RECENTLY ADDED
-
Sacrificial Animals: A Novel
-
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
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.
If you’re new to this site, begin with the Overview and How To Use This Site.
Visit the Adoptee Reading store on Bookshop.org!
Your purchase helps support Adoptee Reading as well as independent bookstores
NEWLY PUBLISHED
-
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 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
RECENT MEMOIRS
-
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
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
RECENT FICTION
-
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
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
RECENT PSYCHOLOGY/SELF-HELP
-
Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections
Rooted in Adoption: A Collection of Adoptee Reflections is a collection of short narratives from those who have been adopted. Adoptees of various ages, backgrounds, and experiences were asked discuss the joys of adoption and the struggles of living a life of secrecy and lost… Read more
-
Who Am I: A Journal to Guide the Search for Your Birth Family
Rebecca Crofoot served as a caseworker for the Nebraska Children’s Home Society for over forty-two years. About thirty of those years were dedicated to assisting clients with search and reunion. Because people are increasingly searching without the assistance of an adoption expert, Crofoot developed this… Read more
-
Groundbreaking Interventions: Working with Traumatized Children, Teens and Families in Foster Care and Adoption
A book of 16 interventions designed to teach new and imaginative ways for working with traumatized children in foster care and adoption and their families. Groundbreaking Interventions provides a wide variety of play-based methodologies that have been successful in working with children over the age… Read more
RECENT JOURNALISM & RESEARCH
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
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
-
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
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
RECENT CHILDREN/TEENS
-
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
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