Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Category: 2023a

  • Against All Odds

    Against All Odds

    by Theresa Hiney Tinggal

    The true story of Irish woman Theresa Hiney Tinggal, who at the age of 48 discovered that she was illegally registered as the biological child of her adoptive parents. Her subsequent quest for the truth led her on a journey where she discovered that there…

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  • A Moment in Time

    A Moment in Time

    by A J Bialo

    Imagine, if you can, if you could trace your beginnings to a specific moment in time. If that specific moment had never happened, your existence–and everything and everybody you have influenced–would never have happened. This is the focus of the title poem in A Moment…

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  • Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness

    Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness

    by Liz DeBetta

    We live in a world where conversations about trauma are becoming commonplace and adopted people are using their voices to educate the general public about the effects of maternal separation and genealogical bewilderment. But for many adult adoptees the act of speaking truth to power…

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  • Surrounding Sparky: A Gift of Life

    Surrounding Sparky: A Gift of Life

    by Brad Livingood

    The story of one man’s journey to unearth his roots while navigating the complexities of a 1950s adoption, told through the backdrop of American history, raising a young family, and the advent of social media and modern DNA testing. Serendipitous twists and turns are all…

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  • Recycled: A Reluctant Search for True Self Through Nurture, Nature, and Free Will

    Recycled: A Reluctant Search for True Self Through Nurture, Nature, and Free Will

    by Jack F. Rocco MD

    Jack Rocco was a baby when he was adopted by a blue-collar, Italian American family. Today a successful orthopedic surgeon, Jack’s identity was built around his Italian heritage and while he knew the story of his “Gotday,” he didn’t know the story of his birth…

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  • A Fire Is Coming

    A Fire Is Coming

    by Emma Stevens

    The true story of when Emma Stevens learned her new next-door neighbor was a psychologist, she innocently asked about how to find a therapist for her own issues. Dr. Carol Brenner decided to accept her as a patient. Against a backdrop of the Laguna Beach…

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  • Found: Adopted Friends Search for their Birth Families

    Found: Adopted Friends Search for their Birth Families

    by Trish Diggins and Sherri Craig-Evans

    Lifelong friends–both adoptees–decided they would take a chance and search for their birth parents using online DNA kits and social media. It turns out, that was the easy part. What happened over the next five years was much more difficult–trying to forge relationships with a…

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  • Phantom Parents: Memoir of an Adoptee

    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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  • Sanctuaries

    Sanctuaries

    by Vince Sgambati

    Gianni, a gay adoptee, comes of age in a time when adoption and same-sex love are not easily discussed or accepted. Sanctuaries is a tender story of love and healing, set against the larger turmoil of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, and the…

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  • Landlock X: Poems

    Landlock X: Poems

    by Sarah Audsley

    Sarah Audsley’s debut poetry collection, Landlock X, joins a growing body of adoptee poetics. By examining the consequences of the international transracial adoptee experience–her own–Audsley’s collection finds more questions than solid answers. Employing a variety of poetic forms, co-opting the pastoral tradition to argue for belonging…

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  • Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

    Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

    by Sarah Myer

    Sarah has always struggled to fit in. Born in South Korea and adopted at birth by a white couple, she grows up in a rural community with few Asian neighbors. People whisper in the supermarket. Classmates bully her. She has trouble containing her anger in…

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  • You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption

    You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption

    by Angela Tucker

    Angela Tucker is a Black woman, adopted from foster care by white parents. She has heard this microaggression her entire life, usually from well-intentioned strangers who view her adoptive parents as noble saviors. She is grateful for many aspects of her life, but being transracially…

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  • A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    A Living Remedy: A Memoir

    by Nicole Chung

    Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she’d long wanted.…

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  • We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

    We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

    by Roxanna Asgarian

    The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children–and a searing indictment of the American foster care system. On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the…

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  • Do You Know Who I Am? An Infantryman’s Adoption Story of Finding Family after Fifty

    Do You Know Who I Am? An Infantryman’s Adoption Story of Finding Family after Fifty

    by Christopher E. Harvey

    Infantryman Christopher Harvey’s childhood ended at twelve years old when his mom casually told him that he was adopted. Consequently, adulthood for him began when he met his birth mother after he turned fifty. And he describes the thirty-eight years in between as a purgatory…

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  • Coloring & Journal Book For Adoptees With Motivational Quotes: For Adoptees Healing Journey – Volume 1

    Coloring & Journal Book For Adoptees With Motivational Quotes: For Adoptees Healing Journey – Volume 1

    by Angel Davis; illustrated by Angie McGahey

    As an adult adoptee that struggles with the seven core issues of being adopted, (loss, rejection, guilt and shame, grief, identity, intimacy, and mastery/control), I have created this therapeutic coloring book with motivational uplifting quotes and affirmations, original illustrations and patterns, and journaling pages to…

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  • Swear, Vent & Coloring Book For (very) F*cking Angry Adoptees: For Adoptees Healing Journey – Volume 1

    Swear, Vent & Coloring Book For (very) F*cking Angry Adoptees: For Adoptees Healing Journey – Volume 1

    by Angel Davis; illustrated by Angie McGahey

    Why an angry sweary coloring and journal book? Because punching people in the face is frowned upon, and anger isn’t great for your overall mental and physical health if you hold on to it–so just let it all out! As an adult adoptee that struggles…

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  • 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

    by Shannon Gibney

    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 from her true story of growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents…

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  • The Sense of Wonder

    The Sense of Wonder

    by Matthew Salesses

    An Asian American basketball star walks into a gym. No one recognizes him, but everyone stares anyway. It is the start of a joke but what is the punchline? When Won Lee, the first Asian American in the NBA, stuns the world in a seven-game…

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