Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

Memoir/Biography

  • An Australian Son

    An Australian Son

    by Gordon Matthews

    Autobiography of Gordon Matthews. Adopted at birth, he grew up in the 1950s in middle class Kew. Through a series of circumstances Matthews came to believe he was of Aboriginal descent. Passionately, he formally embraced this identity and acquired a profile in the diplomatic service.…

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  • As I Lay Me Down to Sleep

    As I Lay Me Down to Sleep

    by Eileen Munro with Carol McKay

    The harrowing true story of how one woman was betrayed by everyone who was supposed to care for her. When Eileen Munro’s mother became pregnant at 17, she was told to give her baby away to a “good family,” but the couple who paid the…

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  • Back to My Roots: My Journey to China

    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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  • Ballerina Dreams: From Orphan to Dancer (Step Into Reading, Step 4)

    Ballerina Dreams: From Orphan to Dancer (Step Into Reading, Step 4)

    by Michaela DePrince and Elaine DePrince

    At the age of three, Michaela DePrince found a photo of a ballerina that changed her life. She was living in an orphanage in Sierra Leone at the time, but was soon adopted by a family and brought to America. Michaela never forgot the photo…

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  • Becoming

    Becoming

    by Laramie Harlow

    15 unforgettable prose-poems and over 20 true short stories by NDN author Laramie Harlow. Becoming is the title of her impressive (and controversial) second collection. Her sensational first book SLEEPS WITH KNIVES was published in 2012 by Blue Hand Books. Her writing about being a…

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  • Becoming Patrick: A Memoir

    Becoming Patrick: A Memoir

    by Patrick McMahon

    When Pat McMahon risks the love of the mother who raised him by seeking out the mother who gave him away, he transforms from a mild-mannered engineer into a frenetic detective. After he overcomes the challenges of existential angst, bureaucratic roadblocks, and unemployment, the phone…

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  • Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe

    Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe

    by Lori Jakiela

    Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe is a book about mapping lives–the lives we are born with and the lives we are allowed to make for ourselves. Belief is part adoption narrative and part meditation on family, motherhood, nature vs. nurture, and what…

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  • Beneath a Tall Tree

    Beneath a Tall Tree

    by Jean Strauss

    Bestselling author Jean Strauss’s memoir about her quest to unearth her past is an incredibly funny and touching journey that redefines the meaning of family and celebrates the universal connections that link us all. Adoptee Author: Jean Strauss Publication Year: 2001 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews: …

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  • Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese-American Adoptee’s Memoir & Search for Identity

    Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese-American Adoptee’s Memoir & Search for Identity

    by Marijane Huang

    Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Marijane was adopted by an American military family at four months old. She grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in the deep South where hers was the only Asian face among a majority of white. Raised to believe she was Vietnamese…

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  • Billie’s Kid: A True Story About Adoption

    Billie’s Kid: A True Story About Adoption

    by Steve Tucker

    Jazz musician Steve Tucker has always known he was adopted and has spent nearly fifty years tormented by thoughts of who he is, where he came from, and whom he looks like. Like many adoptees, he embarks on a journey of discovery when he goes…

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  • Birthright: The Guide to Search and Reunion for Adoptees, Birthparents, and Adoptive Parents

    Birthright: The Guide to Search and Reunion for Adoptees, Birthparents, and Adoptive Parents

    by Jean A. S. Strauss

    What happens when an adoptee decides to locate a birthparent or a birthparent wants to find a child given up long ago? How does one search for people whose names one does not know? And what happens during a reunion? In 1983, Jean A. S.…

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  • Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption

    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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  • Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

    Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

    by Jennifer Lauck

    An account of the author’s childhood, including the deaths of her adoptive parents and Lauck’s discovery that she is adopted, told from her point of view as a child experiencing these events. Adoptee Author: Jennifer Lauck Publication Year: 1999 Critical Reviews Adoptee Reviews:  Other Reviews:  All Bookshop…

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  • Bonded at Birth: An Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots

    Bonded at Birth: An Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots

    by Gloria Oren

    Bonded at Birth: An Adoptee’s Search for Her Roots is a story of loss, survival, determination, and persistence. It covers one state, three countries, and two continents. It covers sixteen years of searching and a little over four decades since her first adoption. After growing…

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  • Braverman (previously titled I Almost Fell Off the Top of the Empire State Building: A True Story of Trauma and Survival

    Braverman (previously titled I Almost Fell Off the Top of the Empire State Building: A True Story of Trauma and Survival

    by Joe Soll with Susan Hawvermale

    From lying on a New Jersey highway with cars speeding by his head in both directions, to being shot in the head by a manic sniper and almost falling to his death from the top of the Empire State Building, Joe Soll’s autobiography details these…

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  • Called Home, Book 2: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects

    Called Home, Book 2: Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects

    Edited by Patricia Busbee and Trace A. DeMeyer

    From recent news about Baby Veronica to history like Operation Papoose, this book examines how Native American adoptees and their families experienced adoption and were exposed to the genocidal policies of governments who created Indian adoption projects. The editors Trace A. DeMeyer and Patricia Busbee, both…

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  • Connecting Threads: Five Siblings Lost and Found

    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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  • 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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  • Cricket: Secret Child of a Sixties Supermodel

    Cricket: Secret Child of a Sixties Supermodel

    by Susan Fedorko

    Susie always knew she was adopted out at the early age of eleven months. She discovers at the age of forty who her biological family is. Susie discovers her birth mother is the first Native American supermodel “Cathee Dahmen.” This is her story. Adoptee Author: Susan…

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  • Cries of the Soul: The True Story of a Korean Adoptee’s Fight to Survive

    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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  • Crossing the Cherry Blossom Sea: An Adoptee’s Memoir

    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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  • Daughter Reassembled: An Adoption Search and Reunion Memoir

    Daughter Reassembled: An Adoption Search and Reunion Memoir

    by Pam Cates

    Pam Cates had led a charmed life. As a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and artist, she had everything she’d always dreamed of–a big house in the country, a wonderful husband, lovely daughter, her parents living next door, and time to paint and garden. She always…

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  • Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother: A Memoir

    Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother: A Memoir

    by Kevin Barhydt

    Abandoned by his mother at birth, Kevin was enveloped in a labyrinth of adoption, addiction, and child sexual abuse. By age 20, a shell of the boy he once was, Kevin succumbed completely to a suicidal lifestyle of drug dealing and prostitution. At 45, after…

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  • Dear Wonderful You: Letters to Adopted & Fostered Youth

    Dear Wonderful You: Letters to Adopted & Fostered Youth

    Edited by Diane René Christian and Mei-Mei Akwai Ellerman, PhD

    A powerful book filled with thoughtful and inspiring letters. This anthology was written by a global community of adult adoptees and adults who were fostered. Each letter was penned to the upcoming generation of adopted and fostered youth. Editors: Diane René Christian, Mei-Mei Akwai Ellerman Adoptee…

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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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  • Dust of the Streets: The Journey of a Biracial Orphan of the Korean War

    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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  • Everything Is Possible: Finding the Faith and Courage to Follow Your Dreams

    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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  • Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir

    Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir

    by Jillian Lauren

    In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei’s harem, an experience she immortalized in in her bestselling memoir, Some Girls. In her thirties, Jillian’s most radical act was learning the steadying power of…

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