Category: Female Adoptees
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Searching for the Castle: Backtrail of an Adoption
by Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom
Like cowboys turning in the saddle to look at where they came from, Searching for the Castle documents the backtrail of author Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom’s adoption. It begins with her urgency as an eighteen-year-old woman initiating her search for her birth parents. Her recollection includes…
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Parenting As Adoptees
Edited by Adam Chau and Kevin Ost-Vollmers
Through fourteen chapters, the authors of Parenting As Adoptees give readers a glimpse into a pivotal phase in life that touches the experiences of many domestic and international adoptees–that of parenting. The authors, who are all adoptees from various walks of life, intertwine their personal…
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Bastards: A Memoir
by Mary Anna King
In the early 1980s, Mary Hall is a little girl growing up in poverty in Camden, New Jersey, with her older brother Jacob and parents who, in her words, were “great at making babies, but not so great at holding on to them.” After her…
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The English American: A Novel
by Alison Larkin
When Pippa Dunn,adopted as an infant and raised terribly British, discovers that her birth parents are from the American South, she finds that “culture clash” has layers of meaning she’d never imagined. Meet The English American, a fabulously funny, deeply poignant debut novel that sprang…
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The Fifth and Final Name: Memoir of an American Churchill
by Rhonda Noonan
In a family memoir that reads like a detective novel, Rhonda Noonan recounts her thirty-year quest to find the truth of her own background–and what she uncovered will surprise readers as much as it did her. Rhonda was born and adopted in Oklahoma, a state…
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She Named You Donna
by Julie Kerton
It’s a January morning in 1976; Julie rips the hospital bracelet from her wrist and throws it across the room. As it lands, she doesn’t know that the sound will echo through the years. But the story doesn’t begin here. In a suburb north of…
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If I Should Die Before I Wake
By Eileen Munro
In her memoir As I Lay Me Down to Sleep, Eileen Munro vividly documented the abuse she experienced at the hands of her adoptive parents and, later, within the care system. The birth of her son, Craig, and her escape from the authorities’ clutches should have…
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As I Lay Me Down to Sleep
by Eileen Munro with Carol McKay
The harrowing true story of how one woman was betrayed by everyone who was supposed to care for her. When Eileen Munro’s mother became pregnant at 17, she was told to give her baby away to a “good family,” but the couple who paid the…
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Ghost of Sangju: A Memoir of Reconciliation
by Soojung Jo
Ghost of Sangju takes readers through Soojung’s childhood in Kentucky filled with joy, family, friendship—and the loneliness of being marked as an outsider even in her own home. Alternating between humor and heartbreak, she offers a glimpse into a life foreign to most: that of…
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Ballerina Dreams: From Orphan to Dancer (Step Into Reading, Step 4)
by Michaela DePrince and Elaine DePrince
At the age of three, Michaela DePrince found a photo of a ballerina that changed her life. She was living in an orphanage in Sierra Leone at the time, but was soon adopted by a family and brought to America. Michaela never forgot the photo…
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Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina
by Michaela DePrince with Elaine DePrince
Michaela DePrince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage, where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a “devil child” for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find…
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Shadows of a Dark-Alley Adoptee: An Adoptee’s Search for Self
by Wendy Barkett
A book of thoughts and poems from an adoptee who attempts to find the truth which is masked by lies. Her lonely travels through a world that feels dark. At times she finds a friend to ride along in this journey called life. Adoptee Author: Wendy…
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The Tangled Red Thread
by Elle Cuardaigh
Born into the social experiment of closed adoption in the early 1960s, Noelle was taken home directly from the hospital at the age of three days. Her early life in rural Washington state seemed idyllic. With loving parents, two brothers, and her beloved pets, she…
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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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The Family of Adoption: Completely Revised and Updated
by Joyce Maguire Pavao
Full of wonderful stories that give insight into a wide variety of adoption issues, now revised in light of recent developments, The Family of Adoption is a powerful argument for the right kind of openness in adoption. Joyce Maguire Pavao uses her thirty years of…
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Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity
by Catana Tully
In this memoir, the author explores questions of race, adoption, and identity, not as the professor of cultural studies she became, but as the Black child of German settlers in Guatemala. Her journey into the mystery that shrouded her early years begins in the US…
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The Sound of Hope: A True Story of an Adoptee’s Quest for Her Origins
by Anne Bauer
Anne Bauer, an adoptee, cannot pretend that she had another life and another family before being adopted. Much of Anne’s childhood was spent wondering about her other mother. She desperately wanted to know where she was, what she looked like and most importantly, why she…
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The Wall of Secrets: Memoir of The Almost Daughter
by Claire Hitchon (with Janice Harper)
Do you feel you belong; that you fit-in in this world? Have you experienced abuse, adoption, loss, and grief? The Wall of Secrets was how I survived those feelings of not belonging, not fitting-in; not being wanted or loved. Each drawer holds one of my…
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Finding Heart Horse: A Memoir of Survival
by Claire Hitchon (with Janice Harper)
Have you ever wanted something so badly it was all you could think of? All you could talk about, write about, dream about. Claire did. She wanted a horse. Finding Heart Horse is her journey and her search for her Heart Horse. It takes her…
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The Adoptee Survival Guide: Adoptees Share Their Wisdom and Tools
Edited by Lynn Grubb
Thirty adoptee authors provide support, encouragement, and understanding to other adoptees in facing the complexities of being adopted, embarking on search and reunion, fighting for equal access to identifying information, navigating complex family relationships with the latest technology, and surviving it all with a sense…
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Called Home, Book 2: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
Edited by Patricia Busbee and Trace A. DeMeyer
From recent news about Baby Veronica to history like Operation Papoose, this book examines how Native American adoptees and their families experienced adoption and were exposed to the genocidal policies of governments who created Indian adoption projects. The editors Trace A. DeMeyer and Patricia Busbee, both…
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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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Toxic Mom Toolkit: Discovering a Happy Life Despite Toxic Parenting
by Rayne Wolfe
Toxic Mom Toolkit takes on super toxic mothers with humor, kindness, and practical tools to help readers build a peaceful and happy life. The book includes Wolfe’s memoir of growing up brave and scrappy in 1950s San Francisco, the daughter of three mothers: an absent…
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The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream
by Katharine Norbury
Katharine Norbury was abandoned as a baby in a Liverpool convent. Raised by loving adoptive parents, she grew into a wanderer, drawn by the landscape of the British countryside. One summer, following the miscarriage of a much-longed-for child, Katharine sets out – accompanied by her…
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Worthy To Be Found
by Deanna Doss Shrodes
Worthy To Be Found chronicles the joys and obstacles of a Christian adoptee relinquished at birth in the 1960s American South. Deanna was called by God from a young age. Driven to serve, and gifted in music and preaching, she excelled in her calling. Coming from…
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The Girl in the Mirror: A Novel in Poems and Journal Entries
by Meg Kearney
An adopted teen’s search for her birth mother is overshadowed by a wrenching loss, dramatically told through her poems and journals. Lizzie McLane, the adopted poet-heroine of the widely acclaimed The Secret of Me, is now a high school senior, excited about her future: meeting boys,…
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The Secret of Me: A Novel in Poems
by Meg Kearney
The acclaimed story of an adopted teenager’s quest to find her place among family, friends, and the wider world. Fourteen-year old Lizzie, as well as her older brother and sister, were adopted as infants. But facts are not feelings, and what it feels like to…
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An Unkindness of Ravens
by Meg Kearney
In An Unkindness of Ravens, Meg Kearney’s poems weave voices of estrangement and redemption: mothers, daughters, lovers of gin and dead things. In the middle poems, the protagonist confronts “Raven”: a figure of guises and disguises, revealing the speaker’s fears and angst. National Book Critics…
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Home by Now
by Meg Kearney
The characters of Meg Kearney’s gritty second poetry collection travel the shadows and edges of modern life. Searching for home and knowing that, once found, home might dissolve without warning, Kearney carves a richly lyric poetry. You will hear the voices of this striking book…
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Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin
Many adoptees are required to become people that they were never meant to be. While transracial adoption tends to be considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and economic toll on those who directly experience it. Outsiders Within is a landmark publication that carefully…