Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Category: Domestic Outside US

  • Who’s Wally?: Adoption, Brian, and Me

    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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  • A Duck – but Tall in the Water . . .

    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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  • Lucky Bastard

    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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  • Tell No One

    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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  • Crazy Bastard: A Memoir of Forced Adoption

    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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  • 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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  • 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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  • 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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  • Where the Fuck is My Mother?: A Book for Grown-Up Adoptees

    Where the Fuck is My Mother?: A Book for Grown-Up Adoptees

    by Annie O

    Gritty depiction of an adopted girl’s journey into adulthood starting in 1970s New Zealand. Annie’s story unearths the dark truths about adoption while shedding light on the fact that it’s not always what it’s made out to be, juxtaposed in this beautifully presented children’s-style book…

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  • Survival Without Roots: Memoir of an Adopted Englishwoman (Book 1)

    Survival Without Roots: Memoir of an Adopted Englishwoman (Book 1)

    by Anna Anderson

    The Survival Without Roots memoir trilogy portrays the melting pot of emotions experienced by many adoptees associated with their lack of identity, as they spend a lifetime wondering … “Is there anyone out there who looks like me, talks like me and thinks like me?” As an…

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  • Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery

    Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery

    by Harrison Mooney

    A powerful, experiential journey from white cult to Black consciousness: Harrison Mooney’s riveting story of self-discovery lifts the curtain on the trauma of transracial adoption and the internalized antiblackness at the heart of the white evangelical Christian movement. Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man the same way…

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  • Probably Ruby

    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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  • Love & Genetics: A True Story of Adoption, Surrogacy, and the Meaning of Family

    Love & Genetics: A True Story of Adoption, Surrogacy, and the Meaning of Family

    by Mark MacDonald and Rachel Elliott

    When a family secret comes to light, lives are changed forever in this honest, beautiful, and sometimes painful memoir. When Mark, adopted at birth, set out to find his genetic family as an adult, he found something he never expected–three full-blood siblings, including a persistent…

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  • The Little Book of Adoption: A Candid Look at Life through the Eyes of Adoptees

    The Little Book of Adoption: A Candid Look at Life through the Eyes of Adoptees

    by Heather Waters; illustrated by Ellie Turner

    Have you ever wondered what goes on in the adoptees world? Here’s a candid look into the world of the adopted person through the eyes of adoptees. Adoptee Author: Heather Waters Publication Year: 2021 Critical Reviews: Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop and Amazon links…

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  • A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law

    A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law

    by Darryl Nelson

    A Timeline of the Injustice of Adoption Law traces Australian laws affecting thousands, back to the US theories of eugenics, then back to Britain. It highlights the various notions of ‘the best interests of the child’ in law, over time, and shows how the poor…

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  • Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice

    Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice

    by Claire McGettrick, Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke, James M. Smith, and Mari Steed

    Between 1922 and 1996, over 10,000 girls and women were imprisoned in Magdalene Laundries, including those considered ‘promiscuous’, a burden to their families or the state, those who had been sexually abused or raised in the care of the Church and State, and unmarried mothers.…

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  • Tree of Strangers

    Tree of Strangers

    by Barbara Sumner

    “‘I live at the end of a gravel road at the top of a valley consumed by bush. My husband is here, and my three girls. But the bush swallows them up like the road.’ I wrote those words at the kitchen table in 1983.…

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  • Life In-Between: A Story of Adoption, Recovery and Connection

    Life In-Between: A Story of Adoption, Recovery and Connection

    by Julia F. Richardson

    Born in 1958 and given up for adoption Julia’s story is an exploration of a search for love, belonging and identity. It is a story of relinquishment and reunion, of trauma and hope. It is a tale of overcoming addiction and learning to live with…

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  • Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised Somewhere Else): A ’60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home

    Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised Somewhere Else): A ’60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home

    by Colleen Cardinal

    During the Sixties Scoop, over 20,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their biological families, lands, and culture and trafficked across provinces, borders, and overseas to be raised in non-Indigenous households. Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh delves into the personal and provocative narrative of Colleen Cardinal’s journey growing…

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  • The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved

    The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved

    by Linda Hoye

    We wear busyness as a badge of accomplishment and personal success. But when we use it to fill a void, being busy can become an addiction. Busyness helps us feel better—or feel nothing—but the benefit doesn’t come without cost. Adoptee Linda Hoye used it to…

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  • Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude

    Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude

    by Linda Hoye

    Linda Hoye was in her early twenties when she found herself parentless for the second time. Adopted at five months of age, her heritage, medical history, and access to information about who she was or where she came from was sealed. It was as if…

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  • Ghost Face

    Ghost Face

    by Greg Santos

    In his third DC Books title, Ghost Face, Greg Santos explores what it means to have been a Cambodian infant adopted by a Canadian family. Through a uniquely playful and self-reflective series of poems that pay moving homage to his adoptive parents, and explore the fantasies…

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  • My Name Is Why

    My Name Is Why

    by Lemn Sissay

    How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This story is how. At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given…

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  • Blackbirds

    Blackbirds

    by Greg Santos

    In Blackbirds, Greg Santos delves into the raw, private mythologies of parenthood, adoption, ethnicity, and uncertain histories. These lyrical poems bring us from Lisbon’s winding ways, to cramped Paris quarters and sacred spaces, to Cambodian street markets–all those rooms, wombs, and ruins that make up…

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  • Life Lines: Writing Transcultural Adoption

    Life Lines: Writing Transcultural Adoption

    by John McLeod

    Adoptions that cross the lines of culture, race, and nation are a major consequence of conflicts around the globe, yet their histories and representations have rarely been considered. Life Lines: Writing Transcultural Adoption is the first critical study to explore narratives of transcultural adoption from contemporary Britain,…

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  • The Adoption Machine: The Dark History of Ireland’s Mother & Baby Homes and the Inside Story of How “Tuam 800” Became a Global Scandal

    The Adoption Machine: The Dark History of Ireland’s Mother & Baby Homes and the Inside Story of How “Tuam 800” Became a Global Scandal

    by Paul Jude Redmond

    MAY 2014. The Irish public woke to the horrific discovery of a mass grave containing the remains of almost 800 babies in the “Angels’ Plot’ of Tuam’s Mother and Baby Home. What followed would rock the last vestiges of Catholic Ireland, enrage an increasingly secularised…

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  • A Family from Barra: An Adoption Story

    A Family from Barra: An Adoption Story

    by Beryl Martin

    Beryl Martin grew up as Pat Ridge, daughter of Nellie and George. George worked at the Municipal Milk Department; Nellie fostered children, to whom she was mostly cruel. Roaming Wellington as a child and schoolgirl, Pat started work at the Zig Zag factory at 14;…

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  • Somebody’s Daughter

    Somebody’s Daughter

    by Zara H. Phillips

    Zara H. Phillips seemed to live a charmed life — backing singer to the stars with an incredible career here and across the Atlantic — but her smile masked a difficult childhood and the reality that she was adopted as a baby in the ’60s.…

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  • Gold from the Stone: New and Selected Poems

    Gold from the Stone: New and Selected Poems

    by Lemn Sissay

    Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries.…

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