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Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs
by Bo Schwabacher
This remarkable book illuminates Schwabacher’s adopted Korean experience: trauma, discovery, reassemblage. She is brave enough to not flinch at the dark parts and talented enough to render them into a gorgeous, singular art. The anti-fairy tale has been made new. It is a splayed open…
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One Small Sacrifice: A Memoir (Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects)
by Trace A. DeMeyer
Award-winning Native American journalist Trace A. DeMeyer has published her updated memoir One Small Sacrifice: A Memoir (Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects), an exposé on generations of American Indian children adopted by non-Indian families. Known for her exceptional print interviews with famous Native…
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Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
by Jeanette Winterson
Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of…
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Other Words for Grief
by Lisa Marie Rollins
“The poems gathered in Other Words For Grief, are a spotlight turned inward. As Lisa Marie Rollins relentlessly searches the interior with a hot light scanning blood and baby pictures; sexual encounters nearly gone awry as well as family encounters that fall short, we are moved…
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Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants
by SunAh M. Laybourn
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…
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Out of the Birdcage: Memoirs of an Adoptee
by JH Dunn
Based on a true story of an adoptee’s search for identity and purpose. Never quite feeling like she fit in, struggling in relationships, and getting in trouble, until she learns about a group that helps adoptees and birth families search for each other. Searching for…
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Out of the Fog: Poems of Nature, Nurture and Imagination
Jill Uchiyama
Using evocative language and powerful emotion, Jill Uchiyama’s poems expose the creative interior of an adopted girl, from infancy to middle age. Through them, we discover the rare and often unknown thoughts, dreams, and imagination of the adoptee forced to adapt to a new family…
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Outer Search Inner Journey
by Peter Dodds
In this riveting memoir a woman in post World War II Germany relinquishes her infant son Peter to an orphanage where he’s adopted by American parents and brought to the United States. Separated from family of origin and ancestral homeland, Peter grows up alienated in…
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Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin
Many adoptees are required to become people that they were never meant to be. While transracial adoption tends to be considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and economic toll on those who directly experience it. Outsiders Within is a landmark publication that carefully…
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Overwhelmed by God’s Grace: Uncovering the Truth About Adoption
by Margaret Etcher Theriault
Margaret always knew she was adopted. She was told she was “chosen” and “special” but she always wondered why her roots needed to be such a big secret. When the truth finally came out, the struggle for acceptance and belonging intensified. But then there came healing…
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Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption
by Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom
Thousands of South Korean children were adopted around the world in the 1970s and 1980s. More than nine thousand found their new home in Sweden, including the cartoonist Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom, who was adopted when she was two years old. Throughout her childhood she struggled…
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Paper and Spit: Family Found—How DNA and Genealogy Revealed My First Parents’ Identity
by Don Anderson
Like many adoptees, Don Anderson wanted to know where he came from. But would he be setting himself up for disappointment by searching? Would he discover parents who were not alive—or worse, parents who didn’t want to know him? Would he be able to find…
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Paper Pavilion
by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Paper Pavilion captures the theme of transnational adoption and a powerful search for a personal history and identity from Korea to America. Adoptee Author: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs Publication Year: 2007 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon…
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Parallel Universes: The Story of Rebirth
by David B. Bohl
In this poignant and powerful memoir, David B. Bohl reveals the inner turmoil and broad spectrum of warring emotions shame, anger, triumph, shyness, pride he experienced growing up as a relinquished boy. Adopted at birth by a prosperous family, Bohl battled throughout his earlier years to keep…
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Parenting As Adoptees
Edited by Adam Chau and Kevin Ost-Vollmers
Through fourteen chapters, the authors of Parenting As Adoptees give readers a glimpse into a pivotal phase in life that touches the experiences of many domestic and international adoptees–that of parenting. The authors, who are all adoptees from various walks of life, intertwine their personal…
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Permanent Home: A Memoir
by Mary Ellen Gambutti
In her charming collection, Mary Ellen offers glimpses of adopted life in an Air Force family. We travel from her South Carolina birthplace, through several states, and three years in Tokyo. A taste of permanence is found in their New Jersey home, but her quest…
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Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype
Edited by Diane René Christian and Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston
A collection of stories, poems, and essays aimed at confronting the “perpetual child” stereotype faced by adult adoptees. The pieces contained within this anthology implore readers to look deeply into their own ideas about what it means to be adopted and to empathize with the…
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Person, Perceived Girl
by A. A. Vincent
Person, Perceived Girl is poetry collection that explores Blackness–specifically queer, Midwestern, disabled, and transracially adopted Blackness. Poems in this manuscript explore identity, lineage, and body. Adoptee Author: A. A. Vincent Publication Year: 2022 Critical Reviews: Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon links on…
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Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee
by David Enker
An unusual adoption, a gruesome family discovery, a lonesome journey through North America, a miraculous death escape at the 7/7 bombings in the London Underground and a life-altering diagnosis are just some of the ingredients in this collection of short stories and illustrations. This book will…
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Planted by Love: Beauty for Ashes Through Finding My Birth Mother
by Linda S. Congdon
When I was a small child in the early 1950’s, my adoptive parents read me a story book about a mother and father going to a special place and choosing a child to become part of their family. The emphasis of this story conveyed that…
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Practically Still a Virgin: An Adoption Memoir
by Monica Hall
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 guilt and shame when the unthinkable happens, Hall is forced to make impossible choices. Will…
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Prison Baby: A Memoir
by Deborah Jiang-Stein
Even at twelve years old Deborah Jiang-Stein, the adopted daughter of a progressive Jewish couple in Seattle, felt like an outsider. Her multiracial features set her apart from her well-intentioned white parents, who evaded questions about her past. But when Deborah discovered a letter revealing…
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Probably Ruby
by Lisa Bird-Wilson
This is the story of a woman in search of herself, in every sense. When we first meet Ruby, a Métis woman in her thirties, her life is spinning out of control. She’s angling to sleep with her counselor while also rekindling an old relationship…
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Problem Child
by Caradoc King
Adopted at eighteen months, Caradoc King was brought up in a large and growing family. His adoptive mother, a complex woman, was unable to bond with her newly adopted son and treated him with a harshness bordering on cruelty. At the age of six, he…
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Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss
by Heidi Marble and Alysa Zalma MD
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…
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Puzzles, Pieces and Choices: A memoir of my struggle for understanding and closure
by R. J. Redmond
Every family has secrets, but I never dreamed my position within ours was the subject of the biggest secret of all. As with any truth untold, there were clues along the way but none obvious. Honesty was a primary value in our home, so I…
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Questions Adoptees Are Asking
by Sherrie Eldridge
People who have been adopted grow up with many similar questions, thoughts, challenges, and choices, such as, “Does my birth mother ever think about me?” and “What is my real worth? Was I a mistake?” More than 70 adoptees discuss these and other adoption issues…
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R.A.W.
by Patience Agbabi
First poetry collection by UK poet Patience Agbabi. Portions of the collection are reportedly autobiographical. Adoptee Author: Patience Agbabi Publication Year: 1995 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon links on this site are affiliate links. We earn a small commission to help keep…
Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!
