RECENTLY ADDED
Including Nearly 500 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!
Welcome!
Adoptee Reading helps adopted people discover books and other writing about adoption from the adoptee perspective.
Check out the Overview and How To Use This Site to learn more.
NEWS FOR ADOPTEE READERS
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Let Us Know What We Missed
We need your help! These past several months, we were focused on technical issues with the Adoptee Reading website and likely overlooked some books that adoptees should know about. Please…
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Adoptee Reading Is Back!
Hello again, adoptee readers! Some of you may have noticed that Adoptee Reading has been inaccessible for many months. In late 2025, I realized that the site was being inundated…
NEWLY PUBLISHED
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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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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 MEMOIRS
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P.S. I Think of You Often: A Journey Into Understanding
Some questions follow us from the beginning. Brenda Laface was adopted as an infant. She built a life that looked complete from the outside: a marriage, a family, the roles… Read more
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Weirdo: Tales of a Geek Adoptee
Weirdo: Tales of a Geek Adoptee delivers an inside look at adoption during the Baby Scoop Era, chronicling a shocking part of American history that should never be forgotten. Relinquished for… Read more
RECENT FICTION
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The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven… Read more
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The Sense of Wonder
An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. It is the start of a joke but what is the punchline? When… Read more
RECENT PSYCHOLOGY/SELF-HELP
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P.S. I Think of You Often: A Journey Into Understanding
Some questions follow us from the beginning. Brenda Laface was adopted as an infant. She built a life that looked complete from the outside: a marriage, a family, the roles that society had already drawn the outline for. But the questions she carried about who… Read more
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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 as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her… Read more
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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 University (final report targeted for release in 2025), adopted people are 36.7 times more likely… Read more
RECENT JOURNALISM & RESEARCH
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What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed
What They Never Told Us tells the stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary, life-changing discoveries about their parentage and/or race and ethnicity that fractured their identities. The book asks the big questions: Who are we? And what is family? Blending social history and personal narratives,… Read more
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The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States
The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents–a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively… Read more
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The Price of Children: Stolen Lives in a Land Without Choice
A powerful church. An acquiescent government. In The Price of Children, investigative journalist Maria Laurino details the shocking story of mothers and children deceived and exploited as directed by the highest levels of the Vatican. Between 1950 and 1970, the Vatican and the American Catholic Church… 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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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
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The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Part memoir, part speculative fiction, this novel explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee. Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with a new book woven… Read more