Including More Than 450 Adoptee-Recommended Titles!

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Adoptee Reading is a catalog of books written by adoptees along with other adoption-related books recommended by adoptees.

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RECENTLY ADDED

  • Almost Loved: Poems
    Almost Loved: Poems
  • The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
    The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood
  • Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood
    Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood
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NEWLY PUBLISHED

RECENT MEMOIRS

  • Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood

    Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood

    In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago’s western suburbs between the 1960s and ’80s, adopted twins Julie and Jenny provide their parents with an instant family. Their sisterly bond holds… Read more

  • Woman of Interest: A Memoir

    Woman of Interest: A Memoir

    In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the… Read more

RECENT FICTION

  • Sanctuaries

    Sanctuaries

    Gianni, a gay adoptee, comes of age in a time when adoption and same-sex love are not easily discussed or accepted. Sanctuaries is a tender story of love and healing, set… Read more

  • Seoulmates

    Seoulmates

    When Hara Wilson lands in Seoul to find her birth mother, she doesn’t plan on falling in love with the first man she lays eyes on, but Choi Yujun is… Read more

RECENT PSYCHOLOGY/SELF-HELP

  • Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss

    Pulled by the Root: An Adoptee’s Healing Journey From Trauma, Shame, and Loss

    Adoption involves complex trauma that, if unhealed and unheard, will pulse through subsequent generations. Pulled by the Root is a raw, vivid, and cinematic account of Heidi Marble’s lived experience as an adopted person. The story is led by Heidi as she pieces together her… Read more

  • Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    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… Read more

  • The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment

    The Adoptee’s Journey: From Loss and Trauma to Healing and Empowerment

    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… Read more

RECENT JOURNALISM & RESEARCH

  • The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood

    The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood

    The orphan story has been mythologized: Step one: While a child is still too young to form distinct memories of them, their parents die in an untimely fashion. Step two: Orphan acquires caretakers who amplify the world’s cruelty. Step three: Orphan escapes and goes on… Read more

  • What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed

    What They Never Told Us: True Stories of Family Secrets and Hidden Identities Revealed

    What They Never Told Us tells the stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary, life-changing discoveries about their parentage and/or race and ethnicity that fractured their identities. The book asks the big questions: Who are we? And what is family? Blending social history and personal narratives,… Read more

  • The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States

    The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States

    The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents–a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively… Read more

RECENT ANTHOLOGIES

  • Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    Adoption and Suicidality: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Resources for Adoptees, Families, Healthcare Professionals, and Allies

    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… Read more

  • When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of… Read more

RECENT POETRY

  • Almost Loved: Poems

    Almost Loved: Poems

    “What if you spend the rest of your life chasing love, only to find her cowering in the pit of your stomach? What then?” Almost Loved follows a former foster child’s… Read more

  • In Praise of Late Wonder

    In Praise of Late Wonder

    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.… Read more

RECENT CHILDREN/TEENS

  • When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology

    There is no universal adoption experience, and no two adoptees have the same story. This anthology for teens edited by Shannon Gibney and Nicole Chung contains a wide range of… Read more

  • Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

    Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

    Sarah has always struggled to fit in. Born in South Korea and adopted at birth by a white couple, she grows up in a rural community with few Asian neighbors.… Read more