Author: Editor
-
Litany for the Long Moment
by Mary-Kim Arnold
The orphan at the center of Litany for the Long Moment is without homeland and without language. In three linked lyric essays, Arnold attempts to claim her own linguistic, cultural, and aesthetic lineage. Born in Korea and adopted to the U.S. as a child, she explores…
-
The Perks of Being an Adoptee
by Mae Claire
Adoption is complex and each adoption is unique. There is something that unites all adoptees though and it is loss. Many find happiness, joy, understanding, and their birth family while at the same time experiencing great pain. There are also adoptees who have had less…
-
Swabbed & Found: An Adopted Man’s DNA Journey to Discover his Family Tree
by Frank Billingsley
As Houston’s beloved KPRC weatherman for more than 20 years, Frank Billingsley seems like a relative to many people. His optimistic presence comes into their homes and reassures that even the gloomiest of rain clouds probably has a silver lining. He has such a way…
-
Decoding Our Origins: The Lived Experiences of Colombian Adoptees
Edited by Abby Forero-Hilty
Decoding Our Origins: The Lived Experiences of Colombian Adoptees is written by seventeen authors who were born in Colombia and adopted internationally. Their individual stories illustrate different aspects of the transracial adoption experience. The traumatic loss of their mothers, culture and identities; racism; and severe…
-
Adoptee: A Childhood of Torment
by Joseph M. Sabol
The true story of an adopted child, abused, beaten, taunted, and humiliated. This book reveals a very different side of the Catholic Ursuline Order of Sisters and of one of the largest Catholic churches in the Cleveland Diocese, St. Charles Catholic Church, during the 1960s.…
-
Everything Is Possible: Finding the Faith and Courage to Follow Your Dreams
by Jen Bricker with Sheryl Berk
Jen Bricker was born without legs. Shocked and uncertain they could care for her, her biological parents gave her up for adoption. In her loving adoptive home, there was just one simple rule: “Never say ‘can’t.’” And pretty soon, there was nothing this small but…
-
Gold from the Stone: New and Selected Poems
by Lemn Sissay
Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries.…
-
Somebody Else’s Daughter
by Elizabeth Brundage
In the idyllic Berkshires, at the prestigious Pioneer School, there are dark secrets that threaten to come to light. Willa Golding, a student, has been brought up by her adoptive parents in elegant prosperity, but they have fled a mysterious and shameful past. Her biological…
-
Ill Will
by Dan Chaon
A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came…
-
Too Afraid To Cry
by Ali Cobby Eckermann
In Too Afraid to Cry, Ali Cobby Eckermann―who was recently awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world―describes with searing detail the devastating effects of racist policies that tore apart Indigenous Australian communities and created the Stolen Generations of adoptees,…
-
Almost Home: A Memoir
by Hilary Harper
While snooping in a closet as an adolescent, Hilary Harper discovers a secret: her parents are not her parents. Documents reveal her mother to be a vague, distant relative who died in a car crash. Her father is “unknown.” Vividly depicting the suburban Detroit neighborhood…
-
The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me
by Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski
The Foundling tells the incredible and inspiring true story of Paul Fronczak, a man who recently discovered via a DNA test that he was not who he thought he was—and set out to solve two fifty-year-old mysteries at once. Along the way he upturned the genealogy…
-
After the Truth: A Memoir
by Paige Adams Strickland
What do you do when you are an adopted adult, trying to balance biological and adoptive families in addition to your own home life? How could being adopted have an impact on your career, your friendships and parenting decisions? What do you do when your…
-
Kimchi & Calamari
by Rose Kent
There are worse things in the world than being adopted. But right now Joseph can’t think of one. Joseph Calderaro has a serious problem. His social studies teacher has given him an impossible assignment: an essay about ancestors. Ancestors, as in dead people you’re related…
-
What Is a Part of Me?
by Ola Zuri
This is the story of a young girl adopted transracially who has some struggles with finding answers to some difficult questions. Follow along with her as she learns some things about her past and finds out where her true strength is. Adoptee Author: Ola Zuri Publication…
-
Where Do I Belong?
by Ola Zuri
The story is about a young boy who was adopted transracially and feels that something in his family isn’t quite right. He wonders and worries about where he fits and where he belongs. Follow him as he soon discovers the answers. Adoptee Author: Ola Zuri Publication…
-
Why Can’t You Look Like Me?
by Ola Zuri
Follow along on a young girl’s journey as she wonders Why Can’t You Look Like Me of those around her. She is an African American girl adopted transracially and feels like she doesn’t fit in, even within her own family. This tender book shows how…
-
It’s Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, and Open Adoption
Edited by Brooke Randolph, MA, NCC, LMHC
The title of this book can be both inflammatory and comforting; different people need to read it different ways. The reality is that the desire for information has nothing to do with parenting or personality, but an innate desire. It’s Not About You is an…
-
In The Veins
Edited by Patricia Busbee
Part of this book’s proceeds will support Standing Rock Water Protectors and #NoDAPL. Twenty-eight poets from across Turtle Island contributed, including First Nations poet David Groulx (Anishinabe Elliott Lake); Assiniboine playwright William Yellow Robe; Ojibwe scholar Dr. Carol A. Hand, who wrote an introduction; notable…
-
Adopted: An Adoptee’s Memoir of Healing Love
by David C. Alves
Adopted touches on the issues nearly every child or adult adoptee must face on the way to maturity, wholeness, and redemption. Along the way my personal narrative provides valuable insights to adoptive and foster parents who long to see their children whole. And to adult adoptees…
-
Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years
by Katie Naftzger
Describing the essential skills you need to help your adopted teen to confidently face the challenges of growing up, adult adoptee and family therapist Katie Naftzger shares her personal and professional wisdom. She outlines four key goals for adoptive parents: · To move from rescuing…
-
Finding Our Place: 100 Memorable Adoptees, Fostered Persons, and Orphanage Alumni
by Nikki McCaslin with Richard Uhrlaub and Marilyn Grotsky
This unique one-volume reference guide provides positive and empowering biographical sketches of 100 famous and well-known adoptees throughout time, serving to counter the many negative stereotypes that exist that exist about people who were adopted, fostered, or lived in orphanages. This work looks at the…
-
The Good Guy
by Susan Beale
Ted, a car-tyre salesman in 1960s suburban New England, is a dreamer who craves admiration. His wife, Abigail, longs for a life of the mind. Single-girl Penny just wants to be loved. When a chance encounter brings Ted and Penny together, he becomes enamoured and…
-
15 Books by Transracial Adoptees
Transracial adoptees are those raised in families of a different race than their own. Sometimes these adoptees were also born in different countries than the ones they live in as adopted people. We can all learn much from these adoptees about issues of racial and…
-
When You Never Said Goodbye: An Adoptee’s Search for Her Birth Mother: A Novel in Poems and Journal Entries
by Meg Kearney
A student at NYU in Greenwich Village, Liz McLane is pursuing her dream of becoming a poet and, at the same time, determined to find her birth mother, no matter what the results may be. Through her journals, Liz records her struggle to navigate adoption…
-
Searching for Enda
by Paul G. Denny
Everyone has a story to tell. Some are of heartbreak, some of loss, some of passion. In Searching for Enda, a brave man asking questions about his adoption in Britain leads him to discover buried secrets swept under a conservative carpet of shame. We all…
-
Walk Away (Kindle Single)
by Michele Leavitt
Walk Away is the unflinching and inspiring story of how author Michele Leavitt lived through the violence of her adolescence, how that violence haunted her through her escape to college and law school, and how she ultimately came to rise out of it to a…
-
10 Books Written by Male Adoptees
There is currently an imbalance in the number of adoptee-authored articles, blogs, and books being written by women vs. men, so it can be difficult for male adoptees to connect with others like themselves. Here are ten books–memoirs, novels, and a poetry collection–written by male…
-
Black Anthology: Adult Adoptees Claim Their Space
Edited by Susan Harris O’Connor, MSW; Diane René Christian; Mei-Mei Akwai Ellerman, PhD
People who identify as Black adoptees are vaguely known within both adoption circles as well as universal discussions. We are just beginning to be introduced to one another. This anthology allows for the opportunity to see the rich diversity of a people; the uniqueness within…
-
Umbilicus
by Paula Gruben
Charlotte van Katwijk guards herself like a secret. Kids are cruel, and she knows if they find out she’s adopted, she’ll be a bully’s easy target. When they are fourteen, Charlotte’s best friend’s mom commits suicide. It triggers in Charlotte a sense of urgency to…