Category: Adoptees
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Who’s Wally?: Adoption, Brian, and Me
by Andy Wallis
Andy Wallis was born as David in 1973; he was surplus to requirements and given up for adoption. Growing up, his adoption was never something he really thought about. It had happened to that boy called David, whom he felt no connection to. Delving deeper…
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In Praise of Late Wonder
by Lee Herrick
In his most personal collection of poems to date, California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick writes with openness about his adoption from Korea in more than 25 new memoir-like prose poems. This expansive collection also includes a section of new poems, as well as highlights from…
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Genetic Stigma in Law and Literature: Orphanhood, Adoption, and the Right to Reunion
by Alice Diver
This book critically analyses the way in which traditional sociocultural and legal biases might be perpetuated against those with unknown – or unknowable – genetic ancestries. It looks to law and works of literature across differing eras and genres focussing upon such concepts as inherited…
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A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .
by Lesley Wells
Lesley was one of six children whose mother gave them all away. Fostered then adopted by people who were simply not fit for purpose she experienced a lot of pain and cruelty in her childhood, but also found a lot of joy in the most…
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Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies
by Beth Syverson and Joseph Nakao; foreword by Dr. Joyce Maguire Pavao
This book is a wake-up call to those impacted by adoption and to those who interact with them. According to preliminary results of a groundbreaking study out of Winston-Salem State University (final report targeted for release in 2025), adopted people are 36.7 times more likely…
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Lucky Bastard
by Anthony Akerman
When he was ten years old, the author was told he’d been adopted. It was a seismic event that turned his world upside down. Nobody was who he thought they were. His mother wasn’t his mother; his father wasn’t his father; his sister wasn’t his…
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Connecting Threads: Five Siblings Lost and Found
by EM Blake
A graphic memoir about siblings of Indigenous and European-American heritage who are taken from their first family, placed in foster care, and most were adopted-a story of the journey to find each other and their first family. This is the story of the complex needs…
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Adoption Memoirs: Inside Stories
by Marianne Novy
Adoption Memoirs tells inside stories of adoption that popular media miss. Marianne Novy shows how adoption memoirs and films recount not only happy moments, but also the lasting pain of relinquishing a child, the racism and trauma that adoptees such as Jackie Kay and Jane Jeong…
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Tell No One
by Brendan Watkins
A stunning memoir of one man’s search for his birth parents, which uncovered an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church. Brendan Watkins was eight years old when his parents told him he was adopted. When he was in his late twenties,…
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The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment
by Cameron Lee Small
Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but the reality is that many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma and issues of identity and belonging. Adoptees often spend the majority of their youth without the language to explore the grief related to adoption or the permission…
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Crossing the Cherry Blossom Sea: An Adoptee’s Memoir
by M. Rosales
In this compelling memoir, M. Rosales recalls the day she was torn away from South Korea at the age of five alongside her younger sister, to live with an American family. With barely any memories of her former life, Rosales navigates the complexities of loss,…
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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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Mirrors Made of Ink
by Shannon Quist
A collection of sixty poems spanning moments across a lifetime, Mirrors Made of Ink focuses on the emotional catastrophe of adoption. Quist muses with varied style on family, existence, and the liminal space between two lives in pieces that narrate a lonely path of discovery amidst a…
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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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Who Is a Worthy Mother?: An Intimate History of Adoption
by Rebecca Wellington
Nearly every person in the United States is affected by adoption. Adoption practices are woven into the fabric of American society and reflect how our nation values human beings, particularly mothers. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed…
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Going Unarmed Into the Wail
by Karen Wangare Leonard
Going Unarmed Into the Wail is an intense, intimate chapbook that wrestles with what it is to be a product of the adoption-industrial complex. With rich visuals, the poems in this chapbook create space that leaves room to interrogate relationships with historic and present systemic violence,…
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When the Ocean Flies
by Heather G. Marshall
An email from a stranger tells Alison Earley that her natural father, whom she has known for only six years, has died suddenly. What begins as a short trip back to Scotland for a funeral soon becomes a journey that puts adoption, sexuality, and identity…
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In Reunion: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Communication of Family
by Sara Docan-Morgan
“Do you know your real parents?” is a question many adoptees are asked. In In Reunion, Sara Docan-Morgan probes the basic notions of family, adoption, and parenthood by exploring initial meetings and ongoing relationships that transnational Korean adoptees have had with their birth parents and other…
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45 Days of Pushing Through: A Guided Journal
by Melissa A. Corrigan
Are you ready for a change? Like really ready? Have you battled low self-esteem, poor internal dialogue, remnants of a traumatic childhood, abusive relationship, or simply feeling a bit… lost? You have the key to unlocking a better you… right inside yourself. In your heart, your mind,…
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Let Us Be Greater: A Gentle, Guided Path to Healing for Adoptees
by Michelle Madrid
Adoption is a lifeline of support and opportunity for countless people, but it can bring challenges and emotional conditions that are often silenced or left unaddressed, including PTSD, risk of suicide, and fear of abandonment. Author Michelle Madrid has experienced these challenges as a foster…
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Adoption Unfiltered: Revelations from Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents, and Allies
by Sara Easterly, Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard, and Lori Holden
Adoption Unfiltered authors Sara Easterly (adoptee), Kelsey Vander Vliet Ranyard (birth parent), and Lori Holden (adoptive parent) interview dozens of adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, social workers, therapists, and other allies–all sharing candidly about the challenges in adoption. While finding common ground in the sometimes-contentious…
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Crazy Bastard: A Memoir of Forced Adoption
by Abraham Maddison
Derek Pedley abandons his thirty-year journalism career on the brink of a breakdown, haunted by addiction, compulsion, and obsession, and carrying the heavy baggage of a boy who found his adoption papers at fifteen. When an anguished letter his mother wrote almost half a century…
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The Killing Closet: A Memoir
by V. L. Brunskill
In this heartbreaking story of family, struggle, hope, and forgiveness, V.L. Brunskill tells of her life as she grows up on Long Island, New York. Vicki-lynn and her brother Peter are adopted as infants into a family defined by violence. V.L. defends her mother and…
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Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood
by Kimberly D. McKee
In Adoption Fantasies, Kimberly D. McKee explores the ways adopted Asian women and girls are situated at a nexus of objectifications—as adoptees and as Asian American women—and how they negotiate competing expectations based on sensationalist and fictional portrayals of adoption found in US popular culture. McKee…
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Who Am I?
by Michelle Rice-Gauvreau
Who Am I? is a powerful memoir by Michelle Rice-Gauvreau that pulls back the curtain on an unsettling chapter of indigenous history. Born in a Mohawk Reservation in Canada, Michelle was illicitly adopted and raised in an abusive home in the United States. Amidst the…
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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
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
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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I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir
by Susan Kiyo Ito
Growing up with adoptive nisei parents, Susan Kiyo Ito knew only that her birth mother was Japanese American and her father white. But finding and meeting her birth mother in her early twenties was only the beginning of her search for answers, history, and identity.…
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Second Choices: A Story of Belonging and Finding Home
by June Wright
Elise, an adoptee, had always felt like a second choice. When she fell in love with and married Evan, she believed she was finally someone’s first choice. She longed for a place to feel validated, loved, and, most importantly, fit in. But Evan had demons…