Adoptee Reading is a catalog of books, all of which meet one of the following criteria:
- a book written by an adoptee
- an adoption-themed book not written by an adoptee that is recommended by an adoptee
The books listed on this site are categorized in multiple ways. Our home page features some popular categories, but you can discover many more titles via the main menu:
- by subject (adoptees, adoptive families, birth families, search/reunion, Baby Scoop Era, etc.)
- by type of adoption (domestic, transracial, intercountry, kinship, etc.)
- by genre (memoir, fiction, psychology, poetry, etc.)
- by author
A book is listed in all the categories that apply to it, therefore you may discover the same book via different menu options. For example, if a book is a memoir in verse about a lesbian Korean adoptee meeting her birth mother for the first time, it will be listed on all of the following pages:
- Adoptees
- Female Adoptees
- Search/Reunion
- LGBTQIA
- Intercountry Adoptions
- Adoptions from Korea
- Memoir/Biography
- Poetry
- Adoptee Authors
You can search all our book listings for specific keywords using the search box located beside the menu.
For each book, a brief summary is given, along with authors’ names, year of publication, and links to critical reviews when they can be found. We distinguish between reviews written by adoptees vs. all other reviews, because we feel adoptees are the best people to evaluate adoption books that other adoptees may want to read.
Each listing also contains links to sources such as Bookshop and Amazon where the book can be purchased. If you click on one of those links and then buy the book, Adoptee Reading will receive a tiny percentage of the sale, which helps offset the cost of hosting and maintaining the site. (Thank you!)
We accept book suggestions! If you know of a great book that should be listed here, please submit the suggestion form.