Category: 2013
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Y: A Novel
by Marjorie Celona
Growing up in foster homes, Shannon chooses to define life on her own terms, but she never stops wondering why she was abandoned. Brilliantly interwoven with Shannon’s story is the tale of her mother, Yula, a girl herself who is facing a desperate fate in…
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Adoption’s Hidden History: Steps to Sealing the Records (Vol. 2)
by Mary S. Payne
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…
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Adoption’s Hidden History: From Native American Tribes to Locked Lives (Vol. 1)
by Mary S. Payne
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…
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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.…
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Birth Mother Mercy
by Alex M. Frankel
Poetry. Adoptee Author: Alex M. Frankel Publication Year: 2013 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 Adoptee Reading running whenever items are purchased via these links, at no additional…
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Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America
by Catherine Ceniza Choy
In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish.…
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Unstoppable
by Tim Green
If anyone understands the phrase “tough luck,” it’s Harrison. As a foster kid in a cruel home, he knows his dream of one day playing in the NFL is a longshot. Then Harrison is brought into a new home with kind, loving parents—his new dad…
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Cries of the Soul: The True Story of a Korean Adoptee’s Fight to Survive
by Khara Niné
In 1970, shortly after the death of her mother, and without the consent or even the knowledge of her father, a barely one year old girl is put up for foreign adoption in South Korea. She ends up in an adoptive family where she spends…
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Tapioca Fire
by Suzanne Gilbert
Tapioca Fire opens when Susan tries to solve the mystery of a missing parent only to uncover a greater crime. Susan Piper was adopted years ago in Thailand. A once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity brings her to Japan for the opening of a new museum. It also gives…
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A Law of Blood-ties: The “Right” to Access Genetic Ancestry
by Alice Diver
This text collates and examines the jurisprudence that currently exists in respect of blood-tied genetic connection, arguing that the right to identity often rests upon the ability to identify biological ancestors, which in turn requires an absence of adult-centric veto norms. It looks firstly to…
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The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious
by Lori Jakiela
Her 70-year-old, cancer-stricken mother kills snakes with a broom. Her best friend believes in psychics and the Virgin Mary. Her new neighbor steals her CDs and her aunt sneaks cheese curls into the house. After seven years in New York, Lori Jakiela gives up her…
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Nearer Home: A Novel
by Joy Castro
The irresistible, razor-sharp second book in the post-Katrina New Orleans-set crime series featuring unforgettable and gutsy reporter Nola Céspedes Early one morning, Times-Picayune crime reporter Nola Céspedes goes for her regular run in Audubon Park. More than the heat of the dawning New Orleans day, she’s trying…
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Remedies
by Patricia Cotter-Busbee
Remedies is a deeply original autobiographical fiction that chronicles the lives of five generations of women. It is beautifully layered and brought to life through image-driven vignettes that have been paired down into razor-sharp scenes. The stories convey tragedy and comedy in equal portions. Wombs…
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What Do You Mean I Was Adopted? 7 Steps to Acceptance, Gratitude & Peace
by Carina S. Burns
Were you adopted? Did you have a similar experience? Do you face issues with identity? Ms. Burns learned of her own adoption when she was a teenager growing up in the Middle East, and it came as a shock. Rather than a prescribed formula for…
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Searching for the Castle: Backtrail of an Adoption
by Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom
Like cowboys turning in the saddle to look at where they came from, Searching for the Castle documents the backtrail of author Barbara Leigh Ohrstrom’s adoption. It begins with her urgency as an eighteen-year-old woman initiating her search for her birth parents. Her recollection includes…
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The Fifth and Final Name: Memoir of an American Churchill
by Rhonda Noonan
In a family memoir that reads like a detective novel, Rhonda Noonan recounts her thirty-year quest to find the truth of her own background–and what she uncovered will surprise readers as much as it did her. Rhonda was born and adopted in Oklahoma, a state…
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Adoption Healing: A Path to Recovery–Articles, etc.
by Joe Soll, LCSW
This addition to the Adoption Healing series is a compilation of all the articles that I have been asked to write in the last year, plus more than a half dozen chapters with totally new material. The articles address specific issues faced by adoptees and…
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Adoption Healing: A Path to Recovery for Mothers Who Lost Children to Adoption
by Joe Soll, CSW, and Karen Wilson Buterbaugh
The reader is provided with a description of the immaculate deception imposed on pregnant women and the ensuing tragedy of the loss of their babies to adoption and the profound effects on their lives. This is followed by different methods of healing the mother’s wounds,…
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Finding Heart Horse: A Memoir of Survival
by Claire Hitchon (with Janice Harper)
Have you ever wanted something so badly it was all you could think of? All you could talk about, write about, dream about. Claire did. She wanted a horse. Finding Heart Horse is her journey and her search for her Heart Horse. It takes her…
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Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity
by Paige Adams Strickland
In Akin to the Truth: A Memoir of Adoption and Identity, Paige tells stories from the perspective of a child and adolescent, growing up with a closely guarded secret. Through vignettes, Paige relates feelings about her adoption to forming and maintaining relationships, caring for pets,…
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Toxic Mom Toolkit: Discovering a Happy Life Despite Toxic Parenting
by Rayne Wolfe
Toxic Mom Toolkit takes on super toxic mothers with humor, kindness, and practical tools to help readers build a peaceful and happy life. The book includes Wolfe’s memoir of growing up brave and scrappy in 1950s San Francisco, the daughter of three mothers: an absent…
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I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying
by Matthew Salesses
I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying, a novel in flash fiction, is a raw, honest look at parenting, commitment, morality, and the spaces that grow between and within us when we don’t know what to say. In these 115 titled chapters, a man, who learns…
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The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption
by Kathryn Joyce
Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of reproductive rights, pitched as a “win-win” compromise in the never-ending abortion debate. But as Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become even more entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. The Child…
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The Declassified Adoptee: Essays of an Adoption Activist
by Amanda H.L. Transue-Woolston; edited by Julie Stromberg
Throughout this book, readers bear witness to key moments in the unfolding of an adoptee from a quiet, contemplative young woman to an outspoken advocate for the rights of adoptees and their loved ones. By addressing adoption through brief essays, the book provides an avenue through…
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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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An-Ya and Her Diary: Reader and Parent Guide
Edited by Diane René Christian
Professional adoptees discuss all aspects of the novel An-Ya and Her Diary. Included are lessons on how to lead an adoption discussion, how a parent can use the novel to emotionally guide their child through the book, as well as writers who eloquently express their…