Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books About Domestic Adoptions in Oceania

  • A Family from Barra: An Adoption Story

    A Family from Barra: An Adoption Story

    by Beryl Martin

    Beryl Martin grew up as Pat Ridge, daughter of Nellie and George. George worked at the Municipal Milk Department; Nellie fostered children, to whom she was mostly cruel. Roaming Wellington as a child and schoolgirl, Pat started work at the Zig Zag factory at 14;…

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  • A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law

    A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law

    by Darryl Nelson

    A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law traces Australian laws affecting thousands, back to the US theories of eugenics, then back to Britain. It highlights the various notions of ‘the best interests of the child’ in law, over time, and shows how the poor…

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  • Adoption Deception: A Personal and Professional Journey

    Adoption Deception: A Personal and Professional Journey

    by Penny Mackieson

    Have you ever wondered how it might feel to have been adopted in Australia during the pre-1980s era in which vulnerable young mothers were coerced into relinquishing their babies? How it might feel to have grown up, become a social worker and worked with vulnerable…

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  • An Australian Son

    An Australian Son

    by Gordon Matthews

    Autobiography of Gordon Matthews. Adopted at birth, he grew up in the 1950s in middle class Kew. Through a series of circumstances Matthews came to believe he was of Aboriginal descent. Passionately, he formally embraced this identity and acquired a profile in the diplomatic service.…

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

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

    by Angel Davis; illustrated by Angie McGahey

    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 book with motivational uplifting quotes and affirmations, original illustrations and patterns, and journaling pages to…

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  • Crazy Bastard: A Memoir of Forced Adoption

    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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  • Heartlines: The Year I Met My Other Mother

    Heartlines: The Year I Met My Other Mother

    by Susannah McFarlane and Robin Leuba

    In 1965, Robin, unmarried and pregnant, comes to Melbourne to give birth and give her baby up for adoption, then returns to Perth to resume her life having never seen her baby. After 10 days alone, the baby is taken home, named Susannah, and made…

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  • Surviving Secrets

    Surviving Secrets

    by Margaret Watson

    A true story that reveals the strength and resilience of the human spirit in the face of betrayal, grief and loss. At age forty, Margaret Watson learned she was adopted. This shocking and confronting truth was previously unknown to her and turned her whole world…

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

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

    by Angel Davis; illustrated by Angie McGahey

    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 hold on to it–so just let it all out! As an adult adoptee that struggles…

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  • The Mothers

    The Mothers

    by Rod Jones

    In 1917, while the world is at war, Alma and her children are living in a sleep-out at the back of Mrs Lovett’s house in working-class Footscray. When Alma falls pregnant, her daughter Molly is born in secret. As Molly grows up, there is a…

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  • Too Afraid To Cry

    Too Afraid To Cry

    by Ali Cobby Eckermann

    In Too Afraid to Cry, Ali Cobby Eckermann―who was recently awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world―describes with searing detail the devastating effects of racist policies that tore apart Indigenous Australian communities and created the Stolen Generations of adoptees,…

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  • Tree of Strangers

    Tree of Strangers

    by Barbara Sumner

    “‘I live at the end of a gravel road at the top of a valley consumed by bush. My husband is here, and my three girls. But the bush swallows them up like the road.’ I wrote those words at the kitchen table in 1983.…

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  • Where the Fuck is My Mother?: A Book for Grown-Up Adoptees

    Where the Fuck is My Mother?: A Book for Grown-Up Adoptees

    by Annie O

    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 not always what it’s made out to be, juxtaposed in this beautifully presented children’s-style book…

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