Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books About or Written By Female Adoptees

  • 45 Days of Pushing Through: A Guided Journal

    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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  • A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    by Lesley Wells

    Lesley was one of six children whose mother gave them all away. Fostered then adopted by people who were simply not fit for purpose she experienced a lot of pain and cruelty in her childhood, but also found a lot of joy in the most…

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  • 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 Fire Is Coming

    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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  • A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

    A Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

    Edited by Susan Ito and Tina Cervin

    Sixty short stories and poems reveal the sometimes heartbreaking, often affirming tales of adoption. Written from the point of view of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, this unique anthology spans nations and cultures. Editors: Susan Ito, Tina Cervin Adoptee Authors: Mi Ok Song Bruining, Lisa Buchanan,…

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  • A Girl Named Connie

    A Girl Named Connie

    by Carol Perkins with Connie Wilson

    In 1946, being adopted was a social curse and a lifelong sentence. I was born that year, but not to prosperous business owners, Bill and Cloteel Wilson as I had thought. When I was six weeks old, they brought me to their rural Kentucky town,…

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  • A Legitimate Life: A Forbidden Journey of Self-Discovery

    A Legitimate Life: A Forbidden Journey of Self-Discovery

    by Melinda A. Warshaw

    Adopted into an affluent and aristocratic family, Melinda A. Warshaw had everything a little girl could want—the best clothes, the best toys, horse riding lessons, anything else her heart desired. But what she didn’t have was answers. Why was she so different from the people…

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  • A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    by Nicole Chung

    Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she’d long wanted.…

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  • A Moment in Time

    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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  • A Princess Found: An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter Who Connected Them All

    A Princess Found: An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter Who Connected Them All

    by Sarah Culberson and Tracy Trivas

    A biracial adoptee from West Virginia searches for her birth parents and discovers that her father is the chief of a Mende tribe in Sierra Leone. Her memoir is paralleled with the story of her father, recreated by a coauthor. Adoptee Author: Sarah Culberson Author: Tracy Trivas…

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  • A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots

    A Single Square Picture: A Korean Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots

    by Katy Robinson

    At seven years old, Katy Robinson is adopted by a Salt Lake City, Utah, couple. Twenty years later, she returns to Seoul, Korea, to reconnect with her birth family and finds herself an outsider in her native country. Adoptee Author: Katy Robinson Publication Year: 2002 Critical Reviews…

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  • A Twenty Year Journey: An Adoptee’s Search for Answers

    A Twenty Year Journey: An Adoptee’s Search for Answers

    by Cathryn B. Stanley

    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 of my pilgrimage with you. Incredibly my circle of existence is quite small, yet the…

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  • Accidental Sisters: The Story of My 52-Year Wait to Meet My Biological Sibling

    Accidental Sisters: The Story of My 52-Year Wait to Meet My Biological Sibling

    by Katherine Linn Caire

    Relinquished at birth to Catholic Charities in 1959, Kathe Linn Caire adores her adoptive family and has never considered searching for her birth parents. At age fifty-two, though, a sudden pull to learn more about her medical history sends her on an unexpected journey. Kathe…

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  • Adopted Out: A Memoir of Closed Adoption and Blackness

    Adopted Out: A Memoir of Closed Adoption and Blackness

    by S.M. Ezeff

    While searching for her birth family, S.M. Ezeff discovered there was a shortage of African American adoptees speaking out and came to realize that agency-based adoption is still taboo within the African American community. Constantly being asked if her adoptive parents were Black, she learned…

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  • Adopted Reality

    Adopted Reality

    by Laura Dennis

    Caught in a paranoid delusion that she’s a bionic spy responsible for 9/11, adoptee Laura Dennis must fight her perfectionist, self-destructive tendencies to regain her sanity. Adoptee Author: Laura Dennis Publication Year: 2012 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop and Amazon links on this site…

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  • Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    by Beth Syverson and Joseph Nakao; foreword by Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao

    This book is a wake-up call to those impacted by adoption and to those who interact with them. According to preliminary results of a groundbreaking study out of Winston-Salem State University (final report targeted for release in 2025), adopted people are 36.7 times more likely…

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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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  • Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood

    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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  • Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age

    Edited by Laura Dennis

    This anthology gives voice to the wide experiences of adoptees and those who love them; examining the emotional, psychological and logistical effects of adoption reunion. Primarily adult adoptee voices, we also hear from adoptive parents, first moms and mental health professionals, all weighing in on…

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  • Adoption Therapy: Perspectives from Clients and Clinicians on Processing and Healing Post-Adoption Issues

    Adoption Therapy: Perspectives from Clients and Clinicians on Processing and Healing Post-Adoption Issues

    Edited by Laura Dennis

    With writing by adoptees, adoptive parents, and clinicians, Adoption Therapy is a first-of-its-kind and wholly unique reference book, providing insight, advice, and personal stories which highlight the specific nature of the adoptee experience. Editor: Laura Dennis Adoptee Authors: Marcy Axness, Ph.D.; Karen Belanger; Karen Caffrey, LPC, JD;…

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  • Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies

    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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  • Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists

    Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists

    Edited by Janine Myung Ja, Michael Allen Potter, and Allen L. Vance

    This anthology begins with personal accounts and then shifts to a bird’s eye view on adoption from domestic, intercountry and transracial adoptees who are now adoptee rights activists. Along with adopted people, this collection also includes the voices of mothers and a father from the…

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  • After the Morning Calm: Reflections of Korean Adoptees

    After the Morning Calm: Reflections of Korean Adoptees

    Edited by Sook Wilkinson, PhD, and Nancy Fox

    Korean adult adoptees speak out in this anthology. Through memories, reflections, and poetry, adoptees speak to the range of issues that accompany adoption: feelings of belonging and difference, self and other, culture and accomodation, love and loss. We now know that it is in late…

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  • After the Truth: A Memoir

    After the Truth: A Memoir

    by Paige Adams Strickland

    What do you do when you are an adopted adult, trying to balance biological and adoptive families in addition to your own home life? How could being adopted have an impact on your career, your friendships and parenting decisions? What do you do when your…

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  • Against All Odds

    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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  • Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity

    Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity

    by Paige Adams Strickland

    In Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity, Paige tells stories from the perspective of a child and adolescent, growing up with a closely guarded secret. Through vignettes, Paige relates feelings about her adoption to forming and maintaining relationships, caring for pets,…

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  • All Morning the Crows

    All Morning the Crows

    by Meg Kearney

    Kearney draws on her acute powers of observation, a lively curiosity, and her gift for gorgeous imagery to take us on a journey of personal exploration, discovery, and reconciliation. Surprising poems bring together the parallel but discreet worlds of humans and birds, which speak to…

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  • All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

    All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

    by Nicole Chung

    What does it mean to lose your roots―within your culture, within your family―and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood,…

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