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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Adoption Ruins and Unearthed Tokens: Baby Scoop Era Adoption Memoir
As far back as she could remember, Shirley Munro had always known that she was adopted. What she didn’t know, at first, was how those two words, “you’re adopted,” were… Read more
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An Accident of Birth: A Story of Adoption and Identity
When a stranger who turns out to be his niece receives an extra 23andMe test by mistake, it changes Alex Blum’s life forever. At the age of sixty, Alex Blum… Read more
RECENT MEMOIRS
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Finding Mary Smith: A Memoir of Family Secrets, Gray Market Adoption, and the Miracle Reunion with My Mom
What if everything you knew about yourself turned out to be only half the story? Comedian Al Isaacs grew up as an only child with loving parents, a gift for… Read more
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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
RECENT FICTION
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Through The Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records
The Silverton Estate Duology Book 2 For over a century, Silverton University has stewarded the Tudor manor, herb quadrants, and ancient cedar groves bequeathed by Elizabeth Silverton, the Estate’s enigmatic… Read more
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Through The Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic
The Silverton Estate Duology Book 1 When thirteen-year-old Stella discovers that her adoption did more than change her name — that it legally erased her origins and sealed away part… 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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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
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Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature: Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion
This book critically analyses the way in which traditional sociocultural and legal biases might be perpetuated against those with unknown – or unknowable – genetic ancestries. It looks to law and works of literature across differing eras and genres focussing upon such concepts as inherited… Read more
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Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories
Adoption Memoirs tells inside stories of adoption that popular media miss. Marianne Novy shows how adoption memoirs and films recount not only happy moments, but also the lasting pain of relinquishing a child, the racism and trauma that adoptees such as Jackie Kay and Jane Jeong… Read more
RECENT ANTHOLOGIES
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Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship
What’s it like when a complete unknown is actually close family? In Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship—a provocative anthology curated by B.K. Jackson, with a foreword by… 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… Read more
RECENT POETRY
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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
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A Moment in Time
Imagine, if you can, if you could trace your beginnings to a specific moment in time. If that specific moment had never happened, your existence–and everything and everybody you have… 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