Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Adoptee Reading is a catalog of books written by adoptees along with other adoption-related books recommended by adoptees.

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  • Sacrificial Animals: A Novel
    Sacrificial Animals: A Novel
  • The Price of Children: Stolen Lives in a Land Without Choice
    The Price of Children: Stolen Lives in a Land Without Choice
  • Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
    Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss

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

    Crossing the Cherry Blossom Sea: An Adoptee’s Memoir

    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… Read more

  • Going Unarmed Into the Wail

    Going Unarmed Into the Wail

    Going Unarmed Into the Wail is an intense, intimate chapbook that wrestles with what it is to be a product of the adoption-industrial complex. With rich visuals, the poems in this… Read more


  • Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss

    Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss

    Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience… Read more

  • Who’s Wally?: Adoption, Brian, and Me

    Who’s Wally?: Adoption, Brian, and Me

    Andy Wallis was born as David in 1973; he was surplus to requirements and given up for adoption. Growing up, his adoption was never something he really thought about. It… Read more


  • Sacrificial Animals: A Novel

    Sacrificial Animals: A Novel

    Inspired by Kailee Pedersen’s own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up alongside her family’s farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores… Read more

  • When the Ocean Flies

    When the Ocean Flies

    An email from a stranger tells Alison Earley that her natural father, whom she has known for only six years, has died suddenly. What begins as a short trip back… Read more


  • A Fire Is Coming

    A Fire Is Coming

    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… Read more

  • 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

    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… Read more

  • 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

    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… Read more


  • Finding Our Place: 100 Memorable Adoptees, Fostered Persons, and Orphanage Alumni

    Finding Our Place: 100 Memorable Adoptees, Fostered Persons, and Orphanage Alumni

    This unique one-volume reference guide provides positive and empowering biographical sketches of 100 famous and well-known adoptees throughout time, serving to counter the many negative stereotypes that exist that exist about people who were adopted, fostered, or lived in orphanages. This work looks at the… Read more

  • The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption

    The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption

    The story, first told by Barbara Raymond in a magazine article that inspired a 60 Minutes feature, was shocking. Georgia Tann, nationally lauded for arranging adoptions out of her children’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, was actually a baby seller who terrorized poor, often unwed mothers… Read more

  • Adoption Deception: A Personal and Professional Journey

    Adoption Deception: A Personal and Professional Journey

    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… Read more


  • 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

    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… Read more

  • When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of… Read more


  • In Praise of Late Wonder

    In Praise of Late Wonder

    In his most personal collection of poems to date, California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick writes with openness about his adoption from Korea in more than 25 new memoir-like prose poems.… Read more

  • 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

    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… Read more


  • When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of… Read more

  • Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

    Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

    Sarah has always struggled to fit in. Born in South Korea and adopted at birth by a white couple, she grows up in a rural community with few Asian neighbors.… Read more