Category: Domestic US
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Paper and Spit: Family Found—How DNA and Genealogy Revealed My First Parents’ Identity
by Don Anderson
Like many adoptees, Don Anderson wanted to know where he came from. But would he be setting himself up for disappointment by searching? Would he discover parents who were not alive—or worse, parents who didn’t want to know him? Would he be able to find…
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For Black Girls Like Me
by Mariama J. Lockington
Makeda June Kirkland is eleven-years-old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda’s family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena―…
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The Lies That Bind: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Rejection, Redirection, DNA, and Discovery
by Laureen Pittman
Born in a California women’s prison in 1963, Laureen Pittman was relinquished for adoption. As a child, Laureen was conditioned to believe that being adopted didn’t matter. So, it didn’t . . . until it did. Through scraps of information, Laureen stitched together her history –…
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Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory
by James Cagney
The poems in Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory interrogate identity, family, loneliness, and the expectations of masculinity. Using dreams, blues, and a chorus of voices, this collection of poems examines the complexities of intimacy for an adopted person trying to find…
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Adoption, Identity, and Kinship: The Debate over Sealed Birth Records
by Katarina Wegar
In this thoughtful book, sociologist Katarina Wegar offers a new perspective on adoption and the search debate, placing them within a social context. She argues that Americans who are embroiled in adoption controversies have failed to understand how much the debate, adoption research, and the…
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The Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption and the American Family
by Rachel Rains Winslow
Prior to World War II, international adoption was virtually unknown, but in the twenty-first century, it has become a common practice, touching almost every American. How did the adoption of foreign children by U.S. families become an essential part of American culture in such a…
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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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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 Last Year
by Amelia Banis
Being adopted is one thing. Being adopted and navigating the complexities of having unexpected relationships with both biological parents is something quite different. Having two sets of parents can be an incredible gift, but it can also be unimaginably complicated and challenging. Its often filled…
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An Adoptee Lexicon
by Karen Pickell
Lyrical and informative, An Adoptee Lexicon is a glossary of adoption terminology from the viewpoint of an adult adoptee. Contemplating religion, politics, science, and human rights, Karen Pickell, who was born and adopted in the late 1960s, intersperses personal commentary and snippets from her own experience with…
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Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption
Susan Devan Harness
In Bitterroot Susan Devan Harness traces her journey to understand the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a white couple and living in the rural American West. When Harness was fifteen years old, she questioned her adoptive father about her “real” parents.…
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My Life: The Journey Of An Adoptee
by Jim Armstrong
My Life is an autobiography of my life as an adopted child. Adoption can be an emotional roller coaster for many adopted children. In this book i have provided my life journey and wish to share my journey so other adopted people know that they are…
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Odyssey of a Belief: An Adoptee’s Journal
by Joe Wh. Zychik
Odyssey of a Belief is a compelling chronicle about triumph over seemingly hopeless circumstances. The author spent the first six years of his life in eight different homes and two foster centers while being parented by seven different mothers, one grandmother, and who knows how many…
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All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
by Nicole Chung
What does it mean to lose your roots―within your culture, within your family―and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood,…
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Found and Lost: An Adoption, An Agency and A Search for Self
by Suzette J. Brownstein
Growing up with a secret is never easy. While mine seems innocuous now, it caused me a lot of pain in 1978. As an adoptee from the closed system where secrecy ruled, I felt adopted but never born. So when my birth father called me…
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Other Words for Grief
by Lisa Marie Rollins
“The poems gathered in Other Words For Grief, are a spotlight turned inward. As Lisa Marie Rollins relentlessly searches the interior with a hot light scanning blood and baby pictures; sexual encounters nearly gone awry as well as family encounters that fall short, we are moved…
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You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are: An Adoptee’s Journey Through The American Adoption Experience
by Rudy Owens
Nearly 50 years after he was relinquished for adoption, Rudy Owens learned how fortunate life can be. In 2014 in San Diego, Owens met his biological half-sister for the first time. That meeting inspired Owens to tell his adoption story set against the larger adoption…
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Parallel Universes: The Story of Rebirth
by David B. Bohl
In this poignant and powerful memoir, David B. Bohl reveals the inner turmoil and broad spectrum of warring emotions shame, anger, triumph, shyness, pride he experienced growing up as a relinquished boy. Adopted at birth by a prosperous family, Bohl battled throughout his earlier years to keep…
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Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America
by Stacey Patton
Why do so many African Americans have such a special attachment to whupping children? Studies show that nearly 80 percent of black parents see spanking, popping, pinching, and beating as reasonable, effective ways to teach respect and to protect black children from the streets, incarceration,…
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That Mean Old Yesterday: A Memoir
by Stacey Patton
An astonishing coming-of-age memoir by a young woman who survived the foster care system to become an award-winning journalist. On a rainy night in November 1999, a shoeless Stacey Patton, promising student at NYU, approached her adoptive parents’ house with a gun in her hand.…
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The Lucky Daughter
by Mariama J. Lockington
Poetry. “Mariama J. Lockington’s The Lucky Daughter digs deep into the physicality of moving through this world as a queer woman of color. These poems – about race, sexuality, families (found, formed, and inherited) – are brutal in their honesty and beauty. “a girl” Lockington…
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Swabbed & Found: An Adopted Man’s DNA Journey to Discover his Family Tree
by Frank Billingsley
As Houston’s beloved KPRC weatherman for more than 20 years, Frank Billingsley seems like a relative to many people. His optimistic presence comes into their homes and reassures that even the gloomiest of rain clouds probably has a silver lining. He has such a way…
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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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Everything Is Possible: Finding the Faith and Courage to Follow Your Dreams
by Jen Bricker with Sheryl Berk
Jen Bricker was born without legs. Shocked and uncertain they could care for her, her biological parents gave her up for adoption. In her loving adoptive home, there was just one simple rule: “Never say ‘can’t.’” And pretty soon, there was nothing this small but…
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Somebody Else’s Daughter
by Elizabeth Brundage
In the idyllic Berkshires, at the prestigious Pioneer School, there are dark secrets that threaten to come to light. Willa Golding, a student, has been brought up by her adoptive parents in elegant prosperity, but they have fled a mysterious and shameful past. Her biological…
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Almost Home: A Memoir
by Hilary Harper
While snooping in a closet as an adolescent, Hilary Harper discovers a secret: her parents are not her parents. Documents reveal her mother to be a vague, distant relative who died in a car crash. Her father is “unknown.” Vividly depicting the suburban Detroit neighborhood…
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The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me
by Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski
The Foundling tells the incredible and inspiring true story of Paul Fronczak, a man who recently discovered via a DNA test that he was not who he thought he was—and set out to solve two fifty-year-old mysteries at once. Along the way he upturned the genealogy…
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After the Truth: A Memoir
by Paige Adams Strickland
What do you do when you are an adopted adult, trying to balance biological and adoptive families in addition to your own home life? How could being adopted have an impact on your career, your friendships and parenting decisions? What do you do when your…
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It’s Not About You: Understanding Adoptee Search, Reunion, and Open Adoption
Edited by Brooke Randolph, MA, NCC, LMHC
The title of this book can be both inflammatory and comforting; different people need to read it different ways. The reality is that the desire for information has nothing to do with parenting or personality, but an innate desire. It’s Not About You is an…
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In The Veins
Edited by Patricia Busbee
Part of this book’s proceeds will support Standing Rock Water Protectors and #NoDAPL. Twenty-eight poets from across Turtle Island contributed, including First Nations poet David Groulx (Anishinabe Elliott Lake); Assiniboine playwright William Yellow Robe; Ojibwe scholar Dr. Carol A. Hand, who wrote an introduction; notable…