Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Books about Intercountry Adoptions from Asia

  • The Wet Hex: Poems

    The Wet Hex: Poems

    by Sun Yung Shin

    Personal and environmental violations form the backdrop against which Sun Yung Shin examines questions of grievability, violence, and responsibility in The Wet Hex. Incorporating sources such as her own archival immigration documents, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Christopher Columbus’s journals, and traditional Korean burial rituals, Shin explores the ways that lives are…

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  • This Many Miles from Desire

    This Many Miles from Desire

    by Lee Herrick

    The haunting music of Lee Herrick’s This Many Miles from Desire reflects the quest of the poet, an adoptee, to understand his place in the world: “one more child found in the world’s history/of found children.” Spiritually yearning, imagistically sharp, and lyrical, Herrick’s poems are…

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  • Through Adopted Eyes: A Collection of Memoirs From Adoptees

    Through Adopted Eyes: A Collection of Memoirs From Adoptees

    Edited by Elena S. Hall

    Through Adopted Eyes explores the world of adoption from the viewpoint of adoptees. Russian adoptee Elena S. Hall shares her own story and thoughts on the subject of adoption in addition to interviews from other adoptees of different ages, heritages, and perspectives. Whether you are…

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  • To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption

    To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption

    by Arissa H. Oh

    To Save the Children of Korea is the first book about the origins and history of international adoption. Although it has become a commonplace practice in the United States, we know very little about how or why it began, or how or why it developed…

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  • Together At Last: Stories of Adoption and Reunion in the Age of DNA

    Together At Last: Stories of Adoption and Reunion in the Age of DNA

    Edited by Paul Lee Cannon, Nancy Lee Blackman, Cerrissa Kim, Katherine Kim, and Linda Papi Rounds

    Together At Last is a collection of first-person stories that explores the intersection of multiple histories: the Korean War, military camptowns, immigration, and transnational adoption. Taken together, they challenge us to rethink the legacies of the un-ended Korean War and re-evaluate the foundational role that…

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  • Too Much Soul: The Journey of an Asian Southern Belle

    Too Much Soul: The Journey of an Asian Southern Belle

    by Cindy Wilson

    Join Cindy on her journey from being adopted in Seoul, Korea, by an African American couple to growing up in the Dirty South–Jackson, Mississippi! See how she fights and loves her way through life as she searches for her identity and discovers her place in…

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  • Unbearable Splendor

    Unbearable Splendor

    by Sun Yung Shin

    Finalist for the Believer Poetry Award Sun Yung Shin moves ideas—of identity (Korean, American, adoptee, mother, Catholic, Buddhist) and interest (mythology, science fiction, Sophocles)— around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be at home. Adoptee Author: Sun Yung Shin…

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  • Vietnamese.Adopted: A Collection of Voices

    Vietnamese.Adopted: A Collection of Voices

    by Indigo Willing, Anh Đào Kolbe, Dominic Golding, Tim Holtan, Cara Wolfgang, Kev Minh Allen, Adam Chau, Landa Sharp, Michael Nhat

    Vietnamese.Adopted: A Collection of Voices is a group of writings each in their own form and style, un-censored in content or subject matter, allowing each person to speak on what being a Vietnamese Adoptee, Adopted Vietnamese, or Vietnamese War Orphan is to them, as well…

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  • Voices from Across the Sea: An Adoption Memoir Uniting Two Worlds

    Voices from Across the Sea: An Adoption Memoir Uniting Two Worlds

    by Lora V. Keleher

    A memoir sharing my journey to South Korea to meet my biological family and the feelings I experienced growing up as an interracial adoptee. It touches on pain, abandonment, alienation, racism, love, and more. Adoptee Author: Lora V. Keleher Publication Year: 2019 Critical Reviews: Adoptee…

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  • We Take Me Apart

    We Take Me Apart

    by Molly Gaudry

    Shortlisted for the 2011 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry Nominated for the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize “There is no more perfect place to be than in Molly Gaudry s tender, dirt-floored novella, We Take Me Apart. Oh cabbage leaves, oh roses, oh orange-slice childhood grins: this…

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  • When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    Edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung

    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 powerful, poignant, and evocative stories in a variety of genres. These tales from fifteen bestselling,…

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  • When You Were Born in China: A Memory Book for Children Adopted from China

    When You Were Born in China: A Memory Book for Children Adopted from China

    by Sara Dorow

    This book utilizes photographs to educate about life in China and includes information about Chinese social policies, orphanages, and the journey of an adopted child to the United States. Author: Sara Dorow Publication Year: 1997 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop and Amazon links on…

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  • Where We Come From

    Where We Come From

    by Diane Wilson, Sun Yung Shin, Shannon Gibney, John Coy; Illustrated by Dion MBD

    In this unique collaboration, four authors lyrically explore where they each come from―literally and metaphorically―as well as what unites all of us as humans. Richly layered illustrations connect past and present, making for an accessible and visually striking look at history, family, and identity. We…

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  • Woman of Interest: A Memoir

    Woman of Interest: A Memoir

    by Tracy O’Neill

    In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she’d never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea. After contacting a…

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  • You’ll Always Be White To Me: A Memoir

    You’ll Always Be White To Me: A Memoir

    by Garon Wade

    Three years in to Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war, an abandoned baby ends up in the adopted arms of a white American couple living in a Colombo home that doubles as a CIA safe house. They take him on an extraordinary journey around the globe…

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