Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books about Intercountry Adoptions from Asia

  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • An-Ya and Her Diary

    An-Ya and Her Diary

    by Diane René Christian

    An-Ya and Her Diary chronicles the journey of a fictional eleven-year-old adoptee from China. Written in diary format, young An-Ya reveals her emotional journey as she is catapulted from a Chinese orphanage into a middle class home in America. Author: Diane René Christian Publication Year: 2012 Critical…

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  • An-Ya and Her Diary: Reader and Parent Guide

    An-Ya and Her Diary: Reader and Parent Guide

    Edited by Diane René Christian

    Professional adoptees discuss all aspects of the novel An-Ya and Her Diary. Included are lessons on how to lead an adoption discussion, how a parent can use the novel to emotionally guide their child through the book, as well as writers who eloquently express their…

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  • Arabilis

    Arabilis

    by Leah Silvieus

    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 upbringing, these poems delve into the complex relationship between the self and the indifferent world…

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  • Back to My Roots: My Journey to China

    Back to My Roots: My Journey to China

    by Yanina Verplanke

    “Happy Life is starting from this moment” This slogan is written on the wall of the Chinese adoption bureau of Chongqing. It is quite applicable to the seventeen-month-old toddler De Xing Fu. She grows up as a happy-go-lucky kid in Goes, a town in Zeeland, under…

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  • Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese-American Adoptee’s Memoir & Search for Identity

    Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese-American Adoptee’s Memoir & Search for Identity

    by Marijane Huang

    Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Marijane was adopted by an American military family at four months old. She grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in the deep South where hers was the only Asian face among a majority of white. Raised to believe she was Vietnamese…

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  • Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space

    Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space

    Edited by Susan Harris O’Connor, MSW; Diane René Christian; Mei-Mei Akwai Ellerman, PhD

    People who identify as Black adoptees are vaguely known within both adoption circles as well as universal discussions. We are just beginning to be introduced to one another. This anthology allows for the opportunity to see the rich diversity of a people; the uniqueness within…

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  • Cleave

    Cleave

    by Tiana Nobile

    In her debut collection, Tiana Nobile grapples with the history of transnational adoption, both her own from South Korea and the broader, collective experience. In conversation with psychologist Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments and utilizing fragments of a highly personal cache of documents from her own…

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  • Cooper’s Lesson

    Cooper’s Lesson

    by Sun Yung Shin, illustrated by Kim Cogan

    Cooper caught his reflection in the window. Brown hair, fair skin, and some freckles. Grandmother Park always said, “Such white skin!” and Grandmother Daly always said, “What brown skin!” One cousin always teased him about being “half and half.” Cooper has had about enough of…

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  • Cries of the Soul: The True Story of a Korean Adoptee’s Fight to Survive

    Cries of the Soul: The True Story of a Korean Adoptee’s Fight to Survive

    by Khara Niné

    In 1970, shortly after the death of her mother, and without the consent or even the knowledge of her father, a barely one year old girl is put up for foreign adoption in South Korea. She ends up in an adoptive family where she spends…

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  • Crossing the Cherry Blossom Sea: An Adoptee’s Memoir

    Crossing the Cherry Blossom Sea: An Adoptee’s Memoir

    by M. Rosales

    In this compelling memoir, M. Rosales recalls the day she was torn away from South Korea at the age of five alongside her younger sister, to live with an American family. With barely any memories of her former life, Rosales navigates the complexities of loss,…

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  • Dear Wonderful You: Letters to Adopted & Fostered Youth

    Dear Wonderful You: Letters to Adopted & Fostered Youth

    Edited by Diane René Christian and Mei-Mei Akwai Ellerman, PhD

    A powerful book filled with thoughtful and inspiring letters. This anthology was written by a global community of adult adoptees and adults who were fostered. Each letter was penned to the upcoming generation of adopted and fostered youth. Editors: Diane René Christian, Mei-Mei Akwai Ellerman Adoptee…

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  • Desire: A Haunting

    Desire: A Haunting

    by Molly Gaudry

    Traumatized by the events of We Take Me Apart, the unlikely heroine of Desire: A Haunting leads a silent life in the cottage that has been in her family since Hester Prynne first bequeathed it to Pearl–whose endearingly cranky spirit remains. So begins this strange friendship between “dog”…

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  • Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity

    Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity

    by Matthew Salesses

    In Different Racisms, Matthew Salesses explores the unique racism Asian Americans face, including the model minority myth, the impact of Jeremy Lin’s fame on Asian American representation in national media, and America’s perception of “Gangnam Style” singer and K-Pop sensation, Psy. Salesses’ essays (and his…

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  • Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear

    Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear

    by Matthew Salesses

    Matt Kim is always tired. He keeps passing out. His cat is dead. His wife and daughter have left him. He’s estranged from his adoptive family. People bump into him on the street as if he isn’t there. He is pretty sure he’s disappearing. His…

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  • Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States

    Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States

    by Kimberly D. McKee

    Since the Korean War began, Western families have adopted more than 200,000 Korean children. Two thirds of these adoptees found homes in the United States. The majority joined white families and in the process forged a new kind of transnational and transracial kinship. Kimberly D.…

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  • Dust of the Streets: The Journey of a Biracial Orphan of the Korean War

    Dust of the Streets: The Journey of a Biracial Orphan of the Korean War

    by Thomas Park Clement

    Autobiography of a half and half Korean boy born in the middle of the Korean War found at age 5 on the streets of Seoul, post war, adopted into the U.S. who eventually grew up to be a medical device inventor with over two dozen…

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  • Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

    Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

    by Meredith Ireland

    There’s no one Kelsie Miller hates more than Eric Mulvaney Ortiz—the homecoming king, captain of the football team, and academic archrival in her hyper-competitive prep school. But after Kelsie’s best friend, Briana, moves across the country and stops speaking to her, she’ll do anything, even…

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  • Everyone Was Falling

    Everyone Was Falling

    by JS Lee

    On the weekend of July Fourth, shots are fired at a twentieth high school reunion in a small US town, killing fifty-six. Three survive. So begins Everyone Was Falling, an empowering novel of friendship and violence on the verge of Trump’s election. Lucy–a queer, Asian…

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  • Famous Adopted People

    Famous Adopted People

    by Alice Stephens

    Lisa Pearl is an American teaching English in Japan and the situation there―thanks mostly to her spontaneous, hard-partying ways―has become problematic. Now she’s in Seoul, South Korea, with her childhood best-friend Mindy. The young women share a special bond: they are both Korean-born adoptees into…

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  • Finding Out: Coming to Terms with Adoption

    Finding Out: Coming to Terms with Adoption

    by Paula Wilson

    Thanks to my wonderful parents, there is a story to be told about an airman and his wife. Those people, who took a chance, went through an arduous process never taken before by an American to open their hearts and home to a two-year-old orphan…

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  • Flip the Script: Adult Adoptee Anthology

    Flip the Script: Adult Adoptee Anthology

    Edited by Diane René Christian, Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston, and Rosita González

    Flip the Script: Adult Adoptee Anthology is a dynamic artistic exploration of adoptee expression and experience. This anthology offers readers a diverse compilation of literature and artistry from a global community of adoptees. From playwrights to poets, filmmakers to photographers, essay writers to lyricists—all have…

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  • From Home to Homeland: What Adoptive Families Need to Know before Making a Return Trip to China

    From Home to Homeland: What Adoptive Families Need to Know before Making a Return Trip to China

    Edited by Debra Jacobs, Iris Chin Ponte, and Leslie Kim Wang

    Every year, hundreds of adoptive families embark on homeland trips to China and other countries. Homeland trips offer great opportunities for helping adopted children develop a coherent narrative that makes sense of their complicated beginnings. Although the trip can be a joyful experience, it can…

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