RECENTLY ADDED
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Into the Light
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Road to Belonging: Establishing a Legacy of Love After Closed Adoption
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Finding Loretta: An Adopted Daughter’s Search to Define Family
Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!
Welcome!
Adoptee Reading is a catalog of books written by adoptees along with other adoption-related books recommended by adoptees.
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NEWLY PUBLISHED
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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
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Almost Loved: Poems
“What if you spend the rest of your life chasing love, only to find her cowering in the pit of your stomach? What then?” Almost Loved follows a former foster child’s… Read more
RECENT MEMOIRS
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Road to Belonging: Establishing a Legacy of Love After Closed Adoption
Each person has their own unique story, and as Lynne Leppard’s early life included foster care and adoption, she often found herself wondering about her origins and heritage. Her loyalty… Read more
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Finding Loretta: An Adopted Daughter’s Search to Define Family
Adopted as an infant by a naval officer and his wife during the Baby Scoop Era, Diane Wheaton has always heard conflicting versions of the truth of her origins—but it’s… Read more
RECENT FICTION
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Into the Light
When you’re like me, you have to lie.It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then,… Read more
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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
RECENT PSYCHOLOGY/SELF-HELP
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Truth and Agency: Writing Ideas For People Who Were Adopted
In order to feel fully rooted, it’s important to know your story. If your personal narrative starts “The day we got you,” then you are already in the gaslit land of the uprooted. It can be a struggle to feel fully human when you don’t… Read more
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Under My Bed and Other Essays
Jody Keisner was raised in rural Nebraska towns by a volatile father and kind but passive mother. As a young adult living alone for the first time, she began a nighttime ritual of checking under her bed each night, not sure who she was afraid… Read more
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Voices Unheard: A Reflective Journal for Adult Adoptees
Adoption is based on loss, often yielding deep feelings of inner turmoil, grief, disconnection, and, at times, overwhelming fear and anxiety stemming from those old, unattended wounds. Yet it is common for the actuality of childhood relinquishment to be minimized or unheard by others who are not… Read more
RECENT JOURNALISM & RESEARCH
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Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants
Since the early 1950s, over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted in the United States, primarily by white families. Korean adoptees figure in twenty-five percent of US transnational adoptions and are the largest group of transracial adoptees currently in adulthood. Despite being legally adopted, Korean… Read more
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Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed… Read more
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Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the abortion debate, but little attention has been paid to the lives of mothers who relinquish infants for private adoption. Relinquished reveals adoption to be a… Read more
RECENT ANTHOLOGIES
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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
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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
RECENT POETRY
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Almost Loved: Poems
“What if you spend the rest of your life chasing love, only to find her cowering in the pit of your stomach? What then?” Almost Loved follows a former foster child’s… Read more
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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
RECENT CHILDREN/TEENS
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Into the Light
When you’re like me, you have to lie.It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then,… Read more
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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