Category: Asia
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Marilyn
by Amanda Ngoho Reavey
Amanda [Ngoho] Reavey’s first book, Marilyn, began as an exploration through somatic experiments on what it means to stay and became a fragmented map of the immigration system, the international adoption process, and family. How do you articulate disenfranchised grief? How does a person who…
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I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean Birth Mothers of Ae Ran Won to Their Children
Edited by Sara Dorow
A collection of anonymous letters written by Korean birth mothers to the children they relinquished for adoption. The mothers were helped by the Ae Ran Won agency in Seoul, Korea, which provides a temporary home to unmarried pregnant women before and after they give birth.…
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When You Were Born in China: A Memory Book for Children Adopted from China
by Sara Dorow
This book utilizes photographs to educate about life in China and includes information about Chinese social policies, orphanages, and the journey of an adopted child to the United States. Author: Sara Dorow Publication Year: 1997 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon links on…
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Star of the Week: A Story of Love, Adoption, and Brownies with Sprinkles
by Darlene Friedman
It’s Cassidy-Li’s turn to be Star of the Week at school! So she’s making brownies and collecting photos for her poster. She has pictures of all the important people in her life—with one big exception. Cassidy-Li, adopted from China when she was a baby, doesn’t…
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Kids Like Me in China
by Ying Ying Fry (with Amy Klatzkin)
In this first view of China adoption from a child’s perspective, eight-year-old Ying Ying Fry returns to her orphanage to remember what it is like and to write a story so that other adopted children will understand where they came from. Kids Like Me in…
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Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love
by Xinran (translated from Chinese by Nicky Harman)
Following her internationally bestselling book The Good Women of China, Xinran has written one of the most powerful accounts of the lives of Chinese women. She has gained entrance to the most pained, secret chambers in the hearts of Chinese mothers—students, successful businesswomen, midwives, peasants—who,…
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Back to My Roots: My Journey to China
by Yanina Verplanke
“Happy Life is starting from this moment” This slogan is written on the wall of the Chinese adoption bureau of Chongqing. It is quite applicable to the seventeen-month-old toddler De Xing Fu. She grows up as a happy-go-lucky kid in Goes, a town in Zeeland, under…
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How to Greet the Mother Who Bore You (A Short Story)
by Matthew Salesses
Before Teddy and his parents moved to Korea, the adopted nine-year-old knew almost nothing about his birth mother. But once they arrive in Seoul, the boy begins to scan the face of every passing woman, wondering if she might be the one who gave him…
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Lucky Girl
by Mei-Ling Hopgood
In a true story of family ties, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, comes face to face with her past when her Chinese birth family suddenly requests a reunion after more than two decades. In 1974,…
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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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The “Unknown” Culture Club: Korean Adoptees, Then and Now
Edited by Janine Myung Ja, Jenette Moon Ja, and Katherine Kim
This collection serves as a tribute to transracially adopted people sent all over the world. If you were adopted, you are not alone. This book validates the experiences of anyone who has been ridiculed or outright abused, but have found the will to survive, thrive…
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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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To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption
by Arissa H. Oh
To Save the Children of Korea is the first book about the origins and history of international adoption. Although it has become a commonplace practice in the United States, we know very little about how or why it began, or how or why it developed…
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Vietnamese.Adopted: A Collection of Voices
by Indigo Willing, Anh Đào Kolbe, Dominic Golding, Tim Holtan, Cara Wolfgang, Kev Minh Allen, Adam Chau, Landa Sharp, Michael Nhat
Vietnamese.Adopted: A Collection of Voices is a group of writings each in their own form and style, un-censored in content or subject matter, allowing each person to speak on what being a Vietnamese Adoptee, Adopted Vietnamese, or Vietnamese War Orphan is to them, as well…
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Ten Thousand Sorrows
by Elizabeth Kim
“I don’t know how old I was when I watched my mother’s murder, nor do I know how old I am today.” The illegitimate daughter of a peasant and an American GI, Elizabeth Kim spent her early years as a social outcast in her village…
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Dust of the Streets: The Journey of a Biracial Orphan of the Korean War
by Thomas Park Clement
Autobiography of a half and half Korean boy born in the middle of the Korean War found at age 5 on the streets of Seoul, post war, adopted into the U.S. who eventually grew up to be a medical device inventor with over two dozen…
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After the Morning Calm: Reflections of Korean Adoptees
Edited by Sook Wilkinson, PhD, and Nancy Fox
Korean adult adoptees speak out in this anthology. Through memories, reflections, and poetry, adoptees speak to the range of issues that accompany adoption: feelings of belonging and difference, self and other, culture and accomodation, love and loss. We now know that it is in late…
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Songs of My Families: A Thirty-Seven-Year Odyssey from Korea to America and Back
by Kelly Fern with Brad Fern
In 1971, Lee Myonghi, aged five, was taken from her family and placed in a Korean orphanage. Six months later, she was flown to the United States, where she and two other Korean girls were adopted by a Minnesota couple. They renamed her Kelly Jean.…
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Parenting As Adoptees
Edited by Adam Chau and Kevin Ost-Vollmers
Through fourteen chapters, the authors of Parenting As Adoptees give readers a glimpse into a pivotal phase in life that touches the experiences of many domestic and international adoptees–that of parenting. The authors, who are all adoptees from various walks of life, intertwine their personal…
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The Hundred-Year Flood
by Matthew Salesses
In the shadow of a looming flood that comes every one hundred years, Tee tries to convince himself that living in a new place will mean a new identity and a chance to shed the parallels between him and his adopted father. This beautiful and…
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Ghost of Sangju: A Memoir of Reconciliation
by Soojung Jo
Ghost of Sangju takes readers through Soojung’s childhood in Kentucky filled with joy, family, friendship—and the loneliness of being marked as an outsider even in her own home. Alternating between humor and heartbreak, she offers a glimpse into a life foreign to most: that of…
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From Home to Homeland: What Adoptive Families Need to Know before Making a Return Trip to China
Edited by Debra Jacobs, Iris Chin Ponte, and Leslie Kim Wang
Every year, hundreds of adoptive families embark on homeland trips to China and other countries. Homeland trips offer great opportunities for helping adopted children develop a coherent narrative that makes sense of their complicated beginnings. Although the trip can be a joyful experience, it can…
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Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity
by Matthew Salesses
In Different Racisms, Matthew Salesses explores the unique racism Asian Americans face, including the model minority myth, the impact of Jeremy Lin’s fame on Asian American representation in national media, and America’s perception of “Gangnam Style” singer and K-Pop sensation, Psy. Salesses’ essays (and his…
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Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption
Edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin
Many adoptees are required to become people that they were never meant to be. While transracial adoption tends to be considered benevolent, it often exacts a heavy emotional, cultural, and economic toll on those who directly experience it. Outsiders Within is a landmark publication that carefully…
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Adoption Reunion in the Social Media Age
Edited by Laura Dennis
This anthology gives voice to the wide experiences of adoptees and those who love them; examining the emotional, psychological and logistical effects of adoption reunion. Primarily adult adoptee voices, we also hear from adoptive parents, first moms and mental health professionals, all weighing in on…
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Gardening Secrets of the Dead
by Lee Herrick
Memory, history, family, the future: these are the preoccupations of Lee Herrick’s Gardening Secrets of the Dead. Adoptee Author: Lee Herrick Publication Year: 2012 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon links on this site are affiliate links. We earn a small commission to…
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This Many Miles from Desire
by Lee Herrick
The haunting music of Lee Herrick’s This Many Miles from Desire reflects the quest of the poet, an adoptee, to understand his place in the world: “one more child found in the world’s history/of found children.” Spiritually yearning, imagistically sharp, and lyrical, Herrick’s poems are…
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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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Paper Pavilion
by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Paper Pavilion captures the theme of transnational adoption and a powerful search for a personal history and identity from Korea to America. Adoptee Author: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs Publication Year: 2007 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews: Other Reviews: All Bookshop and Amazon…
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The Language of Blood
by Jane Jeong Trenka
With inventive and radiant prose that includes real and imagined letters, a fairy tale, a one-act play, crossword puzzles, and child-welfare manuals, Trenka recounts a childhood of insecurity, a battle with a stalker that escalates to a plot for her murder, and an extraordinary trip…