Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

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

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RECENTLY ADDED

  • 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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NEWLY PUBLISHED

  • A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    Lesley was one of six children whose mother gave them all away. Fostered then adopted by people who were simply not fit for purpose she experienced a lot of pain… 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

RECENT MEMOIRS

  • 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

  • Practically Still a Virgin: An Adoption Memoir

    Practically Still a Virgin: An Adoption Memoir

    During Alaska’s rough-and-tumble 1970s oil boom, a time when prostitution, violence, and lawlessness reigned, Monica Hall rebels against her strict Catholic parents in a downward spiral of delinquency. Overwhelmed by… Read more

RECENT FICTION

  • 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

RECENT PSYCHOLOGY/SELF-HELP

  • 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 as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her… 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 University (final report targeted for release in 2025), adopted people are 36.7 times more likely… Read more

  • The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment

    The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment

    Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but the reality is that many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma and issues of identity and belonging. Adoptees often spend the majority of their youth without the language to explore the grief related to adoption or the permission… Read more

RECENT JOURNALISM & RESEARCH

  • Adoption’s Hidden History: Steps to Sealing the Records (Vol. 2)

    Adoption’s Hidden History: Steps to Sealing the Records (Vol. 2)

    An estimated six million Americans are adopted. The development of laws and regulations facilitating this process has been shrouded in mystery. “Adoption’s Hidden History” is for anyone who has ever been touched by adoption. From Myra Clark Gaines’ nineteenth century court fight for recognition as… Read more

  • Adoption’s Hidden History: From Native American Tribes to Locked Lives (Vol. 1)

    Adoption’s Hidden History: From Native American Tribes to Locked Lives (Vol. 1)

    Adoptions are finalized daily across America. Like the root system of a giant oak, tentacles of its history are submerged in years of human experience. Native Americans adopted children and adults into their tribes before pilgrims settled in the New World. Early-day adoption advocates took… Read more

  • Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo?

    Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo?

    This book presents a committed quest to unravel and document the postwar adoption networks that placed more than 3,000 Greek children in the United States, in a movement accelerated by the aftermath of the Greek Civil War and by the new conditions of the global… Read more

RECENT ANTHOLOGIES

  • 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

RECENT POETRY

  • 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

RECENT CHILDREN/TEENS

  • The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

    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

  • Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

    Everyone Hates Kelsie Miller

    There’s no one Kelsie Miller hates more than Eric Mulvaney Ortiz—the homecoming king, captain of the football team, and academic archrival in her hyper-competitive prep school. But after Kelsie’s best… Read more