a bit… lost? You have the key to unlocking a better you… right inside yourself. In your heart, your mind,…
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Let Us Be Greater: A Gentle, Guided Path to Healing for Adoptees
by Michelle Madrid
Adoption is a lifeline of support and opportunity for countless people, but it can bring challenges and emotional conditions that are often silenced or left unaddressed, including PTSD, risk of suicide, and fear of abandonment. Author Michelle Madrid has experienced these challenges as a foster…
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Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies
by Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and Lori Holden
Adoption Unfiltered authors Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies–all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption. While finding common ground in the sometimes-contentious…
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Crazy Bastard: A Memoir of Forced Adoption
by Abraham Maddison
Derek Pedley abandons his thirty-year journalism career on the brink of a breakdown, haunted by addiction, compulsion, and obsession, and carrying the heavy baggage of a boy who found his adoption papers at fifteen. When an anguished letter his mother wrote almost half a century…
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The Killing Closet: A Memoir
by V. L. Brunskill
In this heartbreaking story of family, struggle, hope, and forgiveness, V.L. Brunskill tells of her life as she grows up on Long Island, New York. Vicki-lynn and her brother Peter are adopted as infants into a family defined by violence. V.L. defends her mother and…
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Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood
by Kimberly D. McKee
In Adoption Fantasies, Kimberly D. McKee explores the ways adopted Asian women and girls are situated at a nexus of objectifications—as adoptees and as Asian American women—and how they negotiate competing expectations based on sensationalist and fictional portrayals of adoption found in US popular culture. McKee…
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Who Am I?
by Michelle Rice-Gauvreau
Who Am I? is a powerful memoir by Michelle Rice-Gauvreau that pulls back the curtain on an unsettling chapter of indigenous history. Born in a Mohawk Reservation in Canada, Michelle was illicitly adopted and raised in an abusive home in the United States. Amidst the…
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Against All Odds
by Theresa Hiney Tinggal
The true story of Irish woman Theresa Hiney Tinggal, who at the age of 48 discovered that she was illegally registered as the biological child of her adoptive parents. Her subsequent quest for the truth led her on a journey where she discovered that there…
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A Moment in Time
by A J Bialo
Imagine, if you can, if you could trace your beginnings to a specific moment in time. If that specific moment had never happened, your existence–and everything and everybody you have influenced–would never have happened. This is the focus of the title poem in A Moment…
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Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness
by Liz DeBetta
We live in a world where conversations about trauma are becoming commonplace and adopted people are using their voices to educate the general public about the effects of maternal separation and genealogical bewilderment. But for many adult adoptees the act of speaking truth to power…
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I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir
by Susan Kiyo Ito
Growing up with adoptive nisei parents, Susan Kiyo Ito knew only that her birth mother was Japanese American and her father white. But finding and meeting her birth mother in her early twenties was only the beginning of her search for answers, history, and identity.…
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Second Choices: A Story of Belonging and Finding Home
by June Wright
Elise, an adoptee, had always felt like a second choice. When she fell in love with and married Evan, she believed she was finally someone’s first choice. She longed for a place to feel validated, loved, and, most importantly, fit in. But Evan had demons…
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Surrounding Sparky: A Gift of Life
by Brad Livingood
The story of one man’s journey to unearth his roots while navigating the complexities of a 1950s adoption, told through the backdrop of American history, raising a young family, and the advent of social media and modern DNA testing. Serendipitous twists and turns are all…
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Mystic Masquerade: An Adoptee’s Search for Truth
by Valerie Naiman
Mystic Masquerade: An Adoptee’s Search for Truth is an epic story of adoption that weaves together DNA, ancient wisdom, esoteric knowledge and suppressed information about humanity’s origins. Adopted at birth in Miami, Valerie Naiman healed the trauma of infant separation by embarking on a spiritual…
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When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology
Edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung
There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres. These tales from fifteen bestselling,…
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Recycled: A Reluctant Search for True Self Through Nurture, Nature, and Free Will
by Jack F. Rocco MD
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 he knew the story of his “Gotday,” he didn’t know the story of his birth…
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Not Nicholson: The Story of a First Daughter, An Adoption Search and Reunion Memoir
by Ann M. Haralambie
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, the hurdles and misdirections, and what happens when she finally finds out who her biological…
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A Fire Is Coming
by Emma Stevens
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 Brenner decided to accept her as a patient. Against a backdrop of the Laguna Beach…
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Found: Adopted Friends Search for their Birth Families
by Trish Diggins and Sherri Craig-Evans
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 happened over the next five years was much more difficult–trying to forge relationships with a…
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Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee
by David Enker
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 some of the ingredients in this collection of short stories and illustrations. This book will…
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Sanctuaries
by Vince Sgambati
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 against the larger turmoil of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, and the…
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Landlock X: Poems
by Sarah Audsley
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 answers. Employing a variety of poetic forms, co-opting the pastoral tradition to argue for belonging…